I've always disliked the term "wave-particle duality" and I think Feynman nailed it when he said that quantum objects are neither.

>“Quantum mechanics” is the description of the behavior of matter and light in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen. Newton thought that light was made up of particles, but then it was discovered that it behaves like a wave. Later, however (in the beginning of the twentieth century), it was found that light did indeed sometimes behave like a particle. Historically, the electron, for example, was thought to behave like a particle, and then it was found that in many respects it behaved like a wave. So it really behaves like neither. Now we have given up. We say: “It is like neither.” There is one lucky break, however—electrons behave just like light. The quantum behavior of atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and so on) is the same for all, they are all “particle waves,” or whatever you want to call them. So what we learn about the properties of electrons (which we shall use for our examples) will apply also to all “particles,” including photons of light.

I would recommend the Feynman lectures for further reading.

Small black holes evaporate faster than large black holes. If you have a black hole with mass as low as 50 neutron masses, it would basically decay instantly, releasing all its energy in a tiny explosion of light and particles. Even a black hole with a mass of 1 kg would only take 10^-16 seconds to evaporate.

>much lower radioactivity concerns than fission, making it easier to deal with both from a safety perspective but also a public acceptance perspective?

The amount of "radioactive waste"(=radioactive resources) would be comparable to a breeder reactor. Newer reactor designs are much safer than old ones. If you eliminate the most common risks in the design, you can easily reduce the chance of a meltdown to practially zero. The development cycle for nuclear power is much slower than for other technologies, because of their high lifetimes and low numbers. Imagine if we stopped developing cars after the first 4 designs, with the biggest charge being a few hundred cars, because they were too unsafe. That's where we are with nuclear. If you can drop the mean time between meltdown incidents from every 10 years to every 1000 years worldwide, then that does matter. People want to make you believe this technology is inherently unsafe and the designs can't be improved. That is completely false.

>All the futurology stuff around fusion

Most of the futurology stuff is made by people who have no clue what they are talking about.

> It a fusion reactor exploded there may be major loss of life but it wouldn’t make the surrounding environment toxic for long periods, or at least that’s the idea.

This study concludes that the relocation of people after the Fukushima nulcear accident was not justified on the grounds of radiological health benefit. Also that "long period" is "only" about 100 years. Nuclear has still the lowest death rate of all alternatives.

>Obviously if you need lithium it’s clearly not truly unlimited

Lithium is abount 10 times more abundant than Uranium, so supply is not an issue.

> but the idea of something you could scale out much faster than solar/wind is rather appealing.

Why are you assuming that you can build fusion reactors faster than fission reactors or solar/wind? There are no commercial fusion reactor yet and all existing designs are very early prototypes. The data to make that conclusion doesn't exist yet. Not to mention that fusion is at least 20 years away (as always) and we need a solution now.

Yes, but that depends on the specific breeder design. Besides, if someone really wants nuclear weapons, there are a thousand different paths. Just look at north korea. The wikipedia article on breeder reactors states the reason why there is not more interest in breeder in the first paragraph: >Breeders were at first found attractive because they made more complete use of uranium fuel than light water reactors, but interest declined after the 1960s as more uranium reserves were found,[2] and new methods of uranium enrichment reduced fuel costs.

Breeders could extract 100 times more energy from the same fuel rod than an LWR can, but even at 1% efficiency LWR's are efficient enough that fuel cost is not an issue. That's just how OP the energy density of the fuel is.

>The reason people consider fusion to be a "holy grail" energy source is because it is capable of creating its own fuel.

Fission reactors can create more fuel than they consume as well. They are called breeder reactors. However the fuel for fission reactors is already so cheap that most commercial operators are not interested making it even more efficient. So what if fusion reactors can create their own fuel (which remains to be proven)? It doesn't matter if the reactors themselves are too expensive. Fusion is considered a "holy grail" because commercial large scale fusion is not yet real. When it becomes real, it will stop being a "holy grail", because there is almost no advantage to nuclear.