[flangola7]

Wikipedia tells me HVDC runs at 100s of kilovolts. What kind of semiconductor can handle that without promptly turning into plasma?

[cwillu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pole_2_Thyristor_Valve.jp...

My understanding is that the semi's are stacked so that any individual switch only sees a voltage it can handle, with safeguards to cut off the whole mess on failure.

[dreamcompiler]

Big ones, usually made of silicon carbide.