Goals - Initiative - Advantages
GOALS
The main goal of the FUSION ENERGY FOUNDATION - FEF is to foster and support research and development (R&D) for fusion as a new energy source and to educate the public about the use of nuclear fusion for the purpose of producing clean, abundant, economical and multipurpose energy sources for worldwide use.
Since there is already a big international effort ongoing in this area, the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the FEF will concentrate on alternative concepts that are not covered by the large cooperative effort.
THE INITIATIVE
The Fusion Energy Foundation is an international, non-profit organization, which promotes Nuclear Fusion as the major future source of clean energy. Members are scientists, politicians, and ordinary citizens, concerned with the present general lack of interest in Fusion research, other than in the large ITER experiment.
They see Fusion as the most promising future source of safe and affordable energy.
They want to mobilize broad public support and funding for Fusion Research on a much wider scale.
The aim is evaluation and selection of existing and promising new methods of Fusion for further development.
The ITER experiment is developing very interesting and useful new technologies, but in view of the importance of a continuous supply of abundant and safe energy in the long term, the world should not rely on one single large experiment alone but parallel efforts are needed to assure and possibly quicken success.
Of course further development and utilization of Green Energy Projects as well as Nuclear Fission as a medium term solution are very important for diversity and resilience in the coming years.
ADVANTAGES OF FUSION ENERGY
Fusion has a practically limitless fuel supply. The basic fuels, hydrogen and deuterium (H and D) can easily be extracted from sea water. Lithium (Li), from which tritium can be produced, is a readily available light metal in the Earth's crust.
Fusion produces no greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2 that cause global warming, nor other gases that have damaging effects on the environment.
No transport of radioactive materials is required.
Waste from fusion will not be a long-term burden on future generations. Only metal parts close to the fusion plasma will become radioactive. Any radioactive waste generated will be small in volume and the radioactivity will decay over a few decades.
The fusion reaction is inherently safe. Only a few grams of fuel are present in the plasma vessel, enough for a few seconds of "burn". As fusion is not a chain reaction, the reaction can never run out of hand.
Fusion can be used to run so called sub-critical reactors, i.e. activating old fuel rods from classical reactors and thus prolong their usefulness and decrease the amounts of dangerous substances in them. As the name says sub-critical reactors cannot go critical and hence have no danger of meltdown.
Fusion is suitable for large-scale electricity production and possibly also for smaller decentralized local (mobile) heat/electricity production.