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A comment on Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial fusion companies. Parent comment

Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by DennisP on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:39PM (#30667626)
It is, deuterium fusion's final product is half tritium (and half He3).

But D-T reactors would mainly breed tritium from lithium. The CFS reactor, for example, will immerse the reactor in a pool of FLiBe salt, which also functions as coolant. Each beryllium atom hit with a neutron emits two neutrons, and when neutrons hit lithium atoms they breed tritium. General Fusion does something similar with lead in place of beryllium.

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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by TaylorAlexander on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:43PM (#30667645)
Thank you. So do they need to source tritium externally at all? I’ve seen people claim CFS will have to source tritium, making it expensive to operate. Can they breed all they need?
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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by DennisP on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:47PM (#30667671)
They'll need tritium for startup. After that they shouldn't need more if they can get the breeding ratio high enough, but that might not be easy.
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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by ncmncm on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:02PM (#30680597)
In practice it means the mix of Li-6 and Li-7 in your coolant pipes has to capture more than half of the neutrons emitted, and not too many of the slow neutrons released in intermediate reactions get stolen.
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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by TaylorAlexander on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:55PM (#30667710)
Interesting thank you!
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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by pfdietz on Sunday March 13, 2022 @10:33PM (#30667948)
Unless a DT reactor can breed its own tritium it will be totally economically hopeless.
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Re:Tokamak Energy sets a temperature record among commercial... by TaylorAlexander on Monday March 14, 2022 @04:08AM (#30669656)
Yeah. Someone the other day said in a comment that commercial fusion will never be viable because tritium is so expensive. But it does sound like breeding is the plan at least with ARC so I don't know what that commenter was thinking.
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