https://interestingengineering.com/energy/steam-driven-nuclear-fusion-reactor
"In a global first, Richmond, Canada-headquartered fusion energy company General Fusion achieved the first-ever plasma in a reactor driven by steam."
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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It is somewhat bewildering to realize that we have come all this way in technology but somewhere something is always turning water into steam to drive a piston of some sort.
Which is exactly why when Einstein got the Nobel Prize when he discovered the photoelectric! Kind of a big deal when basically everything before that was turbine driven, as you mention.
Everything before that and almost everything after that.
The only exception i know is fermenting biomass to methane and burning it.
There's actually a company called Helion which is trying to skip the steam turbine step completely with fusion energy. Although generally speaking you're correct, they're kind of the exception that proves the rule.
All power is steam power, fossil fuels are burned to boil water. Heck nuclear reactors are also just boiling water to create steam.
It's all Steampunk but we grew out of our punk phase :P
Solar is (usually) not. Couldn't fit a steam turbine in a calculator.
"Couldn't fit a steam turbine in a calculator."
Not with that attitude you can't.
Solar photovoltaic doesn't involve steam. We can be solarpunk as well!
I guess hydro-power uses steam in the global water cycle so I'll give you that. Radio-Thermal Generators are all solid state, but not much power on earth comes from them.
Wind turbines as well.
Unless you count the humidity in the air.
And thermopiles.
Loads of fossil power use gas turbines that do not involve steam :x
Was an old joke.
I invented a revolutionary new power generation!
"is it actually new or just steam"
".... steam".