Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
can do is to make it dif
cult to move from peaceful uses to
weapons, to detect such activities as early as possible, and
to apply appropriate sanctions when all else fails. Though
there are technical improvements that can reduce prolif-
eration risk, it is only in the political arena that real risk
reduction can occur.
The real issue is the credibility of sanctions that can be
imposed on those who violate the rules and start down the
road leading toward a nuclear weapons program. There
are few technical barriers to proliferators and if the inter-
national community does not act together no program
can succeed.
.
Fusion
There are no fusion power plants operating today.
Mainstream fusion hopes to take two isotopes of hydro-
gen, deuterium (one proton plus one neutron) which
occurs naturally, and tritium (one proton plus two neu-
trons) which is radioactive with a half-life of about
years,andturnthemintohelium(twoprotonsplustwo
neutrons) with a large energy release. The advantages
advocates talk about are that no
fissionable materials are
involved (reducing proliferation risk) and there are few
long-lived isotopes produced (simplifying the waste dis-
posal problem).
There are two approaches to fusion energy: inertial
con
nement (the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Law-
rence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) in the United
States, for example) and magnetic con
nement fusion
(the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
or ITER in France, for example). They are fundamentally
