NZ Herald – Julian Hunt: It’s time for mature nuclear debate

NZ Herald – Julian Hunt: It’s time for mature nuclear debate

By Julian Hunt |  15 March 2012 – 5:30 AM

It is now a year since the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima disaster, the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Inevitably, the episode has prompted renewed debate about nuclear power.

There seems to be no alternative but to include nuclear in the energy mix for the foreseeable future. So, what do new generations of fission, fusion and hybrid offer?

Fusion. The principle of controlled thermonuclear fusion is to extract energy from processes similar to those occurring inside the Sun, where hydrogen atoms are fused together to form helium. This is a ‘clean’ process with negligible long-lived radioactive waste.

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