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Originally Posted by dellwear
It's been "not that far off" for 40 years, we haven't got another 40 left!
Oh and it may be stable (for a few seconds) but consumes alot more energy so run than it produces I'm afraid. Also you still have the same problem with decommissioning of stations.  |
If fusion had the same massive international funding that fission had in the 40s and 50s, it wouldn't be far off.
It's true that fusion reactors take a hell of a lot of energy to start up. But once you get them hot enough, they can be self-sustaining. It's still not spectularly efficient -- the majority of the energy generated by the reactions goes to continuing the reactions. But this is exactly the same as what happens in current conventional and nuclear power stations...
And the problem of decommissioning power stations is nowhere near as acute. The radioactive material would have a half-life of about 100 years, compared with thousands of years for uranium and plutonium. And that's before scientists have started looking at the problem of designing radiation-resistant materials for use in fusion reactors...