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by u320 828 days ago
So he's pushing an energy solution that requires Tritium. One of the rarest elements of earth. And then has the nerve to accuse fission of relying on rare elements.
2 comments

Why is it rare? Because it decays.

Why would anyone make a plan to use it as a fuel without a plan to generate it? They don't. You breed it in the blanket that collects the energy. The energy balance is quite positive.

And then, sometimes, you make it into keychains.

https://www.tecaccessories.com/collections/tritium-isotope-f...

Who is he?

Where did he push tritium?

Is the word tritium in the article? (Chrome can't find it.)

Is hydrogen more common than uranium?

Is hydrogen more common than plutonium?

What quote demonstrates "accuse", as in, "they had the nerve to accuse"?

These are honest questions, I hope you don't take offense.

Full disclosure: I live in Cambridge, MA, where MIT is located.

The only fusion pathway being seriously studied for energy in the short (read: next century) term is D-T fusion, it doesn't need to be stated.

Deuterium and Tritium are the fuels, they have to be. There are lots of other pathways, but they all require even higher temperatures/pressure than D-T, and we can't really sustain even D-T for any useful length of time.

Fortunately, T is a byproduct of DD fusion.

Unfortunately, as we don't have any commercially viable fusion reactors yet, we can't even guess if we can afford to make T in the future.

This is not true. Helion's very clever scheme appears to offer a near term route to using DD and D3He fusion. Helion could also burn DT, but they don't want to due to its practical drawbacks.

If you didn't know this you need to pay much more attention to them. IMO, they are the least dubious of all the fusion efforts at reaching a practical reactor, and that includes the DT efforts.

Helion is also going to produce prodigious amounts of excess tritium if their scheme works, which is good news for others trying the DT path (although how they compete against a workable advanced fuel reactor is not clear.)