Fusion fuel is plentiful and easily accessible: deuterium can be extracted inexpensively from seawater, and tritium can be produced from naturally abundant lithium. Future fusion reactors will not produce high activity, long lived nuclear waste, and a meltdown at a fusion reactor is practically impossible.

Both fission and fusion are nuclear processes by which atoms are altered to create energy, but what is the difference between the two? Simply put, fission is the division of one atom into two, and fusion is the combination of two lighter atoms into a larger one. Nuclear fission releases heat energy by splitting atoms.

Energy in radiation is transferred to the surroundings during nuclear fission, and is transferred by heating as well. In a nuclear power station , this is used to turn water into steam, which then turns turbines connected to electrical generators .

Fusion powers the Sun and stars as hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, and matter is converted into energy. Hydrogen, heated to very high temperatures changes from a gas to a plasma in which the negatively-charged electrons are separated from the positively-charged atomic nuclei (ions).

Fusion is not only possible on earth, it has been carried out many times. The most notable and well-documented deuterium-tritium (D/T) fusion reaction took place in the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor in the UK.

The closer reactants get to one another, the more likely they are to fuse (see Figure 4). Thus most fusion in the Sun and other stars takes place at their centers, where temperatures are highest. Moreover, high temperature is needed for thermonuclear power to be a practical source of energy.

Fusion reactors have a significant potential for safe, environmentally benign operation. Safety aspects of fusion power plants, which have been designed on paper, cannot yet readily be compared with safety aspects of fission power reactors or other operating energy sources.

So it is easy to see that fusion reactions give out more energy per reaction. However, the energy per unit mass is more relevant. This is 0.7MeV for fission and 6.2MeV for fusion so it is obvious that fusion is the more effective nuclear reaction.

Abundant energy: Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases nearly four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas and four times as much as nuclear fission reactions (at equal mass).

Thermonuclear fusion is the process that occurs when two atoms combine to make a larger atom, creating a whole lot of energy. Fusion already happens naturally in stars — including the sun — when intense pressure and heat fuse hydrogen atoms together, generating helium and energy.