> Many on Hacker News fantasize about fusion (not fission) reactors. These fusion reactors will be an intense source of fast neutrons. All the hardware in a fusion reactor will become radioactive. Not to mention the gamma rays.
My personal ideology about fusion aside, it should be mentioned there is an easy fix for these radiation problems. What you do is put the fusion reactor in space, and collect the energy with specialized fusion energy collectors on Earth (or in space). They'll have the problem that they aren't able to collect energy if the fusion reaction is below the horizon, so this design is imperfect, but having the fusion reaction take place in space means you don't have to deal with a radioactive casing by not including it in your fusion reaction space station design because you don't need any. Just a bit of hydrogen, a tiny bit of helium, and a some time.
For such an approach I’ve always thought it seemed a risk to launch something like that into the air. E.g. what happens if the rocket explodes while taking off? Or something bad happens when in space? Will it rain nuclear material?
Obviously you just put the nuclear material inside of the in-flight data recorder so it will survive a rocket failure.
If you're being serious, Cassini had those kinds of questions with its launch about its RTG but that didn't have enough nuclear material for it to be a problem.
If we were to try and use a fusion reaction in space, we'd probably use the existing one.
My personal ideology about fusion aside, it should be mentioned there is an easy fix for these radiation problems. What you do is put the fusion reactor in space, and collect the energy with specialized fusion energy collectors on Earth (or in space). They'll have the problem that they aren't able to collect energy if the fusion reaction is below the horizon, so this design is imperfect, but having the fusion reaction take place in space means you don't have to deal with a radioactive casing by not including it in your fusion reaction space station design because you don't need any. Just a bit of hydrogen, a tiny bit of helium, and a some time.