[j9461701]

Achieving fusion would be a god-send, but aneutronic fusion - which is generally considered 'the next step' - would be utterly spectacular.

First, it would save you having to build very expense and complex steam turbines. Like Chernobyl had 4 nuclear reactors powering 1 steam turbine, because the engineering required to build a high quality high capacity one is super expensive. With aneutronic fusion you could just use the energy from the generated charged particles and directly turn that into juice.

The huge, huge, huge thing though would be no more neutron radiation. It would vastly simplify reactor construction, reactor cleanup, biological shielding, etc. etc.

Aneutronic fusion would also us to just spam power plants, safely and cheaply, in a way that's difficult for modern society to even understand. Assuming the aneutronic reactor itself isn't mega expense of course.

[arethuza]

I'm pretty sure the Chernobyl plant had 4 separate "blocks" each with one reactor and two turbo generators? No.4 was the one that exploded but the other three kept on producing power for years after.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[j9461701]

You're totally correct. It was 4 reactor buildings feeding one turbine house, but the house contained two turbo generators. Thanks for the correction!

[gameshot911]

Aneurotnic fusion sounds like exciting stuff. Are there any pilots in development? Is it realistically achievable at the moment (well, as realistic as any fusion efforts), or still in the realm of room-temperature superconductors?