Even if fusion is feasible, it will not solve the problems people keep hoping it will.
1. Proliferation. A thorium reactor already has no proliferation risks
2. Costs. LOL. At least 2000 years to recoup the R&D, and then OpEx still exists
3. Fuel availability. Thorium. Reactor.
4. Waste. Where do you think all those neutrons will go? The container. which will slowly become radioactive as you transmute it thus... IT will also become brittle and need replacement. It is ... nuclear waste. Radioactive and in need of storage. Also: a thorium reactor can use existing nuclear waste to for a while it'll REDUCE amount of waste we have to deal with
The one and only thing fusion does have going for it: at least IN THEORY it might be possible to do on a space ship by collecting interstellar gas. Not much heavy isotopes there but plenty oh H and some He
There's already a reactor that can do this (CANDU reactor), and has been operational for decades, no research required. That there is little new investment in building them tells me that no one really cares about reducing the amount of nuclear waste, and that it's all very political.
Yep. Ontario's power reactors can (and have!) run on plain uranium, partially depleted uranium "waste" from American power reactors, and my favourite: a mix of depleted uranium and ex-Soviet warhead plutonium [1]. A thorium breeding cycle is also possible, in theory with CANDU and it's actually being done with India's heavy water pressurized reactors using thorium, which are an indirect derivative.
1. Proliferation. A thorium reactor already has no proliferation risks
2. Costs. LOL. At least 2000 years to recoup the R&D, and then OpEx still exists
3. Fuel availability. Thorium. Reactor.
4. Waste. Where do you think all those neutrons will go? The container. which will slowly become radioactive as you transmute it thus... IT will also become brittle and need replacement. It is ... nuclear waste. Radioactive and in need of storage. Also: a thorium reactor can use existing nuclear waste to for a while it'll REDUCE amount of waste we have to deal with
The one and only thing fusion does have going for it: at least IN THEORY it might be possible to do on a space ship by collecting interstellar gas. Not much heavy isotopes there but plenty oh H and some He