[acidburnNSA]

Right. But slapping boiling water around the burning plasma is kind of a rube goldberg usually. See LLNL's LIFE design for example [1]. Things like molten salt walls circulating through a steam turbine and all that.

There are other ideas too, but it's hard to beat a Rankine cycle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

[pfdietz]

You can't just slap boiling water around the burning plasma in a DT reactor, since you need almost all the neutrons to make more tritium. Water would absorb too many neutrons. The IFE designs use thick showers of liquid lithium or molten FLiBe for this reason.

[eternalban]

HILIFE-II Inertial Confinement Fusion Power Plant Design:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150404075829/https://hifweb.lb...