benf wrote: @oldjar

Personally, I would not want to be a first responder to a breach of containment and loss of coolant at a fission power plant. One has to admire and respect the bravery of those that do.

Focus Fusion wouldn’t require a life or death struggle with runaway fuel rods. In event of a failure the call to answer to would be…Why did the generator turn off? A much better scenario in my view.

You can’t compare technology that hasn’t even been show to work yet with something that has proven to work reliably for over 50 years. And there’s always going to be industrial accidents that require heroic actions. We all know how important energy is to the economy and the amount of wealth it creates. Nuclear power plants have produced about 10% of our total energy needs in the U.S. for over 30 years, and there are no deaths from radiation in the U.S., and at most 50 have died worldwide from nuclear power plant radiation. Energy accounts for nearly everything we do in society, os is worth trillions of dollars every year. No other system in the entire economy has the safety record of nuclear power per dollar generated. With the number of people who die prematurely from other causes, there are much more important things to worry about than a struggle with runaway fuel rods.

Now, if focus fusion does end up working out in an optimistic timescale at an even cheaper cost than Soviet designed fission, than there will be not be a big need for fission in the future except for research purposes. But I don’t think it’s smart to put all our eggs in the focus fusion basket. While fusion is being perfected, we could use a better solution now to phase out other energy sources.