Tritium
node
Tritium is the radioactive hydrogen isotope that supplies half of the deuterium-tritium fuel, and it is the constraint that most coverage of fusion omits. It does not occur naturally in useful quantities, it decays with a half-life of about 12.3 years — roughly 5.5% of any stockpile lost per year — and the only significant civil source is heavy-water CANDU fission reactors in Canada, which produce it as a by-product at a rate of order half a kilogram per reactor per year. Published assessments put the world civil stockpile at roughly 25 kilograms, projected to peak and then decline as CANDU units retire and as the inventory decays and is consumed. Estimates of consumption for a gigawatt-scale plant run to the order of a hundred kilograms per year, which is several times the entire present world stockpile annually. This is why breeding is not optional, and why a fusion economy cannot be started from mined or stored fuel.
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Evidence · 2
Timeline
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Connections · 1
- Tritium breeding blanketdepends_on
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 24 blocks · 2 evidence · 26 related
- Story
- Tritium is the radioactive hydrogen isotope that supplies half of the deuterium-tritium fuel, and it is the constraint that most coverage of fusion omits. It does not occur naturally in useful quantities, it decays with a half-life of about 12.3 years — roughly 5.5% of any stockpile lost per year — and the only significant civil source is heavy-water CANDU fission reactors in Canada, which produce it as a by-product at a rate of order half a kilogram per reactor per year. Published assessments put the world civil stockpile at roughly 25 kilograms, projected to peak and then decline as CANDU units retire and as the inventory decays and is consumed. Estimates of consumption for a gigawatt-scale plant run to the order of a hundred kilograms per year, which is several times the entire present world stockpile annually. This is why breeding is not optional, and why a fusion economy cannot be started from mined or stored fuel.
- Knowledge
- Tritium breeding blanket
- Tritium
- Connections
- Tokamak (toroidal magnetic confinement)
- Inertial confinement fusion
- ITER
- Tritium breeding blanket
- Private fusion sector
- JET's DTE1 campaign sets the first deuterium-tritium fusion power record
- JET's DTE2 campaign releases 59 MJ in a single pulse
- NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
- JET sets the single-pulse fusion energy record of 69.26 MJ
- JET ceases plasma operations after 105,842 pulses
- ITER's declared target date for the start of deuterium-tritium operation
- Lithium (as breeding feedstock)
- ITER
- Tritium
- ITER's declared target date for the start of deuterium-tritium operation
- Evidence
- The world civil tritium stockpile, sourced almost entirely from CANDU heavy-water reactors, is of order tens of kilograms, is projected to peak and then decline as those reactors retire, and decays continuously at a 12.3-year half-life
- ITER is designed to test breeding blanket mock-ups rather than to operate a closed breeding cycle, and no fusion device has yet demonstrated tritium self-sufficiency
Observed changes · 0
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/atlas?object=RESOURCE_TRITIUM&experience=RESOURCE_TRITIUM