The high-energy neutrons from fusion reactions will trigger fission in surrounding materials, increasing energy output while potentially reducing nuclear waste.
Nuclear fission is not as dangerous as people think it is. Nuclear powerplants are built like fortresses, there are many protocols for safety and a well built and well planned nuclear powerplant will not bring any casualties. The alternative on the other hand (fossil fuels), kills more people every year than nuclear energy in its whole history. If you asked me if I’d rather live next to a nuclear power plant or a coal/oil based thermoelectric, I’d choose the one who gives out a lesser radiation dose, the nuclear powerplant
It’s the catastrophic failures that leave long lasting multi generational environmental deviststion. The more fission plants we have, the higher the risk of one going. We live in the days where 1 in 500 year events are happening on the norm and massive state actors actively target nukes as policy. Fukushima happened because despite the “it would never happen here that bad” happened even with multiple redundancies and built like a fortress. Every fission plant made increases the chances of another catastrophic failure. It’s a gamble with worsening odds that I feel is a blind spot.
I applaud China in innovating, but fission plants give me red flags as they pile on the risk. Then piping a neutron stream into one seems even more risky. I would to develop energy storage and splitting hydrogen and oxygen. At least if a hydrogen / oxygen plant goes it won’t make exclusion zones or poison the water supply.
Can you imagine if Fukushima happened on the shores of Lake Michigan rather the Pacific Ocean? It would contaminate the drinking water and economic lifeblood for millions. Many see fission as a quick fix, but I feel they overlook the odds when that kind of money (and there’s a huge nuke lobby) for these plants could be used in developing less risky solutions that would benifet us in the long term goal of becoming a Type 1 and beyond civilization.
I thought we would have learned after Fukushima fission was not the way to go.
These are actually far, far safer than any pure fission plant. The nice thing about these fusion-fission plants is they can be designed to be completely and utterly meltdown proof. Regular fission plants have a self-sustaining fission reaction; the plant is designed to slow the reaction down and keep it under control. With a fusion-fission plant, you can design it the opposite way. You design the fission part to be sub-critical. You use a fission fuel that cannot maintain a self-sustaining fission reaction. You design it so that the fission part is only able to maintain a reaction if it has a giant neutron beam pointed at it. And that neutron flux is provided by the fusion part of the reactor.
If anything at all goes wrong in the plant, all you have to do is cut off power to the fusion reactor. The fusion component of the reactor cannot itself make net power; it consumes electricity to keep running. So you just it off, the neutron flux collapses, and the fission portion is unable to keep its reaction going.
Yeah yeah rebuilt the Titanic and this time it really is unsinkable. They told us that before and it still happened.
Either the beam can’t be turned off fast enough. A crack developed in the shield. The tripple redundant backups had an evironmental anomaly occur that didn’t think would happen in 500 years. What are the odds?
Odds get worse every year with every build. Fission is not a sustainable or safe no matter how they market / lobby the technology. Fukushima was extremely over engineered. Sea walls, multipe redundant backup gens high up on a hill. Scram procedures and a negative coefficient of reactivity to stop it from going Cherynobol, and it still hasn’t been cleaned up over a decade later, and it still had a massive release into the largest ocean. What if Fukushima happened in say Lake Michigan instead?
After all the stink China made about Fukushima, I really am suprised they still went with fission. They are setting themselves up IMO and they have a lot more people to worry about than Japan. Oh well I know I’m in the minority here. I just don’t see why others just blindly go with it. There’s a smart group here. They get the dangers of blue no matter who, but they don’t get the risks of fission.
Just admit you don’t understand the technology enough to explain why you feel its unsafe, then get back to us when you figure out its fossil fuel companies.
Perhaps the PRC has a better understanding than you.
Sometimes ships really are unsinkable. You can build a small boat out of materials that are themselves buoyant. If you make a boat of a foam material or some woods, you can submerge that boat at the bottom of a lake, release it, and it will pop right back up to the surface. It’s hard to build an ocean liner this way, but there are truly unsinkable boats. There is a difference between safety by backups/safety mechanisms and intrinsic safety. Your car’s engine cannot explode in a nuclear fireball. It’s resistant to nuclear explosions not because of some elaborate series of safety mechanisms and backups, but simply because it lacks the capability to generate any kind of atomic reaction. Physics, not engineering, provides for the safety of unsinkable boats, your car’s lack of nuclear explosiveness, and fusion-fission reactors.
You speculate that the beam may not be shut off fast enough. But there IS no “fast enough” in this context. This is not some system that has the capability of spiraling out of control. Imagine you had a combustion engine that was provided air by a blower motor. The blower motor can supply a certain m^3/min, and this is all the air the engine receives. The motor can only supply the engine so much air; it is fundamentally incapable of spiraling out of control.
There’s no way for a fusion-fission reactor to explode in some runaway process. You design the neutron beam so that its absolute maximum power is still well below what would be required to turn the fission reactor into a pile of slag, like orders of magnitude below. You don’t put some big honking fusion reactor in this system. You build your fusion portion so that it’s only capable of providing enough neutrons for a gentle slow fission burn. There simply will never be enough neutrons in the system for the fission pile to experience runaway fission.
Okay, but. How many of those happened? I can think of two. And fukushima was 100% avoidable if it wasn’t for capitalism. They knew it could happen, they knew what to do to avoid it, they were warned multiple times, and did nothing, because why would they spend money to fix that. There are ways to ensure better safety and that this won’t happen, unless something really bad happens. Now, burning coal will always pollute the environment, aggravating global warming and causing death all over the world. Don’t underestimate CO2. Yes, we can research better solutions, we can also research better safety measures and use something that is ready and robust instead of continuing to use coal and oil. The only thing I’m trying to argue here is that nuclear is better and safer than coal/oil plants which cause the most early deaths per unit of energy produced
China is achieving high efficency Fusion early!
By using it to supercharge fission plants
Nuclear fission is not as dangerous as people think it is. Nuclear powerplants are built like fortresses, there are many protocols for safety and a well built and well planned nuclear powerplant will not bring any casualties. The alternative on the other hand (fossil fuels), kills more people every year than nuclear energy in its whole history. If you asked me if I’d rather live next to a nuclear power plant or a coal/oil based thermoelectric, I’d choose the one who gives out a lesser radiation dose, the nuclear powerplant
It’s the catastrophic failures that leave long lasting multi generational environmental deviststion. The more fission plants we have, the higher the risk of one going. We live in the days where 1 in 500 year events are happening on the norm and massive state actors actively target nukes as policy. Fukushima happened because despite the “it would never happen here that bad” happened even with multiple redundancies and built like a fortress. Every fission plant made increases the chances of another catastrophic failure. It’s a gamble with worsening odds that I feel is a blind spot.
I applaud China in innovating, but fission plants give me red flags as they pile on the risk. Then piping a neutron stream into one seems even more risky. I would to develop energy storage and splitting hydrogen and oxygen. At least if a hydrogen / oxygen plant goes it won’t make exclusion zones or poison the water supply.
Can you imagine if Fukushima happened on the shores of Lake Michigan rather the Pacific Ocean? It would contaminate the drinking water and economic lifeblood for millions. Many see fission as a quick fix, but I feel they overlook the odds when that kind of money (and there’s a huge nuke lobby) for these plants could be used in developing less risky solutions that would benifet us in the long term goal of becoming a Type 1 and beyond civilization.
I thought we would have learned after Fukushima fission was not the way to go.
These are actually far, far safer than any pure fission plant. The nice thing about these fusion-fission plants is they can be designed to be completely and utterly meltdown proof. Regular fission plants have a self-sustaining fission reaction; the plant is designed to slow the reaction down and keep it under control. With a fusion-fission plant, you can design it the opposite way. You design the fission part to be sub-critical. You use a fission fuel that cannot maintain a self-sustaining fission reaction. You design it so that the fission part is only able to maintain a reaction if it has a giant neutron beam pointed at it. And that neutron flux is provided by the fusion part of the reactor.
If anything at all goes wrong in the plant, all you have to do is cut off power to the fusion reactor. The fusion component of the reactor cannot itself make net power; it consumes electricity to keep running. So you just it off, the neutron flux collapses, and the fission portion is unable to keep its reaction going.
Yeah yeah rebuilt the Titanic and this time it really is unsinkable. They told us that before and it still happened.
Either the beam can’t be turned off fast enough. A crack developed in the shield. The tripple redundant backups had an evironmental anomaly occur that didn’t think would happen in 500 years. What are the odds?
Odds get worse every year with every build. Fission is not a sustainable or safe no matter how they market / lobby the technology. Fukushima was extremely over engineered. Sea walls, multipe redundant backup gens high up on a hill. Scram procedures and a negative coefficient of reactivity to stop it from going Cherynobol, and it still hasn’t been cleaned up over a decade later, and it still had a massive release into the largest ocean. What if Fukushima happened in say Lake Michigan instead?
After all the stink China made about Fukushima, I really am suprised they still went with fission. They are setting themselves up IMO and they have a lot more people to worry about than Japan. Oh well I know I’m in the minority here. I just don’t see why others just blindly go with it. There’s a smart group here. They get the dangers of
blue no matter who, but they don’t get the risks of fission.
Just admit you don’t understand the technology enough to explain why you feel its unsafe, then get back to us when you figure out its fossil fuel companies.
Perhaps the PRC has a better understanding than you.
Sometimes ships really are unsinkable. You can build a small boat out of materials that are themselves buoyant. If you make a boat of a foam material or some woods, you can submerge that boat at the bottom of a lake, release it, and it will pop right back up to the surface. It’s hard to build an ocean liner this way, but there are truly unsinkable boats. There is a difference between safety by backups/safety mechanisms and intrinsic safety. Your car’s engine cannot explode in a nuclear fireball. It’s resistant to nuclear explosions not because of some elaborate series of safety mechanisms and backups, but simply because it lacks the capability to generate any kind of atomic reaction. Physics, not engineering, provides for the safety of unsinkable boats, your car’s lack of nuclear explosiveness, and fusion-fission reactors.
You speculate that the beam may not be shut off fast enough. But there IS no “fast enough” in this context. This is not some system that has the capability of spiraling out of control. Imagine you had a combustion engine that was provided air by a blower motor. The blower motor can supply a certain m^3/min, and this is all the air the engine receives. The motor can only supply the engine so much air; it is fundamentally incapable of spiraling out of control.
There’s no way for a fusion-fission reactor to explode in some runaway process. You design the neutron beam so that its absolute maximum power is still well below what would be required to turn the fission reactor into a pile of slag, like orders of magnitude below. You don’t put some big honking fusion reactor in this system. You build your fusion portion so that it’s only capable of providing enough neutrons for a gentle slow fission burn. There simply will never be enough neutrons in the system for the fission pile to experience runaway fission.
Okay, but. How many of those happened? I can think of two. And fukushima was 100% avoidable if it wasn’t for capitalism. They knew it could happen, they knew what to do to avoid it, they were warned multiple times, and did nothing, because why would they spend money to fix that. There are ways to ensure better safety and that this won’t happen, unless something really bad happens. Now, burning coal will always pollute the environment, aggravating global warming and causing death all over the world. Don’t underestimate CO2. Yes, we can research better solutions, we can also research better safety measures and use something that is ready and robust instead of continuing to use coal and oil. The only thing I’m trying to argue here is that nuclear is better and safer than coal/oil plants which cause the most early deaths per unit of energy produced