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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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It improves the waste issue, doesn't really solve it. A dirty, little-discussed secret about fusion power.
If we had a bunch of fusion plants go live, we'd soon have tons and tons of radioactive containment wall material to bury/store somewhere. Including all the special handling requirements that you need with fuel rod waste. I think fusion plants would actually create more waste than a comparable fission plant, at least as far as tons of radioactive material.
The benefit is that waste would be lighter isotopes and degrade faster. So you have more physical material to worry about but only need to worry about it for ~100 years, not thousands.
Still far better than thousands of tons of toxic and radioactive fly ash from coal.
The decommissioning plans for ITER more or less literally say "let stand there as-is for 100 years, then demolish as usual". Fisson plants, which don't use less concrete, need to be taken apart small section by small section, each single piece analysed for radiation and sorted into long- or short-term storage. Fusion plants are only marginally more of a headache safety-wise than the radiology department of a hospital and you don't generally hear people complaining about those.