system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If there is a breach in a fusion reactor, what will happen?

I'm writing a novel and I want to have a fusion reactor breach its walls through some kind of coolant malfunction or whatever.

My question: If you had a stable reaction going, and then removed a chunk of the wall, would the resulting energy escaping be catastrophic or would things just flicker out? I'm hoping catastrophic for the books sake...
gpt
If you remove a part of the wall but not the magnets the fusion reaction will heat the magnets until they stop being superconducting. The magnetic field breaks down, the reaction stops - essentially instantaneous, probably before you even managed to fully remove the wall segment.

The energy stored in the plasma at any given point in time is small - less than the energy in a hand grenade probably. Fusion reactors cannot explode or do anything else dangerous.