Fusion Power Development Issues.

摘要

Propriety of the optimistic goal of an operating fusion demonstration by the year 2000depends on when exhaustible energy sources will be depleted and on the ability of breeder fission reactors to overcome socio-political hurdles. The risk of an energy shortage near the end of the first quarter of the next century appears significant enough that an early goal for fusion demonstration is appropriate. Such a goal places considerable emphasis on tokamak development and forces the development strategy into a normative form. If less urgency were placed on achieving demonstration,the fusion program could be more exploratory and therefore more likely to develop economically viable devices with commercial characteristics preferable to our present conceptualization of tokomaks. Greater emphasis should be placed on hybrid reactors as alternatives to fission breeder reactors;they have many of the same perceived evils as fission reactors,however. Conventional cost-benefit analyses underestimate benefits of long-term energy resources such as fusion and solar power. Risk and uncertainty and discount rates reflecting social concerns for the future should be considered in these analyses.