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The major conclusions reached by the SEAFP team in 1995 were that fusion has very good inherent safety qualities; there are no chain reactions and no production of 'actinides'. The worst possible accident originating in a fusion power station could not breach the confinement; any releases could not approach levels at which evacuation would be considered.

The radiotoxicity of a fusion power station's waste materials decays rapidly, and they present no accumulating or long-term burden on future generations. They would not need guaranteed isolation from the environment for very long timespans. In addition to these favourable results, fusion produces no climate-changing or atmosphere-polluting emissions.

The Japanese are the contractors, they are pretty well renowned for their efficiency. So I think building time may be reduced.
More work needs to be done on the spherical Tokamaks such as START and MAST. Which are showing increasingly promising results. I know from an inside source that more attention is being given to the spherical Tokamak. Especially now that in nearly all the participating countries there is at least a single toroidal tokamak.

From TFA:
"However, environmental groups have criticised the project, saying there was no guarantee that the billions of euros would result in a commercially viable energy source."
This baffles me, just whose side are the environmentalists on again? It doesn't matter that there is no gaurantee. The likelyhood of it being a comercially viable energy source is very high.

Also, bear in mind that everybody knows that fusion will be "along in 20 years" and has been this way for the past 60. However, most countries in the world are producing larger plasma departments at universities and there is a much greater influx of fusion scientists. Many hands make light work. And it has already been mentioned that there are many tokamaks in the world, Russia, China, Japan and America have multiple. The UK has the current largest, Jet, and it also has the spherical tokamaks as stated.

Peace out, baby.

Your conclusion is a bit off; for most of what you say, I reply: "Exactamundo." That last paragraph, though, is an environmentalist's wet dream and suggests a need for lessons in basic economics and engineering.

Where there is a demand there will probably be a supply. Given coal and the sun (and all the myriad ways of harnessing energy therefrom) as well as existing and severalpotential nuclear energies there is no reason to expect "mini-mansions", modern manufacturing nor "agri-business" to decline alongside petroleum and its' distillates. While I've taken blacksmithing as a hobby, I fully expect that my other hobbies, automotive repair, photography, welding, woodworking and programming (I don't sleep well) to continue to be inexpensive diversions for my sons and daughters well into the next millenium.

Perhaps you've been bitten by the year 2000 bug and not quite healed the infection, or, alternately you've spent too much time buried in your Foxfire books, or perhaps you've read Friday once too often. In any regard, there's not cause to worry that society is going to collapse any time soon. There's quite enough energy to keep us entertained and heated (or air conditioned) for a century or twelve, assuming we don't breed ourselves into extinction (albeit not necessarily as cheaply as you and I enjoy).

p.s. Strip-mining isn't necessarily an environmental nightmare. (Having grown up in Alaska fairly close to Healy, I was aware of Usibelli Coal Mine and their efforts, but I was shocked at the grammar of the page I referenced; what are they teaching those kids in Healy? I don't profess to be an english professor, but I am shocked!)

IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but a lot of people don't seem to know much about fusion so here are some links which explain a bit more about it:

http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion2.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fusion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_f usion
http://www.fusion.org.uk/
http://www.iter.org/

http://www.fusion.org.uk/

Everyone here seems to be talking about nuclear fission and the waste from it, but what about nuclear fusion?

The uranium will run out a lot less slowly than oil (in the US) or gas (in Europe) if this is taken into account.

Unfortunately, public anti-nuclear hysteria will prevent us from properly exploiting these resources until our backs are firmly against the wall. If Bin Laden were to disrupt the flow of gas from Siberia to Europe and plunge the continent into chaos, cold, darkness, sickness and death, maybe the politicians will do something about it. However, until their is a major disaster either involving economics (high oil prices) or logistics (Siberian gas supply) nothing will get done.

Meanwhile, we're still developing nuclear fusion which is coming along a lot better than most people think...No uranium (or oil or coal or gas) required.

Which studies do you cite for the reactor replacement schedule?
AFA the reaction itself, Boron (hydrogen/boron) fusions are said to create NO radioactive waste, and helium is the only byproduct.

From this , I got the following excerpt:Over their lifetimes, fusion reactors would generate, by component replacement and decommissioning, activated material similar in volume to that of fission reactors, but qualitatively different in that the long-term radiotoxicity is considerably lower [no radioactive spent fuel]. The use of advanced low activation materials and recycling could further ease the management of radioactive waste. Overall, the study indicates that fusion waste would not constitute a burden for future generations. ...

Indeed. For more information on this, you could do worse than starting here: fusion.org.uk

Er, um, we can and have, actually, we just haven't made a way of generating electricity from it yet. Mind you, fission is here and down, and unfortunately going away because of "environmentalists", short-term capitalism and yellow-bellied politicians.

I'm not sure that getting helium-3 from the Moon is a good idea economically though. Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to.

Not only did they say that, but later in the article, they say "Well if we do it the MAST way, instead of the JET way, then we can see this."

Uh-huh.

So they show us some snazzy snapshots, say it's a donut-shaped field that is small and can hold hot gas, and in 20 years your home will be powered by it!

Anyone want a link to a decent site explaining the technical details of how these fields work?

Try here then.

That's the homepage for the reactor. If there's not tech details there, it's still a pipe dream.

This site gives a general overview of current fusion studies.

For the more technically inclined, you can check out the journal Fusion Engineering and Design (Sorry - if the link doesn't work for you, it's probably a pay-per-access journal and your business/school/self isn't a subscriber). Anyway, it's full of juicy fusion engineering and design details.