>>38839204the point is that the thing you are using to create energy had to have energy put into something else for it to work. if you use a lighter to create a fire from a coal, there's gas that is being combusted to create the fire in the lighter, plus all the other stuff downstream that was required to even construct the lighter and the butane that's inside of it, and it's almost always a net loss in power, if you were to capture the thermal energy from the combustion of the coal. fusion is like that, except when you put in 500 units of combined power, you get 510 units of resultant power, versus putting in 500 units of combined power to create the fire and getting 300 units of resultant power from heating water and spinning a turbine
