Fusion and pollution

Fusion in its earlier stage, the simplest reaction to get going is the deuterium, tridium reaction which does create a neutron and that tends to make the container of the fusion reaction itself slightly radioactive. Tridium itself is slightly radioactive. One step beyond that is the boron reaction, and that one is absolutely radiation free. It creates nothing but neutral by-products in heat. So this is a temporary gap to get through the tridium reaction. Once we get to the boron reaction you have basically unlimited fuels and you have no radiative by-products at all, so it is basically the dream energy source. By the way, radiation, nuclear radiation, all that’s happening is you are taking the natural radiation that exists in the ground and basically you are concentrating it. So there is still radiation around, we get large amounts of radiation dose just by living in the Earth’s environment. We have cosmic rays coming through all the time. If you were to turn on a Geiger counter in your school, you would find there are radioactive sources around you. It’s just a question of when you concentrate it, can you put enough protection around it to make sure it doesn’t get into the public? And that is of course a concern, humans do make mistakes.