Fusion reactor
A fusion reactor is an energy generation unit that employs deuterium fuel to yield helium plasma, which is typically used to power the impulse drive, or is sent through the secondary EPS system to power other systems.
This process starts in the fuel storage tanks. Deuterium is taken from the tanks and reduced in temperature so that it turns into solid deuterium ice pellets. These pellets get fired into the reactor where a set of fusion initiators are used to ignite the pellet whilst a magnetic field holds them in place. This process fuses the deuterium atoms together.
Following this, the created stream of plasma is passed through to the space-time driver coil.
On a Federation starship, fusion reactors are typically networked together with each reactor passing it’s plasma output to another in a cascade fashion. This is done because a typical Star Fleet impulse drive needs the combined output energy from at least three fusion reactors. Each of the eight impulse engines on a Galaxy class starship has three fusion reactors connected together in this manner.
