Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[Ivy Matt]

Whoa, I take that back. The article does mention boron. I’m not sure how I missed that before. :red: But, still, no mention of why boron is important, and in the sidebar it says deuterium and tritium are the “best” fuels for fusion, even as the article quotes the ITER guy as saying you can’t use fusion for proliferation.

Phil’s Dad wrote: Steam age.

I’m not sure what you mean. If you’re referring to a particular reactor design, I’d say fusion is fusion and breakeven is breakeven. Plenty of people can credibly claim to have achieved the former. Nobody yet has a credible claim to the latter. When somebody does achieve the latter, I’m not going to be too picky about how they did it. I’d like to see lots of people eventually achieve the same thing using a number of different designs. Then, when the inevitable shakeout occurs, we can be assured that the one to three winning designs have weathered real competition.

If you’re referring to the method of generating electricity, well, the Polywell folks hope to fuse boron and hydrogen some day. They haven’t yet, but who has? (Of course, I expect LPP to be the first. ;-))