[logfromblammo]

Stellar fusion like that which occurs in our sun is effectively aneutronic, but is also relatively slow, because the limiting step is the combination of two protons into a proton-neutron pair.

You need to keep a lot of hydrogen at plasma-hot temperatures and very high pressures for a long time. So you can't really do it with masses smaller than Jupiter, because smaller bodies can radiate the energy away faster, and produce fewer events from the lesser mass.

So the only technologically effective way to leverage solar is to deconstruct larger stars into red dwarfs between 0.08 and 0.35 solar mass, perhaps with a ferro-platosmiridium core to increase the overall density and make the reactions viable at lower overall mass. Then surround the whole thing with a Dyson shell and Shkadov/Caplan thruster.

It's a bit beyond our means right now.

[cuspycode]

Aneutronic reactors are good of course, but the Sun still puts out lots of other dangerous radiation. In particular, ultraviolet electromagnetic radiation from the Sun causes tens of thousands of cancer deaths every year. I have no problem accepting a few percent of that mortality from man-made radiation sources if that helps solving the CO2 emission crisis.

[logfromblammo]

Good. For the foreseeable future, the limit of energy available from solar will be the total surface area of the Earth divided by two.

And that includes hydro from evaporation-rainfall cycling, photosynthesis, and wind. Which basically leaves as alternate energy sources tidal, from the sun and moon dragging the oceans around, energy stored from long periods of solar absorption in ages past, residual geothermal, and nuclear.

A little neutron-activated waste is indeed a small price to pay.