Rather than create electricity by heating water and turning a turbine, Wilson's new reactor would use nuclear fission to produce energy from molten salt.
The energy release from nuclear fission is roughly a million times greater per unit weight than fossil fuels, which is why nuclear fission is such a compelling long term energy source.
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Reactors that exploit nuclear fission (in which energy is generated by splitting uranium atoms) have produced thousands of tonnes of spent fuel and other radioactive by-products.
Think of nuclear fission: it generates useful energy but if it runs out of control you get a cataclysmic explosion.
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The good news is that the big names in nuclear energy -- like Areva, Hitachi, General Electric and Toshiba -- have recently been joined by a bevy of high-tech start-ups seeking to develop advanced nuclear-reactor designs for both fission and fusion energy production.
Nuclear fission avoids using large quantities of fossil fuel for energy but is very contentious because it produces radioactive waste.
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Thermoelectric coupling uses heat from the decay of a radioactive fuel (as opposed to the full-scale nuclear fission which powers a reactor on Earth) as its energy source.
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However, while mining helium-3 from the moon will be one challenge, extracting energy from it is another, as it relies on nuclear fusion, rather than fission used in today's nuclear reactors.
Today, most alternative energy technologies that are discussed--wind, solar, tides, waves, clean coal, nuclear fission and, perhaps one day, fusion--are useful only for making electricity.
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