I think we just haven't found the right fusion design.
If we use a reaction that primarily produces beta radiation or other high energy charged particle, sending it through a coil of wire would induce a voltage that we could extract as electric energy.
For that matter, appropriately located coils could be used to extract thermal energy from the plasma directly. The trick there is that we can't get much with the current tokamak and stellarator designs -- the thermal energy is too disordered to use a large coil and the plasma flow is not sufficiently confined to use small coils. There are almost certainly better configurations, but the electrohydrodynamics simulations are tricky. If we keep at it I'm sure we can find a stable configuration with fewer degrees of freedom.
If we use a reaction that primarily produces beta radiation or other high energy charged particle, sending it through a coil of wire would induce a voltage that we could extract as electric energy.
For that matter, appropriately located coils could be used to extract thermal energy from the plasma directly. The trick there is that we can't get much with the current tokamak and stellarator designs -- the thermal energy is too disordered to use a large coil and the plasma flow is not sufficiently confined to use small coils. There are almost certainly better configurations, but the electrohydrodynamics simulations are tricky. If we keep at it I'm sure we can find a stable configuration with fewer degrees of freedom.