NON-PROLIFERATION ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR FUSION

Growth of world population as well as world-wide economic development accompanied by increasing energy demand will represent a major challenge to the future global energy system. Fossil energy resources are plentiful at present but will be limited in the long term perspective, and their exploitation will be an enormous burden to the environment of the future energy system. The use of both renewable and nuclear energy sources are discussed controversially. Renewable energies are generally less competitive in free markets and the use of nuclear energy has ecological as well as political implications. One political aspect of the use of nuclear energy is related to the non-proliferation issue. For nuclear fission an effective control system with international safeguards as the central component is already existent. While the use of nuclear fusion for energy generation is still at the research stage of development, proliferation concerns might arise in the future. Respective non-proliferation measures resembling the safeguards system for nuclear fission did not exist for nuclear fusion and need to be discussed and developed. Starting from different approaches to nuclear fusion (magnetic confinement and inertial confinement) their proliferation-relevant features will be considered. The paper will concentrate on certain aspects of fusion research and their implications on non-proliferation. In the synopsis a number of elements of a future non-proliferation system for materials and activities aiming at the use of thermonuclear reactions for future energy generation will be identified and explained.