[hairytrog]

Not quite. 80% of the energy in D-T fusion reactions are released as neutron energy. I sure hope most of that will be used for generating electrical power rather than breeding tritium... :) The dpa rates and helium embrittlement are way higher for fusion and fast fission reactors than for thermal fission reactors. See Figure 3 and 5 of https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci...

[marcosdumay]

You have to absorb the neutrons to capture that energy, so you will always have to deal with transmutation. You can't choose one or the other.

On this case, the lithium absorbs the neutrons and convert most of the energy into heat, while it becomes tritium.