What are 3 advantages of using fusion?

Advantages of Fusion

• Clean. Fusion produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, emitting only helium as exhaust.
• Safe. Fusion energy is inherently safe, with zero possibility of a meltdown scenario and no long lived waste.
• Abundant. There is enough fusion fuel to power the planet for hundreds of millions of years.
• On Demand.

Does fusion create waste?

Fusion on the other hand does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. A fusion reactor produces helium, which is an inert gas. Tritium is radioactive (a beta emitter) but its half life is short. It is only used in low amounts so, unlike long-lived radioactive nuclei, it cannot produce any serious danger.

Why is nuclear fusion a bad idea?

But fusion reactors have other serious problems that also afflict today’s fission reactors, including neutron radiation damage and radioactive waste, potential tritium release, the burden on coolant resources, outsize operating costs, and increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Can ITER be used to generate electricity?

Remember that ITER is a test facility designed purely to show proof of concept as to how engineers can mimic the inner workings of the sun to join atoms together in the real world in a controlled manner; ITER is not intended to generate electricity.

Is the ITER really the world’s biggest energy investment?

The website implicitly boasts of this massive energy investment, depicting every one of the ITER subsystems as the most stupendous of its kind. For example, the cryostat, or liquid-helium refrigerator, is the world’s largest stainless steel vacuum vessel, while the tokamak itself will weigh as much as three Eiffel towers.

How long does it take to build an ITER reactor?

The reactor was expected to take 10 years to build and ITER had planned to test its first plasma in 2020 and achieve full fusion by 2023, however the schedule is now to test first plasma in 2025 and full fusion in 2035.

Where does ITER get its tritium fuel from?

The ITER website states that the tritium fuel will be “taken from the global tritium inventory.” That inventory consists of tritium extracted from the heavy water of CANDU nuclear reactors, located mainly in Ontario, Canada, and secondarily in South Korea, with a potential future source from Romania.