[DennisP]

This is a great article on First Light's tritium production: https://nickhawker.com/2023/01/22/the-nuclear-physics-of-why...

Summing up: you need your fusion neutrons to breed more tritium from lithium. Lithium-7 produces tritium plus a lower-energy neutron that can breed one more tritium. Lithium-6 produces tritium but without the extra neutron.

Most designs lose a lot of neutrons, so they have to either enrich lithium for more lithium-7, or (most commonly) mix in either lead or beryllium as a neutron multiplier.

First Light's design captures 99% of the neutrons, so they think they can breed 50% more tritium than they consume with just natural lithium.

[AtlasBarfed]

What's more valuable for lithium, environmentally: use in EVs or (even if they have a net-positive fustion reaction) use in a fusion reactor that is virtually guaranteed to not be LCOE competitive with even existing nuclear?

[DennisP]

It'd be interesting to look at how much lithium is required by a fusion reactor compared to the electric cars that reactor could keep supplied with electricity. I suspect the reactors would have a pretty small effect on lithium availability for cars.