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There’s an argument to be made that we should do a much better job of directing those neutrons to make tritium, since fission isn’t even something to discuss un
by RC_ITR 3y ago
There’s an argument to be made that we should do a much better job of directing those neutrons to make tritium, since fission isn’t even something to discuss until we know how to make abundant tritium.
- credit_guy 3y agoYes. But fusion is not quite here yet. It's a difficult business proposition to store large quantities of tritium in the hope that you'll be able to sell to an operator of a fusion reactor three decades down the road (after about 80% of it has decayed). On the other hand, when fusion is ready for prime time, one could use liquid lithium in a reactor. Liquid lithium has quite a number of advantages over sodium: in that temperature range it has more specific heat capacity than any metal, higher even than water. It has excellent conductivity. And if it captures a neutron, it splits in helium and tritium plus energy. It could increase the energy production of a fission reactor by more than 5%. And you get that tritium for free, and ultra-rare helium-3 if you fancy some aneutronic fusion at some point.