what would happen if a fully operational fusion reactor exploded in the possibly worst way?
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Upside to fusion reactors, they can’t really run away
Fusion doesn’t want to keep going. The hot atoms push each other away and only a small fraction succeed at fusing so as soon as the pressure that’s forcing them together goes away the fusion stops and the plasma dissipates. Its a couple grams at most of hot gas being pushed into a super tight ring (tokamak style) but when it expands to fill the toroid the temperature will drop dramatically and nothing will really happen
The most dramatic way for a fusion reactor to “explode” is for cooling on the superconducting magnets to be abruptly lost. If they get too warm they stop having 0 resistance and suddenly have resistance so the stupid high current flowing through them now generates an insane amount of power, promptly boiling off all the surrounding coolant, seriously damaging the magnet, and possibly venting a lot of helium or nitrogen from a sealed casing
That’s it. The worst it can really do is *pop* and require expensive and time consuming repairs, but no one outside the facility would be endangered by anything other than power failure.
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