Fusion workers vaporised

12.10.27: AN ACCIDENT at an experimental nuclear fusion reactor unleashed a fireball 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun.

All 47 personnel working at ITER-III, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor near Oxford, were instantly vaporised. Rescue workers found no human remains, not even ash. In the aftermath of the accident doubts are being voiced that nuclear fusion, which attempts to harness the energy source of the sun for the generation of electrical power, will be the safe energy option that its proponents claimed.

Critics say that, even if the 100-million-degree 'plasma' can be safely confined, the problem of neutron-induced radioactivity in the reactor containment vessel remains dangerously unresolved. MC