407
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
407 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
59708 readers
1450 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The reaction used in fusion generators is:
[2]H + [3]H -> [4]He + n
Since tritium is usually produced from lithium in situ, you add:
[6]Li + n -> [3]H + [4]He.
The only radioactive thing here is tritium, and it's mostly confined to the reactor. Also, tritium isn't nearly as bad as fission waste.
So does this also mean that glow-in-the-dark watches (the non electronic type) get cheaper?
I mean, if you could extract any tritium from the reactor cavity, but it's probably going to get burned up instantly.
The reactions I showed add up to this overall reaction. Neutrons simply serve as a catalyst.
[2]H + [6]Li -> 2 [4]He
On the bright side, fusion reactors produce helium as a byproduct, which might make party balloons cheaper.