Last week’s official dedication of the National Ignition
Facility, the massive experiment in nuclear fusion, has set some
physicists to plotting ways in which nuclear fusion could be put
to work in a new generation of nuclear power plants. Although
doubters say that NIF may not even be able to produce a
controlled fusion reaction, the same reaction that occurs in the
heart of the sun and in thermonuclear weapons, boosters such as
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu are already discussing how
fusion energy could best be harnessed. Chu notes that the Obama
administration’s decision to halt construction of the Yucca
Mountain repository for nuclear waste has renewed interest in
reactors that could actually reduce the nuclear waste produced
by traditional nuclear power plants. There are “a resurgence of
hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart
not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can
burn down the long-lived actinides” [Technology Review], says
Chu. Actinides are a grou