What are the dangers of fusion energy?
Answers
Answer:
But fusion reactors have other serious problems that also afflict today's fission reactors, including neutron radiation damage and radioactive waste, potential tritium release, the burden on coolant resources, outsize operating costs, and increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Answer:
No CO₂: Fusion doesn't emit harmful toxins like carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Its major by-product is helium: an inert, non-toxic gas. No long-lived radioactive waste: Nuclear fusion reactors produce no high activity, long-lived nuclear waste.
Explanation:
It is a Nuclear reaction- radioactivity will be there, BUT, in comparison to Fission, much much lesser. I hope you are aware of the fundamental difference between fission and fusion, if not here’s a small primer: Nuclear Fission is the process in which a heavy nucleus is broken into pieces and the mass defect between the parent and daughter nuclei is converted into energy, whereas in Fusion, two lighter nuclei are fused/joined to create a resultant heavier nucleus, once again, the mass defect goes to create the energy gain. But, the fusion process in focus at the moment has only fast neutrons as a dangerous biproduct, carrying 14.1MeV of the total released 17.6 MeV (the numbers are rounded) and are capable of creating a lot of radioactivity in the vacuum vessel. However, a lot of care has been taken in selecting materials, which will be used to fabricate the vacuum vessel and other plasma facing components in order to minimize the activation caused by neutrons.
Even more tricky issue is Tritium- again, I take it for granted that you are aware of the chemistry of isotopes. Tritium is highly radioactive, with a half life of 12.32 years (Tritium - Wikipedia). The fusion reaction we want to achieve is D+T−−>He+n,D+T−−>He+n,where D is Deuterium, T is Tritium, He is the resultant Helium and n represents neutron. Tritium being short lived radioactive substance (compared to other nuclear waste we get from fission reactors), falls under high observation category, and even for the test reactors like ITER (ITER - Wikipedia) , we need permission of international regulatory body for prduction and storage of Tritium.
For commercial energy production, we need long operational hours and large scale reactors, well I do not want to jinx but no plant or reactor is cent percent failproof!
For the moment, I can not think about anything more but still, in my belief, the problems are definitely not so big- compared to the present energy sources, baring renewables. There are many pro’s than con’s of Nuclear Fusion and I hope “the world” comes to realize it soon. I am not accusing anyone, but we do fusion, which will be a source of clean and green energy, and in order to achieve what we want to achieve, we don’t need to lie or hide! We put forward the facts the way they are, so that our approach is the same as the result: clean!
Live long and prosper!!