If you instead consider that perhaps we stole the tech from aliens fusion cells and then instead of miniaturization they actually tried to upscale it to power vehicles, power armor and industrial applications. This would explain the struggle, they were able to copy the small fusion cells by basically replicating the LEGO pieces copied from the alien fusion cells. But without understanding the math or science. Makes sense that they had to struggle to upscale it.
I like this theory, especially since energy ammo could power the alien blaster in the old games and the F3 plasma pistol was all but confirmed to be alien tech in Mothership Zeta.
not really as then you would chain a whole bunch of the small ones together to gain the larger output. the only reason you wouldnt bother with that approach is if you already had a larger more efficient alternative which they did for fusion so this furthers the idea it is all a "fusion washing"scam similar to how Greenwashing is a thing with large companies today
Fallout permanently has a problem with having it's cake and eating it too. Shelves are stocked and everything's still ruined and burned 200 years later since they wanted a post apocalyptic looking wasteland but also wanted 'restarting of society' factions akin to the initial two games. They wanted a resource war where people were desperate enough to end the world, but also wanted sci-fi tech that would ruin the concept of energy scarcity entirely. In short: Fusion is so messy for the same reason nuka-cola bottles are still in most vending machines. The writing was not focused on making things real as possible and the more they try to make it seem that way it all falls apart.
True, but it’s more of an issue with the Bethesda era, since at least the other Fallouts were more concerned with creating something new from the ashes of the old. Like the games themselves, Bethesda is stuck in the same mindset ever since the release of 3. 3 has no right to look like the apocalypse just happened, when the war took place over two centuries ago.
@@breecegriffith5896what are you talking about my guy, this has literally always been a problem with fallout. You literally have giant plasma rifles in the first game
@@breecegriffith5896 Every single building or piece of technology in New Vegas is pre war. The main story is about delivering a 200 year old chip to a 200 year old guy so he can activate a 200 year old robot army in a 200 year old bunker to take over a 300 year old dam. There is absolutely no progress in New Vegas.
@@LucyWest370 he's talking about how fallout 3 was supposed to be set less than a century (citation needed) after the war, and instead they set it 200 years after to have to brotherhood and super mutants
I think the use of "fusion" for cells and cores is a misnomer, stemming from Mass Fusion the manufacturer. That would mean every "fusion core" and "microfusion" cell is actually a fission based product, with true fusion being cutting edge, rare, and extremely large. Mass fusion either lied to consumers for marketing, or didn't correct anyone before the bombs fell. Nvm, you got that after 15 minutes 😂
What if Mass Fusion got their hands on some alien tech to show off the prototype fusion tech to the US government to get funding, then realized they oversold their product and had to resort to selling fission as "fusion cores". Or maybe it was alien tech after the "fusion cores" were being sold that allowed for fusion reactors to be a thing. The blue glow of alien power cells is the same as the blue glow of fusion reactors, whereas "fusion cores" match the red glow of fission reactors and rarely the green glow of plasma weapons.
My take on their limitations compared to larger scale fusion generators is that cells don't have the cooling power for extended use so burn out after quickly generating a large (for their size) amount of power, and Cores can run for a long time but their coolant degrades.
He's hoping that's where he's going and you're going to make him Godzilla. You just need to print him out a cityscape background for his tank when he gets home so you don't ruin his illusion XD. "It just took a few hours to kick in!"
Just my 2 cents: the reason why fusion cells/cores were invented before Mass Fusion got its large fusion reactor in Boston operable might be analogous to IRL battery development. The first lithium batteries required rare earth minerals that are in short supply. Newer designs can go without them altogether. Sooo ... maybe the first designs were created using resources or some sort of tech (recovered, non-recreatable alien tech?) which became so valuable that the Fallout US sought other ways to create a fusion reactor. And it took Mass Fusion until 2077 to come up with a viable solution, just to be ready when Atom paid Earth a bombastic visit.
This theory awnsers pretty much every question I can think of. This is kinda the way I was thinking too. Minus the batteries but a real life example is a great touch.
There's also the simple fact that even in the real world building small reactors is way easier than building big ones. Even more so with the nuclear kind. When dealing with fusion a literal tiny sun it makes just as much sense to start small as they did with nuclear reactors in real life. If something goes horribly wrong you want it to be a small thing when that happens. Once the technology is proven you move to expand it and enlarge it for other purposes
For a long time it was easier and more affordable to effectively power a phone with batteries than to put them on a house (IE for solar power systems) or to power a golf cart or children's rideable car than a full-size car. As much as there are technologies that are difficult to miniatureise and easier to make at a large scale (we don't have proper nuclear reactors that can fit in a shipping container let alone a car) there can also be technologies that are easier to make at small scales and harder to upscale for greater purposes. Everyone carries a phone with a battery in it, but to store generated power for a city, you may be better off with pumped water storage.
28:30 You can make a fission-based V8 engine. The trick is that you need not an internal combustion engine, but a V8 steam engine. It may sound weird, but V-shaped steam engines are not so rare. For example the Heisler-type steam locomotives used a V2 steam engine. So just put 4 of those next to each other, connect the intake manifold to a nuke-heated boiler, and connect the exhaust headers to a radiator or heat exchanger.
Finally, something to do with the Nuclear heater I've had sitting in the attic for a decade. For clarity, legal reasons and the algorithm's immunity to humor's sake; The former was a joke.
Small reactors are in fact easier to make than big ones. Even the nuclear kind. So having small fusion systems available but not large ones makes perfect sense even from a real world perspective.
A great example is in fact modern natural gas power plants. They are not singular or even two or three but instead can number into the dozens of turbines per plant simply because the small trade off's in efficiency are usually worth it for a much easier to build and maintain unit.
Bethesda owes channels like yours so much, keeping fallout and tes alive all these years, if they don't send huge care packages out to you and fudgemuppet, camelworks etc. whenever their next huge game comes out I will be genuinely upset. Series would not be half as popular as it still is if passionate people like you didn't make content on it.
@@pl-boostcreepAnd that's extremely insulting from them. If you have fans who love the game but want to extend it, it's imo something else than "forcing" fans to fix your buggy mess of a game, because otherwise it wouldn't even be half as good. Thanks Todd.
If Mr. Handys run on fusion cores, then how does Bethesda explain the large fluid cans labled "Mr. Handy fuel?" Were they for the robot's flamethrowers or was the one in the tv show just a fusion powered prototype?
I always felt that the fusion cores were a battery and drawing from real world examples, if you was to make a fusion/nuclear generator you would need a huge amount of power just to start it up, which is why when you remove the cores the generators run for awhile, but I imagen without that core when they need to cycle or undergo matinance they are unable to start back up without that core or a core worth of power.
I'm sure the Fusion is Fission in disguise theory is actually in FO4 somewhere? I've heard the theory before but this is the only FO channel I subscribe to. The Fusion Cells/Micro Fusion Cells can easily be chalked up as a dialect difference. As for why they can't scale it up, it could be that at larger scales the process becomes unstable and that's the stumbling block they were struggling to overcome.
5:35 Bugthesda's relationship with the Fallout Bible is like Diseny Star Wars' relationship to "Legends". They say its non-canon while half-assedly copying whatever they can
they'd need like one throwaway line about "plasma instability at scale" justifying fusion being more common at smaller sizes. though still doesn't make since that there wouldn't just be tons of the small reactors running together to power cities.
also fusion breeder reactors are totally going to be a thing. neutrons from fusion turning lithium into tritium, that then needs to be filtered out of the lithium containing material and both getting put back in the reactor.
I reckon the small reactors have some kind of regenerative hydrogen and coolant reserves, so enable the fusion core to go past the safe generating capacity it can reach on its on.
Sure there would be. Politics and war. Have the focus of the use of fusion be for defense technologies and you have an in built excuse. Why build that civilian plant when the RED MENACE might invade that town. We will need the resources for the reactor to make tools to FIGHT THE RED MENACE. Seriously in universe the world is unhinged and that is a perfectly valid excuse..... And yes each time I typed RED MENACE I tried doing a Liberty Prime voice as is correct.
This is a good topic. The thing I still find so silly about the Fallout universe is that wheels are almost completely absent. Other than Securitrons and the Highwayman, you never see so much as a shopping cart being used in the world. More people get around by vertibird than bicycle.
It might be worth mentioning that the power plants in Appalachia have fusion core processors connected to them that when powered up will manufacture endless amounts of fusion cores as long as power remains on. So I would say it's safe to say that these so called fusion cores are a ruse unless these processors have some unknown tech turning fission into fusion held within.
Maintaining consistent lore over a generational span of years (27 here) seems to be a task fit for a handful. The way Bethesda has changed, if not outright retconned some aspects, is proof of that claim.
My headcannon is that (micro)fusion cells use a type of miniature fusion-boosted fission reaction like irl boosted fission bombs, but not (usually) as explosive. fully self-sustaining fusion reactions are hard, but it's (relatively) easy to make radioactive hydrogen fuse in brief bursts (like, with lasers and stuff), and those bursts can be used to multiply the power output of a uranium core. if you set up a uranium core, and fuse some hydrogen inside it (maybe with lasers and stuff?) you could have a very powerful miniature reactor that only had to be periodically fueled with hydrogen. this would explain why they can last for centuries inside a vault generator with a hydrogen supply, but have a limited power capacity in man-portable applications (like lasers and stuff).
plus those generators could have additional cooling systems that the core itself lacks, allowing it to uncheck its standard safeties and generate additional power. Untethered from a generator system, the core might overheat quicker and so shut down for safety reasons. Coolant may have degraded over time hence the lessened run time.
My headcannon is that micro does not refer to the cell but to the fusion energy produced. They could build bigger reactors but they still only produced the same amount of energy no matter the size, so they tried to make the container smaller rather than the amount of energy produced bigger, creating the microfusion cell. Just waiting for Rad to say the exact same thing in the video or to entirely disprove it now. Edit: Maybe fusion cores contain more hydrogen fuel which is why they last longer (outputting pore power in total) and kinda explains why Preston calls it a battery and why they can last for so long. If a microfusion cell was used in the place of a fusion core it could still power a building but for only a second until it runs out of hydrogen fuel?
more important than fuel might be coolant. I reckon MF/F cells burn out after use because they have very limited cooling capacity, and standalone fusion cores carry more coolant, but it degrades over time, explaining the limited use in power armour.
If I were to guess, it's that most of the "fusion" tech seen isn't true fusion power but weird form of plasma reactor/plasma engine and it's just marketed as fusion because most are none the wiser (or they're just fission like Mass Fusion pulls). The few that would have access to true fusion tech would be Vault Tec and its subsidiaries. This would also explain why the Enclave wouldn't have fusion power and how Mass Fusion only figured out fusion tech just days before the Great War. Hell it could explain the Fusion Cores degrading real time as it would be more likely be a plasma battery that was kept topped up by the generators (though take that with some salt since it's a new retcon). True fusion power could be only available to Vault Tec since they're known to be shady as hell with their......testing. TLDR: They're probably just plasma reactors/batteries marketed as fusion tech and Vault Tec were probably the only ones with them.
I always figured the deal with Mass Fusion not having true fusion until short before the Great War was because they tried to develop it independently. If fusion was attainable before then I'd imagine it was strictly held onto by Poseidon Energy/The Government since they didn't want China to achieve the tech. So Mass Fusion was trying to redevelop it from basically scratch, while real fusion was mostly reserved for weapons and certain Generators.
@@dinoboy2672 It's possible Mass Fusion got away with the false marketing because the government thought it would make them much more capable of producing real fusion power than they actually were
It is possible the micro fusion cell was invented first because they could only get material to fuse in a small space then later figured out how to do it at an industrial size scale. That's actually how most things are developed. It's just that most people only hear about the things being touted by advertising from companies to use their service. This lead to the idea being introduced to the zeitgeist that things start at industrial scale then get miniaturized. Early computers were small like a briefcase but weak, hence they were scaled up to giant house size machines to increase their computational power to a worthwhile amount which they rented out until people figured out how to miniaturize it with the invention of microchips.
PS: we've had the ability to build battery banks and solar for industrial scale use but it was cost prohibitive till recently. Could be the same thing with micro fusion cells, industrial scale arrays would have made electricity to expensive for people to afford but an individual could afford to buy the occasional micro fusion cell like how people could afford to buy batteries for a remote but wouldn't be able to afford to power their entire house with them.
I hate the elders scrolls, dungeons and dragons fuckin Grow up😂haha, but still they have been waiting since Skyrim for a new game, couldn't imagine being a Skyrim fan, Id be going ballistic
Obsidian did great and Bethesda still treated them like shit and didn’t give their bonus for the low metacritic score I think they’re going to take everything down with them. They even managed to piss off Mick Gordon and he left doom they’re not on a good path rn. Imo their inflated egos won’t let them see someone else do “Bethesda games” better than them
After the disaster that was 76, I doubt they'll let anyone but the main studio touch a Fallout game of any size. (Also they probably don't want to get shown up like they did with New Vegas lol)
I think that Fallout 1-3 were relatively consistent, making fusion seem like an incredibly rare and practically nonexistent technology. Likely only being invented right before the war, and only being implemented in some of the most important and rare technologies such as the GECK. I think that Fallout 4 had a clear but new direction in the fusion lore. All mainstream fusion reactions were actually a fission scam. The microfusion cells were renamed fusion cell, but in a sense they were just microfission cores that burned through the fissle material quickly. If it truly was fusion, I doubt the salvaged assaultron head would have been radioactive. Fusion cores are likely in the same fissle state, just in a larger form factor. The Nukaworld fusion plant having a meltdown also reveals that it is a fission plant in disguise. These change to fusion lore was not very lore breaking because anything with the fusion label at any point in the games was likely just fission, a technology that was widely used and the world had advanced understanding of. Fallout 76 seems to have tried incorporating the rarity of fusion from 1-3 and the mainstream scam from 4 to claim that only the military and Vault-tec had fusion. The power plants, mining operations, etc. seem to have a fissle lean to them. This is somewhat lore breaking regarding the Enclave's bases in previous games not having fusion, only fission, but if you apply the Fallout 4 logic, it resolves the problem, all fusion products including military and Vault-tec are secretly fission. A GECK exploded causing the overgrowth on the eastern side of the 76 map, possibly revealing that the GECK was a fission product. The Fallout show took fusion lore in an entirely new direction. The fusion scam was not a thing. Fusion was already invented, implemented, and was not enough. The new version of fusion is cold fusion. You can't use Fallout 4 logic here, they talked about fusion a lot.
It's possible that the fusion found in Fallout works off of the same magical pseudo-science many other aspects of the games do, and for whatever reason is much easier to maintain in smaller applications. Maybe it's either very difficult to keep a large reaction at low enough power to be safe or they're harder to start and keep from fizzling out, like how you can start a lawnmower with a pull cord but you're going to have a really fun time cranking a semi truck's motor by hand just due to the sheer immensity. Also, if I were to assume, fusion cores probably have some sort of catalyst in them which allows them to run pretty much infinitely by recycling their fuel, but when too much power is drawn too quickly they can be depleted.
I assume the microfusion cells / fusion cells naming issue is just because the microfusion cells were all around better and eventually replaced the old fusion cells whatever those may have been, so the 'micro' prefix was no longer needed to distinguish them. Like how everyone just calls cellphones 'phones' now because landline phones are less common.
There's no argument that fusion cores, fusion cells and microfusion cells have a lot of power. But I think there is some discussion whether they are really fusion power or merely fission masquerading as fusion (except for the Fallout 4 reactor). Granted it's all pretty inconsistent. So let's just assume that fusion cores ARE fusion power. That raises a couple of questions. Why does the fallout TV show make such a big deal out of the fusion cell that is the subject of all the factions' greed? And if the fusion cores are fusion, maybe they just need to be refilled with water or some other material to fuse? Maybe they all really are fusion power and the Fallout 4 reactor beryllium agitator and the Fallout TV show fusion are just ways to get significantly MORE power, beyond what you can get from reactors of the time? None of it really makes sense. Good video!
Fantastic video! I always appreciate how you dive into the more obscure topics within the Fallout series. After playing these games for over a decade, I never stopped to really think about what a fusion cell is. Your attention to detail and creativity are truly unmatched!
I think it's a matter of a lot of the tech for some reason requiring a fission reactor, or just decaying source for radiation that somehow primes the fission reaction. The pure fusion reaction where you don't have a radiation source somehow initiating fusion being something that was difficult and rarely used. Maybe they need a neutron source because for some reason their fusion is using H-4 or something and fuses it to whatever its partner is right at the moment that it absorbs the neutron. So the common fusion reactors are powered by fission reactors, all of them technically being both but being advertised purely for the fusion reaction. I've also always thought that microfusion cells aren't a net increase in power, or at least not a notable one. That making the cell itself takes somewhere around as much energy as you can get out of them. So functionally it's like building a battery, it's a useful product, but you aren't generating power just packaging it. Still a lot of weird discrepancies in the tech though. I think they could explain it, but probably don't want to come up with the answered needed because it's easier on the writers to keep things vague. They could easily claim that they discovered fusion occurring in an experimental small scale fission reactor and the development of the tech didn't progress well, because they didn't have a good understanding of how it worked, and were mainly working off of experimental iteration of the device rather than uncovering the underlying principles. Or maybe they were just replicating poorly understood alien designs and the advancements in the tech of the small scale fusion were in getting closer to recreating the original than figuring out how it actually worked. Either way they might be inclined to take things I don't think it's a priority for the writers to explain.
Gosh I love this channel the fact that a youtubers fallout mascot character supports and dresses like a child of Atom. Who are my favorite fallout faction throughout all the games. Plus the channel is highly educational this channel rocks
I got one. Sustained fusion isn't possible, only massive pulses, like real life H-bombs are a thing. Microfusion cells can only be used for weapons because their pulsed nature suits weapons and maybe they don't use electricity, but some of the energy directly. Fusion cores work the same way but have some exotic nuclear capacitance in them, that allows them to smooth out the flow, but needs the big machinery ie. Power armour or the building-scale generators OR to be used in a weapon as above. Finally! They can't either be used for utility scale because... The material that is used can only be made in small amounts? I don't know, help me out with the last one. Maybe proximity to others messes them up? With some unknown quantum effects or something?
I believe the fission vs fusion situation with fallout is what they showed where Mass “Fusion” doesn’t actually use fusion but markets it as fusion technology, possibly to corner the market or marketing strategy. Smaller components like the fusion cells or cores could simply be batteries for portable storage and able to store large amounts of energy for generators in buildings or vaults. Actual fusion generators seem to be very large and difficult to work properly so it makes more sense that fusion cores and cells are fusion in name only.
A way to make sense of the problem of scalability could be that because of the amount of resources it takes to force a fusion reaction, the smaller the fusion is the cheaper and more realistic. As it scales up it becomes more and more challenging. By the time the bombs dropped Vault Tec and the US Military had gotten fusion to the point of being able to power a bunker. It was only on October 22nd 2077 that Mass Fusion was able to get the fusion to work well enough to power a whole city (Boston).
One possible explanation for why they had microfusion and struggled to get to macro fusion could be that they reverse-engineered the alien fuel cell into thefusion cell at the same time as they reverse-engineered the alien blaster into the plasma pistol. They would lack the full technological understanding that might have allowed the Thetans to make fusion tech at any scale, only having examples of the micro stuff. It might also explain the lack of a listed discovery date/discoverer, as it would likely be classified as all hell.
The Aliens!!!! Crashed zetan ships, weapons of unearthly origin to examine, leaps in technological understanding of microfusion tech related possibly,,, they needed a power source for the giddy up buttercup and seeded the information of microfusion into the minds of humans
In regards to fusion cores, there are a few minor things (and one maybe-mayor). It seems that a fusion core in a generator can last for centuries, as we see functioning ones in abandoned areas in FO4 and can just pick them up and use them, while in Power Armor and Gatling Lasers, they only last a short time. Implying that it's either an unintended or very consuming method, given they only last a short time there (presumably exagerated for the sake of gameplay balace). It should also be noted in regards to Power Armor that the Fusion Cores are less of a retcon than people think, as one NPC in FO1 mentions that PA are only expected to last "a total of 200 years or so" with what they are using to power them. Which fits, as until NV, we could use PA just fine (203 years later), but they're busted and have to rely on something else by FO4 (210 years). Which would also go well with the 'not the intended use' idea for cores in power armor if it's an improvised but very functional solution. Or cores came first, but simply didn't last very long, PA got its new method after which lasts long, and then back to cores 210 years later. Finally, in FO76, we can argue that, due to Power Armor being build by the player but using Fusion Cores, they simply can't figure out how the INTENDED powering method works and rely on cores instead. Which is also supported by the fact that players can, in fact, MAKE POWER CORES in that game, which is a big thing of note (alongside the new Plasma Core, which happens to look the same for sake of saving resources on development). Which also gives us an idea what they are made from: Various types of stable flux. And the game also introduces power-core-chargers about two years ago, confirming that they are, indeed, something you can recharge like a battery (at least if it's not completely empty), making Prestons comments with cores being like batteries a bit more accurate.
i too had assumed that fusion cells, and cores were simply named wrong and were something along the lines of miniturised thermoelectric generators that use the heat generated by nuclear material to generate electricity, we already have the technology to do something similar in the real world. the fact that the cores on the weapon atoms judgement seem to be leaking nuclear material would seem to support this idea.
Okay I thought I would comment a lot of scientific things and get it wrong and say that fusion does not produce radioactive to while that is true in space is not true on earth because those neutrons that are released from the fusion process will interact with other atoms that is called neutron flux that is ionizing radiation those neutrons colliding with other elements will cause the other elements to possibly become radioactive themselves So a very smart way to build a fusion machine is to line the inside walls of your fusion reactor with a neutron absorbing favorable material that will breed that material up to a fission favorable material so perhaps that is what some of the radiation is from when a fusion powered vehicle is destroyed perhaps they were using this method so they explosion of the vehicle would scatter fissionable material that is radioactive Also since fusion has a very high neutron flux which is radioactive to other things such as humans some sort of shielding around it to keep those neutrons from destroying everything so depleted uranium or something like that being excellent neutron shield Also wanted to add this is the reason that fusion is so slow in our world is because currently a little bursts of fusion releases so much neutron energy in the reactor you have to wait for the radioactive isotopes of the wall material to decay before people can enter it the reactor to change internal configurations of devices this means that they run a little bit and then they have to wait possibly months to a full year before they can change anything that greatly slows down the progress
I kinda of figured that Fusion Cores are used to jump start reactors, like if the vault reactor fails you use a fusion core to kick it back into gear but it doesn't supply it's own power unless it's used in PA or a weapon, which explains why a reactor/generator can use one for hundreds of years, because they aren't being used the entire time but only whenever they need to kick start the generator again. EDIT: basically that fusion cores are weaker agitators, but can be used as a lightweight battery when you need it to even if it isn't their best use.
Calling the Fusion and Micro Fusion power cells may simply have been a marketing tradename that no one expected to be real. Much like calling batteries today Lightning Brand and no one would expect them to be really as powerful as a lightning bolt.
10:56 prehaps the specifics on how to create it was not made available to public sectors like energy companies (that weren't affiliated with Enclave like Posiden Energy). 20:48 also, I think that is just a gameplay feature, not an in-universe mechanic. You don't hear Brotherhood members complain about having to constantly recharge/replace their fusion cores, after all.
I would actually suggest potentially some form of catalytic induced fusion for the small cells. Somethinf that works on the small scale for limited time use.... but which doesn't scale up into fusion as we understand it. It also might explain fusion cores slowly going out. You could even tie it into the eldritch in-lore, being actual magic and a faustian bargain that directly led to the war.
There's no date because it was never "invented". It was likely reverse engineered from Zetan technology by Vault-Tec, and without going onto one of their motherships the tech available was probably the smaller versions powering smaller ships and weapons. Mass Fusion probably had to figure out how to scale that up when they got hold of the tech themselves. Clumsy adaptation and implementation could explain the short lifespan of the units, just because we can copy it doesn't mean we understand how it works and I'd imagine there'd be a lot of energy waste. The Enclave never had fusion tech because it never got properly adapted for large scale operations before the great war so they were stuck with their existing fission reactor.
I've always assumed the amount of fissionable material in the center of a MFC is quite small... Like pea sized small, the rest of the bulk of the cell body is shielding.
In the latest Bethesda game I can get shot multiple times while wearing a spacesuit in the vacuum of space but it still works. I can forgive a little fission vs fusion confusion 😅
Love the video and I agree, this lore makes absolutely no sense no matter how you splice it. Just wanted to point out a couple not picks I spotted real quick: First, fusion is still radioactive. That incident neutron radiation during the fusion process is intense and will "activate" sorounding material making basically everything in a fusion power plant radioactive including the coolant. Breeder reactors don't produce more fissile material than when they start, that just produce a more useful form of it (ie producing plutonium from uranium). Your not making energy though. Lastly, fission is actually more power dense then fusion technology and can last significantly longer. After all, rtgs (radio-thermal generators) are used on space crafts and remote regions specifically because they provide power for centuries with zero maintenance. My bet is that these "fusion cells" are actually just highly compact well shielded rtgs.
I always just thought the fusion cores were the actual elements needed for a fusion generator to function. And then, if need be, the smaller technology stored within the core can use up those elements in a slightly smaller fusion reaction, but it’s eats up the elements quickly and doesn’t last forever. That’s why they’re powering buildings after 200 years, but they only last 24 hours in-game, like in a suit of power armor. No?
You hit on a bunch of things that have always hovered in the background, not making much sense. As other folks here have pointed out, seems like the "real world" gets compromised in the name of game mechanics all too often in the Fallout franchise... Not that I don't love the games, I really do, but there's always stuff that doesn't make sense and sometimes you really have to wonder why it's there in the first place. May Atom bless you and keep you!
A hypothesis i have is that fusion cells and cores are named after their company of manufacture. Much like kleenex tissues or creasent wrench. It's far from a perfect theory, but it's food for thought.
Net Positive Fusion energy has been achieved. Lawrence Livermore National Lab National Ignition Facility (NIF) did it in 2022. But it's still a LONG way from being commercially viable.
given the warning on fusion cells, I think they're not really fusion but just a super dense battery, like the FO universe equal of a lithium iron/ion, and Mass Fusion itself is likely still trying to make fusion but also just a "Battery" company till they can make a big breakthrough into the true fusion field, I can see cores and cells maybe holding a charge of fuel that reacts to create energy when inserted, kinda like a tritium MRE heater but more potent
I think fusion cores and cells, may be created using fusion, but imparts their energy using fission, I also think it could be possible that fusion cores double in function, by being both a high capacity quickly discharging battery and as a sort of atomic sparkplug. In essence fusioning very heavy, very unstable elements and storing them in containment units in cells or cores, and have a mechanism to allow these elements to degrade fast in very short bursts for weapons and longer slower bursts for power armor, and potentially very slow bursts for neutron production for power generation. In short a miniaturized RTG using elements created through fusion
I am thinking that they may have had a unique issue where they were able to create small units that were able to create fusion power and were unable to create a safe upscaled version of the tech. A strange flip on how it is normally done I know but in my head canon that is more than likely what had happened.
From what I understand of fusion, it is essentially self- sustaining so creating one cell or core should for all logical reasonIng be enough for forever. However it could conversely be rated to deliver a certain amount of wattage and anything above said rating would collapse the reaction into uselessness; perhaps slowly or explosively fast.
Im pretty sure we've had a successful fusion reqction where we got more energy out then we put in. The next hurdles are harnessing/collecting the power and self sustaining reactions, but its been awhile since ive read anything. The only articles i see are ones that come across my facebook feed from a page that is no longer about good engineering and technological development. Good articles from them are few and far between now sadly.
One thing to note about why mini fusion is widespread but mass fusion (pardon the pun) is breaking ground is that there are multiple ways to achieve fusion and they are not equal by any stretch. For instance a magnetic confinement type reactor will almost always be large, like the size of a large power plant large But with the right advances in material science inertial confinement can be miniaturised very easily. The difference is that magnetic confinement is much more stable and easier to manage while inertial is much more powerful for its size but once it stops your done. And this can easily be applied to fallout. Fusion cores almost certainly utilise inertial based fusion which explains how when they are in a stable constant and regulated generator are able to keep producing for centuries but once plugged into power armour begins to rapidly degrade as the many laser beams get misaligned and the constant irregular power draw increases the chances of the reaction stopping. Meanwhile magnetic confinement better fits what companies were trying to achieve as their long term stability and scalability would make them much better generators. This also applies to the vaults as we see in '76 that the control vaults were not meant for permanent habbitatation meaning a power source that can be relocated would be immensely more important to their side goal of rebuilding America.
1. In the Real world, Fusion plants would require breeder blankets to convert Lithium into Tritium for fuel. 2. Beryllium would be used in a Fusion (Tritium) breeder blanket 3. Small vs big reactor: likely that the small Fusion cells\cores had some limitations which prevented larger size reactors. For instance perhaps the used lattice fusion & the lattice had to be precharged with Deuterium & it just would not scale up for large reactors that could power an entire city. Likely the Mass fusion\Insititute fusion reactors used plasma fusion. 4. Fission cells would run longer than Fusion cells since there is more energy in Uranium\plutonium than in Deutrium\Tritium because it much more denser, and release more energy per nuclear reaction. 5. Lattice fusion reactors could possible meltdown if the lattice overheated to melting point. Fusion does produce a lot of radiation and would make materials radioactive because most fusion reactions releast neutrons just like fission. That said, it just a game, based upon mocking 1950s americana (movies), so don't expect it to be science accurate. After all in FO76, in the Whitespring bunker, the computer message stated they were all living in a computer simulation.
It technically should be easier to make fusion on a larger scale than on a smaller scale because in order to reach more than 100 million degrees require the best shape would probably be a perfect sphere where the volume of the sphere ratio to the surface area would favor a larger sphere
