Question about UT power generators

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by raniE

How exactly do the semi-portable, portable and backpack fission, fusion and antimatter generators on p 20 of Ultra-Tech actually work? As far as I know, current fission reactors heat water to create steam, which then goes through a turbine and is converted into rotary motion. The ideas for fusion power seem to be the same and I would guess it would also be so for antimatter power generation. So, do the generators in Ultra-Tech differ in the way they produce electrical power, or would one always have to connect the UT-power generators to a water source before using them?

All the TL10+ portable power systems likely don't use steam engines. For example, the fusion reactor is assumed to be an aneutronic fusion system using a D-He3 or p-B11 fuel cycle that generates charged particles usable for direct energy conversion. It is worth noting that all such small reactors are impossible if using the conservative hard sf tech path...