23 What key technologies are needed to achieve these advantages? (Fusion)
Description
This article is from the Fusion FAQ, by Robert F. Heeter heeter1@llnl.gov with numerous contributions by others.
23 What key technologies are needed to achieve these advantages? (Fusion)
*Any* working fusion reactor would have minimal environmental
impact relative to fossil fuels, with the exception of the
radioactive waste problem. Minimizing the radioactive
inventory and waste burden of a fusion reactor is the key
to maximizing the environmental friendliness of fusion.
Now, as can be seen from the answers to questions A and B
above, the development of low-activation materials will
help achieve a tremendous advantage for fusion by dramatically
reducing the radioactive waste problem. This will be
complemented by development of tritium-handling techniques
which allow us to reduce the tritium radiation problems.
More advanced fusion reactors using aneutronic fuels will
eliminate the radioactive-waste problem entirely, but these
fuels are much harder to burn. Aneutronic fusion is
much further down the road and would probably have
a harder time competing economically. Scientists believe
that, from an environmental standpoint, even D-T fusion
with low-activation materials would be an improvement
over current energy sources. Advanced aneutronic fuels
in which only charged particles (i.e., not neutrons) are
released by the fusion reaction would have an additional
advantage: one can directly convert charged particle energy
to electrical energy with much higher efficiency than
one can achieve with conventional turbine-based technologies;
this would reduce the thermal pollution from a fusion plant
dramatically.
* D. What are the materials and fuel requirements for fusion?
This question is answered in Section 2 Part 1; please look
there.
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