Re:General Fusion to build demonstration plant in UK
by StreamBright on Thursday June 17, 2021 @12:30PM
(#27541455)
This is the 1990's view on the subject. There were several projects to address the fission leftover problem. Some of these:
- Method to Reduce Long-lived Fission Products by Nuclear Transmutations with Fast Spectrum Reactors https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14319-7
- Fast-neutron reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor
- Evolution of transuranium isotopic composition in power reactors and innovative nuclear systems for transmutation https://inspirehep.net/literature/1243003
And few other things. It is possible to have nuclear power with shorter byproducts than thousands of years.
Re:General Fusion to build demonstration plant in UK
by Kirby64 on Thursday June 17, 2021 @03:17PM
(#27543399)
Given that the US has only 1 reactor that was commercially put into operation after 1990s [1], it's a pretty realistic way to look at it in the US.
Newer reactors and spent fuel reprocessing are definitely ways to solve the issue, but the fact is you still create those nasty byproducts in the traditional reactors today.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
Re:General Fusion to build demonstration plant in UK
by AtlasBarfed on Thursday June 17, 2021 @11:57PM
(#27547213)
Well if you're talking about a in-development fusion reactor, then it's fair to use in-development fission reactors for comparison.
Fission byproducts are well known to just be a ton of heavy metal junk that decays over thousands of years.
I'm sure there's fusion byproducts that are nasty too, but fundamentally you can't get byproducts as high up on the elemental chart as you can with fission strictly because fusion is merging 2 smaller atoms into 1 larger atom. With fission you start with a larger atom and break it into 2 smaller ones. Oversimplified, but you get the idea.