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Nuclear Fusion Fantasies
The Observer featured on a front page (18/5/90) news that the problem of nuclear power-what to do with the waste-not only had been solved but also been tackled in a way that delivered even more energy. Apparently a new kind of reactor simply will burn up radioactive wastes created by their cousins. This report was echoed across the media. The dream of something-for-nothing is an old one, of course. In the feature film, Chain Reaction, the underlying idea is that abundant-energy-for-all is there for the taking, this time courtesy of nuclear fusion. The Keanu Reeves character cracks the problem but the bad guys, some rogue CIA outfit doesn't want the world to have the benefits of this wonderful breakthrough. You can guess the rest of the story. The two stories, one 'true', the other fictional, share the same illusion, namely that the energy crisis is merely a matter of the odd technical hitch that, one day, will be fixed courtesy of human ingenuity. Actually there are many problems with nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, of which the generation of hazardous wastes is just one. Even if all problems associated with radioactivity could be solved (and they are intrinsic to the nuclear fuel cycle), the fundamental barrier of thermal pollution would remain. But let us imagine the impossible, energy conversion without entropic by-products. Would the world be a better place if we depended upon a network of huge, centralised nuclear plants (fission and/or fusion)? It is in the very nature of both technologies-and their associated energy distribution systems-that they are physically complex compared to, say, a wind turbine or solar plate collector. They require a sophisticated technological cadre-dare one say priesthood-to manage them. Politically then, there are good grounds for thinking that a nuclear-powered society would be a brave new world indeed. Furthermore, in all those human desires, now held back because insufficient energy resources, were to be released, there are equally good reasons for suspecting that not much of that world would remain intact for long.
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