Breakeven with D-T?

[Tulse]

But this wouldn’t be the first claim of theoretical breakeven by a fusion device, would it? Haven’t other teams made claims of theoretical breakeven?

And whatever the scientific achievement, as I said I don’t know for (savvy) investors how important D-T would be. The issue is making a practical generator, not pure scientific research. We already know how to get fusion reactions to produce more energy than they consume, i.e., thermonuclear bombs. The practical concern is getting usable energy out. That’s the goal of FF, and I don’t know that a theoretical D-T breakeven would get the LPP team that much closer to that goal. Of course, I might be mistaken.

[zapkitty]

The issue, as I understand it, is tritium. The ‘T’ in D-T.

Tritium is radioactive hydrogen and, just like H2, it gets everywhere and hooks up with everything… and everyone.

It’s not cesium-127 or strontium 90 but it has costs and issues and it [em]*is*[/em] regulated. And regulated for very good reason.

Even ITER is carefully avoiding tritium until the last possible moment and it’s [em]*designed*[/em] to use tritium as fuel.

Having to engage that regulatory regime is a cost that LPP has determined is unnecessary for success so wouldn’t that render a D-T Focus Fusion setup more of a publicity stunt than anything else?

I believe that quite a number of people working on D-T fusion projects would be saying so… and quite loudly.

[delt0r]

The lab down the hall uses Tritium. My old night scope uses tritium. You can buy tritium florescent toys. Its rather low energy beta emitter.

The reason its gets highly regulated is that once you can get enough of it, ie grams worth. It becomes a very important addition to fission weapons. In short it makes fission weapons *many* times easier to make. Things like ITER and JET require large inventories of tritium. That gets a whole lot of pain WRT regulation.

If something like the DPF can use a very small inventory, regulations are not so prohibitive. I have not idea of how much you would need. But it could well be at the quantities that attracts lot of regulation.

[Author]

Posts