this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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My guess is: it's more efficient to convert boiling water movement to electricity than to convert photons emission to electricity.
Stars are a lot cooler then fusion reactors.
It's in their outer layers that they produce a shit ton of photons.
Fusion reactors are way hotter (like 100m Celsius) and although they make photons most are very high energy (think gamma, xrays etc).
So what would be emitted as visible light would never be enough to generate enough power via pvc to pay back the cost of generating the fusion reaction in the first place much less the cost of building the plant.
Also pvc is like at best 22%~ efficient. You're losing a lot compared to say steam powered generators which, using ultra super critical hot steam made by a fusion reactor could maybe hit 60% (I believe that is high as you can go).
Asianonmetry has a great lecture on steam powered generators
https://youtu.be/suCEKLCCgzw