Quote:
Slick said:
Again, no offense, but even in your example of one of the basic fusion reactions:
D+T->He+n+E
Free neutrons just don't hang around, the free neutron "n" in that equation can/does activate surrounding materials and does create radioactive isotopes.
I say again, that "fusion is clean" is just the public impression. Fission has a very negative public image. People think about Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, SL-1, and other accident sites. They don't think (or know that) workers at a coal mine or coal burning conventional plant get more radiation exposure from the naturally occurring Carbon-14 than nuclear plant workers. They don't think/know that, although there have been accidents at nuclear power planets, there also have been accidents at conventional power plants which have resulted in a great many more deaths over the years. What about people who fly in airplanes for a living - they spend many hours at high altitudes above some of the protection of the natural radiation protection. People get killed all the time in non-nuclear industry, but people think that non-nuclear industry is "clean" as well. I don't think that acid rain, smog and industrial waste in the country's rivers is "clean", and they didn't come from nuclear plants.
Fusion is considered "clean" because we won't have to mine fissionable materials from the ground; we can pull deuterium out of the ocean - ocean water is abundant, right? and has an infinite supply of deuterium, right? They also think that the the reaction is Hydrogen -> Helium. I don't see any "dirty" by-products in that reaction (that equation is not correct, by the way, but it is "common knowledge") And Helium is very safe and very clean. We all know that. We put it in our kids' balloons. We inhale it to make our voices sound funny.
I personally think fusion will be a great step foward as well, but I work in the industry. I don't think it will be as safe and clean as its current reputation. Let's put it this way: a fission reactor (with all of its bad publicity) works at (or usually below) temperatures & pressures of conventional power plants. Fusion can only work at temperatures & pressures found in the sun. Safe and clean?
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Not carbon-14, that is present everywhere. Actual
uranium and
thorium are present in most coal in trace amounts, and burning releases it into the atmosphere. It's true that this is a far larger source of radiation than actual nuclear power plants since the standards are so high for nuclear containment and the volume of coal burned is so large. There is also
mercury in coal. The mercury content of
fish that we are constantly hearing health warnings about is not from some nasty chemical plants dumping mercury. It's from coal-burning power plants.
On the other hand there is simply
no possibility of an accident at a coal-burning plant dumping tons on uranium and highly radioactive decay products into the environment. What people are concerned about is not the 'routine' low-level problem, but the worst case problem. The worst case for a nuclear plant is dramatically worse than the worst case for a coal plant.
The 'worst case' for fusion power would be more like coal power. You might get a big 'whomp' if things failed, but tons of highly radioactive and posisonous elements would not be dumped into the environment.