View source for Talk:Fuel/@comment-99.61.168.9-20141231044928/@comment-24.141.225.61-20150825144320

Fusion reactors use some the energy they produce to sustain themselves, and hydrogen requires the least energy to fuse. Any element other than hydrogen will not work in the reactor because it will start taking more energy than it produces and the reactor will shutdown harmlessly. So you blowing up when you run out of fuel is completely unrealistic, people are just assuming that fusion reactors work like stars when they actually work quite differently.

Fun fact: We actually have experimental fusion reactors in real life, we just haven't figured out how to make on that produces enough power to run itself after being started.