With energy security high on most countries agendas with oil production centred in some of the most volatile (in the political rather than incendiary sense though sometimes it is both!) areas of the world and this current, rather irrational concern of how much carbon there is in gaseous form (please do not breathe out!) nuclear energy is back in vogue.

The choice of reactors is, of course, limited. Either you can build a fission reactor or, well, a fission reactor. Fusion reactors do not exist and may never exist even taking into account the efforts of ITER in France (they are building an experimental reactor) .The technological hurdles that have to be crossed to make a reactor that can hold a sustainable fusion reaction are immense and we simply do not have the materials and technology available.

However, scientists are proposing a re-evaluation of a Hybrid Nuclear reactor, one that combines a fusion reactor at the plants core with a fission reactor around the outside. As bizarre as this may sound this kind of reactor could be inherently safer than a fission only plant as it would produce waste that would breakdown in a mere one hundred years (rather than tens of thousands) and one that solves many of the problems that surround building a fusion reactor particularly the problem on how to contain 3,300 cubic metres of high-energy, neutron producing plasma that is required for a sustainable fusion reaction. The fission reactor wrapped around the fusion core would absorb much of high-energy neutron bombardment meaning current technology and materials could be used to construct the power plant and because energy from the fission reaction could be used to sustain the fusion reaction the fusion core could be much, much smaller than 3,300 cubic metres.

Of course, building loads of nuclear energy power plants always pre-supposes the availability of enough Uranium to power them (something that may not be a given because despite Uranium being plentiful it comes in two forms, Uranium 235 which is suitable for fuel but represents only 0.72% of available reserves, and Uranium 238 which isn’t suitable as a fuel unless it is converted to Plutonium and that increases risk and political problems due to its use in weaponry.

Oh well, I will bank up the fire and blow out the candle before going to bed!