It’s been more than 200 years since the widespread implementation of the steam engine.
Why is this still the most prevalent means of producing electricity? With things like fusion reactors, why is it so hard to convert the thermal energy into electrical energy?
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Because it’s a cheap working fluid, and combined cycle steam plants are rather efficient (65-70%), essentially. The ability to pressurize steam vapor to high pressure super heated conditions (~1100F, ~4000psi range) in modern steam plants make it great for pushing around highly engineered turbine blades, which push a generator. It’s a quite mature technology at this point, so it has quite high fidelity and predictability, and it’s well known how to build and replicate it in various locales. I studied mechanical engineering, so maybe I’m biased based on how big of a subject it was for us, but it has been a difficult technology to provide a clear alternative for given how reliable it is.
It’s probably on it’s way out, in some senses, as wind and solar is now less expensive and construction of those has become essentially the bulk of new energy infrastructure being built. That said, given the fact that steam power plants can be retrofitted to use molten salt as an energy storage fluid heated by excess wind, solar, etc production, we may see them used essentially as grid batteries going forward instead of becoming irrelevant
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