CAJ 4 - Nuclear Power

For a change of topic in my CAJ, I decided to look into nuclear power as an environmentally friendly option. I am aware that the common fission reactors are not really considered environmentally friendly, even though many people feel that way. Granted, they to not emit greenhouse gases. However, they are insecure and produce huge amounts of radioactive waste. To these problems there already have been found solutions, which results in two better ways to generate energy through nuclear power.

The first and probably more established idea is the fusion reactor. This process does not split the atoms, like in typical fission reactors, but join them. There are many advantages to this idea, like lower waste, more security and higher availability of the resources needed. However, the technology is not quite far enough and many more billions of dollars have to be spend for fusion power research.

The second solution is not as known as the first one but maybe the more realistic one. This concept is called nuclear fusion-fission hybrid and combines nuclear fusion and fission. It was invented back in the 1970s but has not received much interest because fusion seemed more promising. Now that research has shown that fusion power will not be implemented soon, the hybrid version has attracted attention again. As in fusion power alone the energy input is still higher than the energy output, the hybrid version is the only way to make fusion power profitable. Through this hybrid enough energy is produced, waste is reduced to the minimum and safety issues shrink extremely. That is because the fission depends on neutrons provided by the easily stoppable fusion reaction and if the fusion is turned off, the fission reaction stops almost instantly. All this means that this way of generating energy seems reasonably safe and clean.