Elon Musk champions the safety of nuclear powerplants

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, stated that it is feasible to build 'extremely safe' nuclear plans during the B-Word conference.

Nuclear energy is called 'clean energy' since it does not emit greenhouse gases during its production. on the other hand, these plants have a negative image as a result of some high-profile mishaps.

“I think modern nuclear power plants are safe contrary to what people may think,” said Musk. “I really think it’s possible to make very, extremely safe nuclear.”

And “I’m talking about fission. You don’t need fusion,” Musk said.

Nuclear fusion is the process through which atoms of smaller elements, such as hydrogen, fuse to produce energy. This is how the Sun creates energy. While corporations and governments strive to duplicate the process, the majority of the energy produced is required to sustain the reaction, rendering the technique financially unviable.

The nuclear fission process, on the other hand, includes the breaking apart of heavy atoms such as uranium, which releases a large quantity of energy as well as additional neutrons, resulting in a chain reaction that generates even more energy.

“You’ve got that big fusion reactor in the sky called the sun. It comes up every day,” Musk said.

Some argue that fusion is a safer way to generate nuclear energy than fission since fission produces radioactive waste that can be harmful for a long time, whereas fusion does not produce long-lived radioactive waste.

Musk did not expand on how nuclear power facilities might be made "extremely safe" on Wednesday. Musk has long advocated for the use of nuclear energy.

“I think that’s a better way to generate energy than certainly a coal power plant or a natural gas power plant,” Musk had said in a PBS interview in 2007.

Oklo, a startup, intends to construct microreactors that will take nuclear waste from larger power plants and carry out further fission processes to extract more energy while decreasing radioactivity.

Similarly, Bill Gates established TerraPower, an advanced nuclear firm that innovates on legacy power plant technology.

With inputs from CNBC