You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

0
0

[–] Probably_insane ago 

How is fusion power safer than fission reactors? Having the temperature of the sun in a magnetic field doesn't sound very safe to me!

0
5

[–] VictorSteinerDavion 0 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago 

Amount of fuel available to sustain the reaction.
Like gas in a car, the fuel has to be pumped in for it to work.

If one of these blows up it can only burn up the fuel currently in the system, where fission reactors have ALL of the fuel available the entire time, which allows for run away reactions like fukushima and chernobyl.

Any explosion in a fusion system will be a very bad thing of course and if the shielding fails a pulse of radiation will get out and destroy a bunch of stuff, but it won't leave a pile of long term pollution behind messing up the place for centuries.

A fusion system blowing up would not be much different than an oil refinery blowing up, and that happens all the time.

0
2

[–] CatNamedJava 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Gen 4 reactor can turn themselves off during a failure so chernobil is not possible with the new ones. Plus the entire US nuclear waste can fit inside a footbal field. Most waste are just sitting next to the plant waiting for gen 4 reactors to come online to recycle the waste.

0
2

[–] Probably_insane 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

I see, so it's still dangerous, just nowhere near as dangerous as it could be in a fission reactor, mainly due to the lack of nuclear fallout?

I guess that's slightly more reassuring

0
3

[–] PotatoFarm 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

Fuel is hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, and while it's dangerous (explosion in contact with air) the residual is... water.

On the other hand, as far as I remember the residual of the reactor as it is ... it's Helium. One of the most harmless elements in the universe, and also very useful in several industries.

Now, if the reactor goes bonkers, it will be a very bad thing... however, leaving behind the initial explosion (shouldn't be even that big), the combustible will be consumed almost instantly and there are no dangerous residuals to worry about.

In other words, a fusion reactor is going to be the safest, greenest (by far), and more efficient (also by far) source of energy.

We are talking that if these reactors can be build at reasonable prices and time, we will be seeing one of the biggest revolutions of all time: extremely cheap, unlimited energy.

Think about creating drinkable water from the oceans (energy prohibitive today), ridiculously efficient farms in terms of water and pesticides (hell subterranean farms would be viable), long space travel would be viable (if we resolve the gravity and radiation issues) and we could start to unfuck the planet by removing our needs for contaminant fuels, or with advanced methods to destroy our waste and even invert desertification.

I can't find the source, but with this sort of energy, the planet could host 10x the current population without any noticeable impact in life standards. (Other than super packet cities)

0
0

[–] MichaelTen [S] ago 

Fusion reactors cannot melt down like fission ones.

0
0

[–] Pisodeuorrior ago 

Pretty sure a refinery full of petrol is more dangerous than that.