Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good points, but in all of that they are specifically targeting enrichment and reprocessing, while allowing nuclear power plants. A fusion reactor is a power plant. It produces neutrons but so does fission; in fact, conventional fission plants get a third of their power from plutonium that they breed from U238, and plutonium accounts for most of the long-term radioactivity in the waste. By comparison, a fusion plant…
Precisely because fusion reactor could be used for plutonium breeding they will be subject to the same controls and political pressures as fission power plants. Operation of all fission power plants, outside of countries with nuclear weapons, is subject to very strict controls by International Atomic Energy Agency, which reports to United Nations Security Council. Also because each civilian nuclear power reactor bree…
When I said "highly enriched fissile" I meant that to include plutonium. Weapons generally use Pu239, while nuclear waste plutonium is 58% Pu239 mixed with other isotopes, plus of course a lot of U238 and various transuranics.
There is one area where fusion reactors are clearly being treated differently, and that's by regulators such as the NRC, which has already decided to treat fusion reactors like particle accelerators and medical devices, rather than with the much more difficult process they use for fission reactors.
