Deuterium Fusion

Fusion energy is what powered almost everything for the second half of the 21st century.

It is fueled by deuterium, or "heavy water": an isotope of regular water which can easily be harvested from the sea or from a river. After going through multiple stages of fusion, the process outputs helium gas, which is stored so it can be used in other applications, such as zeppelin airships... or birthday balloons. A city of a million people would typically consume about 6 tons of deuterium per year.

Some perspective

Assuming perfect energy efficiency, the shower you took this morning had enough deuterium in it to power your house for 30 years. However, the fusion reactors in this world only have a yield of 2%, meaning that shower water would power your house for about half a year instead.

There are two kinds of fusion reactors:

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Fusion Nexus. These hot fusion reactors are massive power plants. They are generally built on or near the sea, so they can use the seawater both to harvest the deuterium they use as fuel, and to cool down.

After the Flare, these facilities are major strategic locations for survivors and scavengers. Most nexuses have shut down or have broken down, but a few of them can still run, and this makes them the only way to turn a subreactor (see below) back on.

Factions of survivors are almost always found near a nexus, and this makes them good locations for trade... Although they can often be the target of raider attacks.

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Subreactors. These hardlight-powered cold fusion reactors can be as small as a coin, or as big as a car. They require a nexus to be started, but once running, they can go for months or years without having to be refueled.

After the Flare, most subreactors got fried and shut down. A few of them, especially in underground facilities, are still running, and scavengers make a living trying to find and sell them.

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1d10	Adventure Seeds
1	The Nexus you lived in was taken over by raiders while you were out on a scavenging trip! You'll have to find a way to free your people and take back the plant.
2	You've ran out of deuterium for your subreactors, and need to explore an abandoned Nexus to find more.
3	You need a massive amount of helium to create a blimp. The local nexus should have some.
4	The local Nexus is broken. It would make a good camp, but it's going to be a lot of work to repair it.
5	You need some data that's stored inside of a data center that has shut down. To put it back online, you're going to have to repair a substation that's between the data center and a Nexus.
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