All nuclear energy has bad by-products that need to be buried. The by-products of nuclear fusion are just a lot less dangerous and only need to be stored for about a hundred years before they can be reprocessed and reused. On the other hand, the by-products of nuclear fission remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
That's fission and they've progressed to be efficient enough to run off the byproducts (before needing new material) making its byproducts less dangerous not needing to be buried as long.
We just need to build a large scale version to prove once and for all.
Is nuclear fusion different from nuclear energy? I thought nuclear energy had some bad byproducts that we've had to bury to get rid of?
Fusion vs fission. Adding vs subtracting is the most basic analogy.
That's fission.
All nuclear energy has bad by-products that need to be buried. The by-products of nuclear fusion are just a lot less dangerous and only need to be stored for about a hundred years before they can be reprocessed and reused. On the other hand, the by-products of nuclear fission remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
That's fission and they've progressed to be efficient enough to run off the byproducts (before needing new material) making its byproducts less dangerous not needing to be buried as long.
We just need to build a large scale version to prove once and for all.