The Focus Fusion Society Forums Policy Fusion Cleans Up Nuclear Waste from Fission? Reply To: Energy Output – MW & GW

#11180
jamesr
Participant

The other aspect to D-T fusion fission hybrid designs is that you can take a fusion reactor (whether ICF or MCF) that would not be able to achieve nett gain on its own, to a system that with the extra heat of the actinide fission (plus decay heat of fission products) makes a whole system that can generate nett power. However unlike a standard fission reactor it is sub-critical without the fusion neutrons so there is no chance of runaway chain-reaction.

So it has all the benefits of the accelerator driven sub-critical reactor ( http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf35.html ), but swapping the problems of designing a stable, efficient, high current particle accelerator with the problems of laser or magnet design.