Fusion Energy Breakthrough Could Be An 'Inflection Point' For Clean Fuel Technology - NBC News

[TexasTowelie]

The Department of Energy is expected to announce a major development regarding fusion energy on Tuesday. Alex Gilbert, fellow at the Payne Institute, discusses the significance of this potential discovery.

[Lunabell]

1. If the problem of waste has been truly solved,

I am more than willing to re-visit my anti stance on this type of energy.

[honest.abe]

3. What waste are you referring to?

https://www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs#:~:text=Fusion%20on%20the%20other%20hand,its%20half%20life%20is%20short

Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. It also produces and consumes tritium within the plant in a closed circuit. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short. It is only used in low amounts so, unlike long-lived radioactive nuclei, it cannot produce any serious danger.

[exboyfil]

4. Depending on the method of construction

You can have the beryllium blanket be radioactive. There are also other waste products. Not nearly the amount produced by fission reactors.

Even with a stable reaction the engineering associated with converting that energy to useful power is mind blowing and complex.

I honestly think orbital solar collectors with microwave beaming energy to Earth is a lot closer technically.

[honest.abe]

5. Yeah it does sound like we are a very long way..

from fusion power plants.

[MagaSmash]

2. Elon COULD have invested in this; instead he threw away his Billions to play with Twitter.

[Shermann]

6. I believe reaching net positive energy production is the second most difficult engineering problem

Problem number one in creating a practical reactor is deterioration from neutron bombardment.