#2-son and I finished Chernobyl tonight.

[hunter]

7. Fission power plants work now. Fusion doesn't, and possibly never will.

Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

Fusion reactors have long been touted as the “perfect” energy source. Proponents claim that when useful commercial fusion reactors are developed, they would produce vast amounts of energy with little radioactive waste, forming little or no plutonium byproducts that could be used for nuclear weapons. These pro-fusion advocates also say that fusion reactors would be incapable of generating the dangerous runaway chain reactions that lead to a meltdown—all drawbacks to the current fission schemes in nuclear power plants.

And, like fission, a fusion-powered nuclear reactor would have the enormous benefit of producing energy without emitting any carbon to warm up our planet’s atmosphere.

But there is a hitch: While it is, relatively speaking, rather straightforward to split an atom to produce energy (which is what happens in fission), it is a “grand scientific challenge” to fuse two hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes (as occurs in fusion).

--more--

https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/#

Nuclear power is the only sustainable way to support the high energy industrial economy many affluent people now enjoy.

We knew what we had to do fifty years ago but the fossil fuel industry was too powerful and nuclear power caused people to freak out in a way that the more dangerous but familiar fossil fuels did not.

Some innovative and economical fusion power system may come along but it's crazy to bet our planet's health on that.