Environmental Aspects of Fusion Reactors

With the continued depletion of fossil and uranium resources in the coming decades, the U.S. will be forced to look more toward renewable energy resources (e.g., wind, tidal, geothermal, and solar power) and toward such longer-term and nondepletable energy resources as fissile fast breeder reactors and fusion power. Several reference reactor designs have been completed for full-scale fusion power reactors that indicate that the environmental impacts from construction, operation, and eventual decommissioning of fusion reactors will be quite small. The principal environmental impact from fusion reactor operation will be from thermal discharges. Some of the safety and environmental characteristics that make fusion reactors appear attractive include an effectively infinite fuel supply at low cost, inherent incapability for a “nuclear explosion” or a “nuclear runaway,” the absence of fission products, the flexibility of selecting low neutron-cross-section structural materials so that emergency core cooling for a loss-of-coolant or other accident will not be necessary, and the absence of special nuclear materials such as ²³⁵U or ²³⁹Pu, so that diversion of nuclear weapons materials will not be possible and nuclear blackmail will not be a serious concern.