What are the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear fusion?

Answer 1

Advantages: All the clones will have the same characteristics, so they are genetically identical. Organisms that are difficult or slow to breed normally can be reproduced quickly. Some plant varieties do not produce seeds; others have seeds that are hidden for long periods.

Disadvantages: If a clone is susceptible to disease or changes in environment, then all the clones will be susceptible. It will lead to less variation, and less opportunity to create new varieties in the future.

Answer 2

The key advantages of nuclear fusion are:
The incredible amount of energy available - about 5 times more energy per kilogram than fission fuels and about 10 million times more energy per kilogram than coal.
The easy availablility of fuel - the currently proposed research reactors and demonstatration power plants will use a mixture of deuterium and tritium gases (forms of hydrogen). Deuterium is easy to extract from seawater and tritium can be manufactured inside the reactor from lithium, a fairly easily available metal.
Safety - unlike a fission plant, no runaway reaction is possible. The entire reactor vessel (about 840m^3 for ITER, the largest reactor in the world when it's finished) contains less than a gram of fuel at any time and the plasma exists in such a delicate and carefully controlled state that any disturbance or disruption will simply cause it to hit the walls of the reactor an cool rapidly to the point where fusion is no longer possible. Of course this severely damages the reactor itself but even if the plasma managed to burn all the way through a wall, it would only release a tiny amount of radioactive material (only a small fraction of the less than 1 gram of gas would be radioactive).

The primary disadvantages are:
Cost - the reactors needed for fusion are necessarily enourmously complex machines that cost an incredible amount (16 billion Euro for ITER so far)
Size - it is an unfortunate fact of plasma physics that the plasmas are very complex systems that always form convective instabilities which rapidly transport heat out of the plasma. The easiest way of controlling these instabilities is to use a larger confinement chamber so the heat takes longer to escape.
Radiation damage to the reactor walls - this seems like a minor issue at first sight since fission reactors clearly survive operating for years or decades with few problems. The issue with fusion is that it produces particles called neutrons with very high enery that bombard the walls of the reactor in a much more damaging way than the low energy neutrons produced in fission reactions can. The bombardment leads to embrittlement of the walls (they'd crack very easily) and swelling. In addition the wall material can become radioactive.
Still in development - the biggest problem is that we still don't know if fusion is achievable with our current designs. ITER should show us the way - if it works as planned then we'll be able to progress fairly rapidly now that we have a lot of research under our belts. If it doesn't work then we have to go back to the drawing board unfortunately. (ITER should work - I've been to some of the research sites and spoken to some of the guys working on it and everyone is confident it'll deliver).

Answer 3

Advantages: A increased supply of replacement organs and tissue for human recipients in case of illness or injury. Less dependence on blood anti-rejection preventives drugs, thus leading to fully compatible organs without complications.

Disadvantages: Enraging almost all religious communities for "playing God," dealing with civil/human rights issues stemming from creating life only to use it, dealing with the hundreds of failed embryos that it usually takes to get one viable clone, the deterioration of genetic material in the clone which leads to health problems and faster than normal aging.

Answer 4

Dr Schumughal aka Hady aka juicy has been cloned.

As for its advantages, unfortunatley there arent any.

However this species has many disadvantages..such as deformed nose,head ears and in general the whole body.!

Answer 5

I found the website K1 Project very helpful. They had several articles underneath their Learn/Energy tab which should answer any questions about nuclear fusion.

Answer 6

can maintain the desired trait(for plant only)