TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
Trump Media & Technology will merge with a fusion power company in an all-stock deal that the companies said Thursday is valued at more than $6 billion.
Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the CEO of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE Technologies CEO Michl Binderbauer.
TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy, a process that occurs on the sun and other stars, according to the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
It doesn’t produce waste isotopes directly, no, but the neutron radiation creates new radioactive isotopes within whatever equipment is in range. And AFAIK it’s harder to stop than fission because the D-T fusion neutrons are 14.1 MeV. And separately from that, it degrades the equipment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_embrittlement
Which seems pretty significant when fusion needs so much equipment hugging the reactor chamber. It would complicate cleaning, too.
That changes with other types of fusion, but D-T is all we got now.
As for proliferation… again, it’s a great neutron source. It doesn’t have the same waste, no, but countries can absolutely use it to breed fissile material if they want.
And let’s say, hypothetically, a country goes against regulators and decides they’re going to breed material with their fusion reactor. With some trouble, they can use it to make tritium too. The supply couldn’t be cut off.