Nuclear Fusion Power and the Environment

Abstract

The physics problems remaining to be solved to achieve practical fusion power by magnetic confinement techniques are believed to be well posed and soluble. A programme plan recently developed in the United States calls for progressively larger plasma confinement experiments to address these physics questions in line with a serious programme in fusion power engineering. Implementation of the plan is expected to lead to the first production of power from a deuterium–tritium-fuelled system in 1980. Thereafter, three progressively larger experimental electrical power reactors are planned, leading to fusion power commercialization in the later 1990s.The environmental characteristics of fusion reactors have been estimated by analyzing conceptual reactor designs. It is projected that the only volatile radioactive material in a fusion power-plant will be the tritium fuel. Analyses indicate that tritium leakage can be held to very low levels and accordingly should not pose a significant environmental hazard.Careful selection of the materials of construction of a fusion reactor core will minimize radioactivity induced by neutron activation. This activity will be nonvolatile, and it can be isolated from the environment by the use of existing techniques. Because this induced activity is short-lived, it does not represent a long-term storage problem.Anticipated thermal efficiencies of fusion powerplants range from present-day levels (30–40%) using standard conversion systems to about 50% when more exotic techniques (such as liquid-metal topping cycles) are utilized.

Environmental Implications of the Use of Fusion Power

“…In the case of fusion, these factors hinge in complicated ways on the technological choices listed in Table HI (Hirsch & Rice, 1974;Holdren, 1978a). The possibilities under fuel cycle include: pure fusion based on the deuterium-tritium (D-T) or deuterium-deuterium (D-D) reactions, or on still more advanced ones, and fusion-fission hybrid schemes in which fusion energy is multiplied in a fission blanket or fusion neutrons breed fissile fuel for separate fission reactors.…”

Solar Photothermal Power Generation

“…The only energy sources that are adequate for the sweep of history are fusion power (not yet invented, but showing encouraging signs as indicated e.g. by Hirsch & Rice, 1974) and solar power (invented, but not yet domesticated). For recent accounts of possible means of using solar energy, see Bockris (1974) and Nielsen (1975).…”

Conservation and Development

“…It would therefore be only prudent, as well as a means of conserving fossil fuels, to use wherever possible methods that do not depend on imported sources of energy-and use whatever means are available to harness renewable sources of energy. These include solar energy (Bockris, 1974;Neilsen, 1975;Meinel & Meinel, in press), nuclear fusion (Hirsch & Rice, 1974), wind (Bockris, 1975), and various possibilities in the Earth and seas.…”