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by azinman2 1281 days ago
It’s not speculation because so much is known about the physics and elements involved. With fusion you want lighter particles which tend to be less radioactive, rather than heavy uranium etc particles for fission.

See https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/safety-in-fusion for more details
1 comments
rrrrrrrrrrrr2 1281 days ago
”Regulatory bodies have vast experience in the realm of safety and security for fission. We are working with them to ensure that all applicable knowledge is transferred to fusion."

Let me put the question another way: suppose we get fusion that's equally as safe as fission like IAEA is saying here. Why would we switch to it if we were unwilling to switch to fission?

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azinman2 1281 days ago
You’re making false equivalences, and ignoring all of the fundamental differences between the technologies. The materials involved are different, the chain reactions are different, the kinds of radiation and half lives are different, the way you build the cores are different (and are still being worked on for fusion).

The entire reason why people are working on fusion IS the fact that it’s much much safer due to all of the key differences. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons from fission to transfer, just as lessons from ICE cars have gone to EVs.

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rrrrrrrrrrrr2 1280 days ago
Fair enough. What you said sounds promising.

My point stands though: we're not doing fusion at scale yet, so we'll see.

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