this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Solar cells, technically.
boiling water systems have a thermal efficiency of ~40% Solar cells are closer to 45% efficient
So line a nuclear fusion containment chamber with photovoltaic cells?
They would melt, but we do also have gamma voltaics which can use the gamma radiation from fission and fusion to generate electricity they just have an atrocious efficiency
That's called a "Dyson sphere".
Doesn't seem particularly efficient to me... The sun burns hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen every second. The amount of released energy we actually put to use is indistinguishable from zero, not 45%.
I mean, that's like pointing out that a coal plant isn't very efficient because it doesn't burn all the coal on Earth at once.
If we put it like that, every other energy source on earth begins that way and adds at least one conversion step.
... except for fusion of course.
Exactly.
Nuclear plants are probably the least efficient, because they required all that fusion energy inside earlier stars to build hydrogen into uranium, and we can only extract a tiny portion of that trapped fusion energy through fission.