this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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A massive nuclear fusion experiment just hit a major milestone, potentially putting us a little closer to a future of limitless clean energy.

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[โ€“] jasory@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Deuterium is pretty common, and tritium can be produced by lithium irradiation. They are finite resources, but still much larger than pretty much any existing resource.

It is true that fusion equipment suffers from neutron radiation, however this is a potential for breeding tritium.

[โ€“] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Like I said elsewhere, the problems I pointed out are relatively mild in comparison to all the good from fusion energy. However, there's only approximately 25kg of tritium in the entire world. ITER is expected to use a majority of this world-wide supply. The mass manufacturing of tritium also presents another problem you pointed out with the supply: a super rare isotope needs rare earth metals to manufacture, one that is already in extremely high demand. I love this research and I want to succeed in any way possible. But we have to face reality and the material problems the science has to overcome.