maybe they don’t use plasma at all?

Never even thought of that. There was a lot of dialog and plot points about finding alternatives to warp after the Burn, and we know they still use dilithium as a regulator, so I assumed they’re still using the same M/A reaction as before. But it’s very possible they extract the energy from the reaction in completely novel ways now.

Was just assuming the same way as we’ve always known because (checks notes) the nacelles still light up blue lol.