fission

You start with Th-232, and under neutron flux you'll breed U-233, which is the reactor's main fission fuel.

But while I've heard accounts of fission in garages and such, I'd never heard of anyone doing fusion.

For nuclear fission devices, must first get the materials, and that's still not so easy.

The amount of decay heat from fission products remaining in the fuel can be lower if there would be scrubbing in place.

Thorium atoms are big and somewhat-unstable, which is what you want for fission.

Inflation is similar to nuclear fusion and deflation is like nuclear fission.

Even when you shut down a fission reactor, you still have a bunch of highly radioactive material sitting there that has to be dealt with.

I've never thought if the advantages of fusion power in terms of "more powerful" than fission, but rather "less dangerous," "cleaner," and "more sustainable.

There won't be a fission chain reaction because essentially no neutrons are released by the radioactive decay of the isotopes in the fallout.

"The problem with fission is that the fuel is really nasty stuff that requires all kinds of special precautions when you mine it, when you process it, and when you dispose of or recycle it.

In short, waste disposal for a fusion reactor is trivial compared to a fission reactor, and when you shut down a fusion reactor the radiation hazard pretty much goes away immediately.

I don't know what kind of radioactive isotopes come out of fusion, but I'm willing to bet that, unless you're deliberately trying to produce them, you probably get way less than you do with a fission reactor.

However, in a working uranium reactor, there will be large quantities of fission products that are also radioactive and are therefore spontaneously decaying in a long chain towards stable isotopes.