Comment by MajimasEyepatch
5 days ago
Does the commercial viability change when one considers regulatory constraints on building new fission plants? People may be more inclined to allow fusion reactors than fission reactors, since the former doesn't require uranium. (I'm sure there are dangerous failure modes for fusion, like there are for everything else, but Chernobyl continues to haunt the nuclear industry in the popular imagination.)
I guess the existing regulations apply to all reactors which handle radioactive materials, not just to fission reactors which produce radioactive uranium isotopes with long half-life, and which include the risk of a nuclear meltdown. Though it would make sense if the safety requirements are significantly lower for fusion reactors because of their higher innate safety.