Fusion power

Fusion power is a form of energy production involving nuclear fusion. The technology forms a cornerstone for all major interstellar civilizations.

History
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Planetary fusion power
Within the gravity well of a planet, fusion power is generated in large power plants. Due to constantly beingaffected by gravity, a more extensive magnetic grid is needed to contain the plasma stream. This makes planetary fusion plants sizeable and expensive. The benefits of having a clean and efficient power source usually makes up for these costs. Still, where there is no need for vast amounts of energy, people might choose for a smaller Fusion cyllinder or alternative means of energy production.

Fusion core
In space, most ships make use of a Fusion core for the generation of their energy needs. Fusion cores are typically spherical, where a contained mini-star is fed hydrogen for its fusion proces. A dedicated starship usually has multiple of these fusion cores. These usually come in the form of primary and secondary cores. The primary cores usually provide the ship's baseline energy demand, where the secondary cores are used to smoothly balance out with the varying power consumption of things like engines, weaponry, shielding, or intense communications.

Fusion cores produce a lot of heat. While a lot of this heat is collected and used to power life-support systems, most needs to be radiated away from the ship. For this reason, starships are often equipped with radiative hull panelling, heat sinks, and deployable radiator grids to manage the heat of a ship.

Fusion cyllinder
A Fusion cyllinder is a small and more compact form of Fusion power. It is also called a micro-fusion reactor. A Fusion cyllinder is usually a portable cyllinder producing energy from a Qwerrium fuel cell. While this subtechnology provides a lot of clean energy, and can be scaled down to be portable, it requires the expensive mineral Qwerrium to run. The fusion cyllinder was originally invented to power long-range nuclear missiles of the Union of Sol, but it was later commercialised for general use.