'steam-driven pistons' sound like you could set one of these things up with a number of cylinders like an internal combustion engine.. but instead of the ignition of fuel forcing the cylinder away via the shock wave and expanding gasses for the next cycle, the liquid lithium gets hotter, this heat is then recovered by pumping it out elsewhere, probably a conventional water boiler/steam turbine deal. Which might supply steam for the next piston-compression cycle + have some mechanical power left over to perform some useful generating capacity and/or drive gearboxes and engines directly.
Fusion car engines? Probably no time soon but 'Mr Fusion' might not be so far fetched.
We have gone from the self-containing tokamak type long reaction to the laser implosion/fuel pellet style, to a liquid lithum piston compression types here. Tech gets safer and easier, if there can be an engine unit that is sealed and has lifetime of hundreds of years without needing major maintenance, then we can tick it off as being as near to tard-proof as anything else ever made. Fusion byproducts are a lot easier to work with than all the nasty stuff that results from all the different ways that a u235 atom can be split. Your engine creates helium? Great, bottle it up and sell it!
Maybe a bigger single cylinder is more efficient than several smaller ones, the tech will figure this out.
'steam-driven pistons' sound like you could set one of these things up with a number of cylinders like an internal combustion engine.. but instead of the ignition of fuel forcing the cylinder away via the shock wave and expanding gasses for the next cycle, the liquid lithium gets hotter, this heat is then recovered by pumping it out elsewhere, probably a conventional water boiler/steam turbine deal. Which might supply steam for the next piston-compression cycle + have some mechanical power left over to perform some useful generating capacity and/or drive gearboxes and engines directly.
Fusion car engines? Probably no time soon but 'Mr Fusion' might not be so far fetched.
They can't tell the difference between diesel and gasoline and you want to allow them to have multiple fusion cylinders ?
We have gone from the self-containing tokamak type long reaction to the laser implosion/fuel pellet style, to a liquid lithum piston compression types here. Tech gets safer and easier, if there can be an engine unit that is sealed and has lifetime of hundreds of years without needing major maintenance, then we can tick it off as being as near to tard-proof as anything else ever made. Fusion byproducts are a lot easier to work with than all the nasty stuff that results from all the different ways that a u235 atom can be split. Your engine creates helium? Great, bottle it up and sell it!
Maybe a bigger single cylinder is more efficient than several smaller ones, the tech will figure this out.
In the mean time , Make Thorium Great Finally