ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters we have seen how uranium, mined from the earth’s crust, is utilized in a nuclear reactor to create energy and how the resulting waste products can be dealt with safely. We have concentrated on the thermal or heat-generating aspects of the materials at the various stages of the cycle. We have seen that the energy that can be recovered from nuclear fission of 1 ton of uranium can be increased 60-fold by the use of fast reactors and that this can extend our use of fission power from a few tens to many hundreds of years. Nevertheless, the world’s uranium resources are finite, and energy resources will increasingly be required by the developing world. Scientists have therefore turned to alternative ways to release nuclear energy. What more natural place to look than to the ultimate source of the earth’s energy—the sun. The energy generated by the sun is not the result of splitting up nuclei of heavy elements but of the joining together—fusion—of nuclei of light elements such as the isotopes of hydrogen or lithium. These elements are abundant and easily available on the earth, so what is the problem of releasing fusion energy for our use?
