If nuclear fusion were to become useful for residential heating, could the plasma be useful for fake fireplaces?
When I say “fake fireplace”, I mean something like those structures fueled by fossil methane that produce flame and heat but obviously don’t burn actual wood
Plasma for fusion is at insane temperature and pressure to make fusion possible, to overcome the repulsive force that keeps protons apart by sheer velocity of the colliding nuclei. So you wouldn’t have that kind of plasma in a fireplace generally. But you can get room temperature plasma today without fusion, look up plasma balls… That could make a cool (but not fire-like) fireplace, if it could be engineered into another form factor
Yeah, maybe it would make more sense to just hook up an electrical mimic-fireplace to a fusion reactor’s electrical output, than to use the actual helium plasma exhaust to mimic flames, come to think of it.
No, that still probably wouldn’t work out, as the other comments have pointed out. Just clarifying that the dangerous aspects of what I asked wouldn’t involve uranium in particular.
Plasma is a bit hotter than your gas fireplace flame. Common lighter flame is at about 600 deg C and while it’s possible to create plasma which is nearly ambient temperature in controlled environments it’s generally tens of thousands of degrees (plasma arc welding for example) up to tens or hunderds of million degrees celsius (inside fusion generator).
That’s mostly why fusion energy is so difficult problem to solve in the first place as there’s no materials which could withstand the heat. So, no, it wouldn’t be useful as a fireplace. It would of course radiate heat, but it would also light your (and your neighbours) house on fire, so not that useful.
And that’s why you can get a sunburn if you’re welding without proper clothing/protection.
Technically speaking nothing is stopping you from building a plasma fireplace right now, it doesn’t need fusion energy. Just grab a stick welder transformer and place couple of carbon rods carefully next to each other. That might be a bit loud, a bit bright for your living room and might set things on fire and have other minor issues like killing your wifi-signal, but it could be done.
Or if you’re satisfied with a bit smaller “flame” you can get a plasma lighter from amazon for 10-20€.
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