To be fair it is still the easiest way to do it. If you have a fuel source that could last basically forever and a closed circuit where you can reuse the same water infinitely as well, why not?
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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This isn't necessarily true they could use the brayton cycle at the higher temps a fusion reactor operates at. So instead of making steam it would just be hot air. This is more efficient but might not be used or whatever reason.
The only viable electric generation that doesn't involve spinning a turbine is solar and not even all solar.
That depends on how you define "viable". And "generate".
Peltier devices generate a voltage from a heat differential passing through a bi-metalic matrix. It's not a huge voltage, so the definition of "viable" comes in there, but it can be used to power low power things and works well for heater accessories. I first saw its use for wood stove fans that get powered just by sitting on the stove. I've also seen them power USB chargers for pellet stoves.
And then there's batteries that generate a voltage from submerging two types of metal in acid. And more modern battery designs might be doing it a bit differently but still no spinning magnets and coils. Obviously they are viable for powering many things, but usually themselves are powered from another source rather than using fresh acid for each charge, so the "generate" bit comes into question.
I think there's some others. Like fiction can be used to generate a static voltage and I'm pretty sure I've seen some tesla coils that use friction to generate their voltage. If you continuously generate that voltage, you could make a circuit out of it rather than shock high school kids or make their hair stand up, though I don't know what kind of amperage you could generate like that (that 5 figure voltage isn't fatal because of a lack of amps).
I asked an AI out of curiosity and, while I won't paste the response (feel free to ask one yourself), it gave a list of 20 methods, though I'd say this thread on its own covers about 9 of them, since some are different specific ways of doing similar ones (eg there were 4 based on moving something relative to a magnetic field).
Viable meaning used for power plants or as an alternative to power plants to generate power for the grid.
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Iirc magnetohydrodynamic or MHD generators were a possible way to not boil water
I just realized…
I don’t like fusion.
They say it’s clean, but 14.1 MeV neutrons are no joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_temperature#Fast
14.1 MeV neutrons have about 10 times as much energy as fission neutrons, and they are very effective at fissioning even non-fissile heavy nuclei. These high-energy fissions also produce more neutrons on average than fissions by lower-energy neutrons. D–T fusion neutron sources, such as proposed tokamak power reactors, are therefore useful for transmutation of transuranic waste. 14.1 MeV neutrons can also produce neutrons by knocking them loose from nuclei.
On the other hand, these very high-energy neutrons are less likely to simply be captured without causing fission or spallation. For these reasons, nuclear weapon design extensively uses D–T fusion 14.1 MeV neutrons to cause more fission. Fusion neutrons are able to cause fission in ordinarily non-fissile materials, such as depleted uranium (uranium-238), and these materials have been used in the jackets of thermonuclear weapons. Fusion neutrons also can cause fission in substances that are unsuitable or difficult to make into primary fission bombs, such as reactor grade plutonium. This physical fact thus causes ordinary non-weapons grade materials to become of concern in certain nuclear proliferation discussions and treaties.
How are reaction chambers supposed to deal with that? It’s not very sustainable if the whole assembly breaks down and turns radioactive over time.
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