The Power of Redefinition

Particle Accelerators Could Work As Power Generators

If, by “power generator” you mean “source of fuel for a separate nuclear reactor.

Imagine the protons in this accelerator are sent into a block of uranium. Each proton might then be expected to generate a shower of some 60,000 neutrons in the material and most of these would go on to be absorbed by the nuclei to form 60,000 plutonium atoms. When burned in a nuclear reactor, each plutonium atom produces 0.2 GeV of fission energy. So 60,000 of them would produce 12,000 GeV.

Using this back-of-an-envelope calculation, Wilson worked out that a single 1000 GeV proton could lead to the release of 12,000 GeV of fission energy.

Or you could throw the Uranium in a reactor and get the Plutonium for free while you generate power. Which we already can do …