The world’s appetite for electricity is driven by everything from electric vehicles (EVs) to artificial intelligence.
Meeting that demand with low carbon sources has become one of the biggest challenges of the century. Among the most promising solutions is nuclear fusion. This is a reaction that fuses hydrogen atoms to release a huge amount of clean energy.
However, fusion offers the temptation of abundant power with little radioactive waste, which faces a major obstacle. The rarity of tritium is a rare hydrogen isotopes that serve as their important fuel.
Currently, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) believe that the answer to this shortage is unlikely to exist: in the US nuclear waste stockpile.
The rarity of tritium
Tritium is essential for many proposed fusion designs, but it only exists naturally in trace amounts in the atmosphere.
The current global reserves are only tens of pounds to tens of pounds, which are primarily produced as byproducts of the Canadian Fission Reactor.
With a price tag of around $15 million per pound, tritium is one of the most expensive substances on the planet, and the US has no domestic source.
Without a reliable supply, fusion capabilities are delayed decades behind and advances in reactor technology.
Nuclear waste: Amazing resources
Meanwhile, the US is tackling the opposite issue with nuclear waste.
Commercial fission plants produce thousands of tons of highly radioactive materials that require costly long-term storage. This waste poses a risk to ecosystems and human health if containment fails.
LNNL physicist Terence Tarnowsky is researching bold ideas. By using this responsibility as a source of tritium, it turns this responsibility into an asset.
His research suggests that by rethinking how the US handles radioactive by-products, it can generate its own supply.
How the concept works
Instead of relying on the chain reaction of traditional fission reactors, Tarnowsky’s systems use particle accelerators to attack nuclear waste with energy.
This process controls a series of reactions that ultimately produce tritium. The accelerator can be turned on and off to avoid the risk of runaways in traditional reactor designs.
The computer model shows that a facility running at one gigawatt (a rough facility equivalent to the power supply of 800,000 homes can produce around 4.4 pounds of tritium per year.
Its power is comparable to the total production of all nuclear reactors in Canada, but is more efficient.
In fact, Tarnowsky’s calculations suggest that this approach can produce more than 10 times more tritium than a fusion plant of the same size.
Engineering challenges lie ahead
Turning simulations into reality is not easy. Tarnowsky is currently improving its model for assessing cost, safety and scalability.
One promising option is to enclose nuclear waste in molten lithium salts. This serves both as protection against coolant and weapon grade material extraction.
Many of the building blocks in such systems already exist, but have never been combined in this way. This research is not about inventing from scratch, but about rethinking how technology is established.
Accelerating the development of fusion energy
If successful, this approach can solve two problems at the same time. It is to provide the fuel needed to reduce the burden of nuclear waste storage and to make fusion a viable power source.
The idea is in the experimental stage, but its meaning is enormous. Rather than viewing nuclear waste as only dangerous by-products, it can be reconstructed as a valuable resource in global clean energy transitions.
By converting waste into fuel, researchers may be able to reduce costs, reduce risks, and bring their dreams of endless clean power closer to reality.
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