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BOb,
My understanding is that current nuclear reactors work on the principle of fission, which could be described as 'cold fission'. Energy is released when fission occurs and you don't have to supply energy to create the fission process -- just amass enough fissionable material and the fission process will happen on its own. Fussion on the other hand takes a considerable amount of energy to initiate, but 'cold fussion' (if it worked) would be a process similar to fission in that no external energy (or very little) would be required to initiate the fusion process, which like fission releases a lot of energy.
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