True, large amounts of Tritium will be generated with long term use, not to
mention the likely short lifetime of the reactor chamber (it will have to be
changed, robotically, every few years cos of the large neutron flux from the
fusion reaction). But these are problems specific to the DT reaction. Of
course, the neutrons could be mopped by using the reaction Li-6 + n -- He-3
+ H-3, but this is unlikely to capture all the neutrons (i'm not sure what
the cross section is for this reaction). A much more promising reaction is
D + He-3, which is aneutronic, and thus completely elimates all problems
with radioactive waste. This probably wont make it into the first
generation of reactors, though. Besides, Tritium only has a half life of
12.3 years, considerably less than that for Uranium. It is thus much more
easily handled. The benefits of commercial fusion *far* outweigh the
potentially solvable problems listed below.

Ziggi


[SNIP]
Yeah don't get your hopes up. Read the World Nuclear Association's info
regarding fusion:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf66.htm

Under the section "Assessing fusion power" you can start to get some idea
how totally infeasible fusion really will likely be. They are likely to
release a bunch of highly radioactive tritium in standard operation. Also
very serious is they blow themselves to smithereens if they loose
superconductivity (which must be kept at cryogenic temps while in
operation). A reactor costing $4.5 billion isn't something you want
blowing
itself up the first time something goes wrong (not to mention releasing a
bunch of radioactives in the process). Besides that a $4.5 billion + + +
reactor could never produce economical electricity compared to basic
nuclear
fission. Check the economics of nuclear power at the world nuclear
association as well:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.htm

While nuclear power is quite competive with fossil fuels, we notice more
than half the cost is the capital investment of the plant, and only a very
tiny fraction is the fuel. Fission nuclear plants today cost somewhere
between ~$1-1.6 billion for 1 GW electric capacity. If it were even
possible to practically build a fusion plant, it would surely cost well
more
than $1.3 billion per gigawatt of capacity. As such, even if the fuel was
totally free (which by no means is it free) it wouldn't be possible to
compete with fossil fuels or nuclear fission.

What we really desparately need to be doing instead is building fully bug
worked out fission breeder reactors (of both U238--Pu239 and Th232--U233
flavors) and spallation sub-critical reactors/nuclear waste incinerators.
That is where the real future lies, not this non-sense fusion baloney.
Expecting fusion to play any practical role in the anywhere near
forseeable
future is about as foolish as believing renewable energy sources could
ever
contribute more than ~30% of our electricity needs. Neither is gonna
happen
in anywhere but fantasy land.