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Jan. 11th, 2006 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyLast year I found out, while critting someone else's SF, that fusion reactions create radioactive waste. As I was one of those SF readin' teens who grew up thinking of fusion power as the Philosopher's Stone, this was a shock, and I wondered why I hadn't learned it before. (Or was I busy writing fanfic during that lecture in first year chemistry?)
Two letters in the 3 December 2005 New Scientist reminded me of this discovery, but the editor has some reassuring facts: the fusion reactor would only be a tenth as radioactive as spent uranium rods; and the materials would have a much shorter half-life ("The radioactivity of a fusion reactor is predicted to drop by a factor of 10,000 within 100 years, compared to a factor of 5 for a conventional nuclear power plant.")
A more serious problem is that it may be decades before any fusion reactor will be up and running (and I heard on the radio today that it will be a decade before "clean coal" technology is available). We can't afford to wait - clean power is available right now, this house is running on it, and cutting down the amount of power we actually use is often as much a matter of will as of technology.
Two letters in the 3 December 2005 New Scientist reminded me of this discovery, but the editor has some reassuring facts: the fusion reactor would only be a tenth as radioactive as spent uranium rods; and the materials would have a much shorter half-life ("The radioactivity of a fusion reactor is predicted to drop by a factor of 10,000 within 100 years, compared to a factor of 5 for a conventional nuclear power plant.")
A more serious problem is that it may be decades before any fusion reactor will be up and running (and I heard on the radio today that it will be a decade before "clean coal" technology is available). We can't afford to wait - clean power is available right now, this house is running on it, and cutting down the amount of power we actually use is often as much a matter of will as of technology.
