Nuclear Energy - Green and Plentiful: Fusion-Fission Hybrids

If the world were forced to shift its energy burden from fossils
to nuclear, will nuclear energy be ready to assume this role? Can one, for
example, envision an economically, environmentally and socially acceptable
path that will guarantee plentiful nuclear energy? Could such an enormous
transition be engineered in near future? Could we, even, begin to build a
nuclear energy dominant future on the foundations of the current and soon
to be available competitive industrial technologies?

To earnestly assume this role, nuclear energy must, first, demonstrate
safe and acceptable technical solutions to two fundamental problems of
fission power:

1. The problem of nuclear waste: transuranic isotopes that have long-term
   radio toxicity and biohazard, and

2. The problem of limited naturally fissile (U235) fuel supply that must
   be solved by breeding fuel from fertile materials like U238 and Th232

It will be shown that a Fusion-Fission Hybrid reactor- a creative
combination of fusion and fission can indeed lay the foundations of a
green and plentiful nuclear energy economy on time scales of less than a
couple decades. Although nuclear fusion is not ready for direct energy
production, recent game changing ideas, inventions, and innovations have
led to the design of a workable highly compact intense fusion neutron
source. In a hybrid driven by such an intense fusion neutron source,
several novel fuel cycles that would be inaccessible to pure fission,
become available. The resulting vastly enhanced overall nuclear capability
can be readily exploited to slay the twin dragon of the constraining
problems of fission- the problems of nuclear waste and that of limited
fuel supply.

Glimpses of the conceptual/scientific new technology along with relevant
applications will be given. How the fusion-fission hybrid adds a new,
perhaps, crucial dimension to the quest for a vibrant nuclear future, will
be examined in a global energy perspective.