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zutnoq t1_iyvlecc wrote

Reply to comment by NetworkLlama in Why not use hydrogen and deuterium in fusion reaction rather than tritium and deuterium? by Curious_user4445

20 kg is probably not as small an amount as you might think. The energy equivalent of that mass is around 500 TWh of which something on the order of half a percent is released in the reaction IIRC, so say something on the order of 2 TWh worth of energy of which you could extract say 1 TWh worth of electricity (if we assume 50% efficiency which might be optimistic but probably not orders of magnitude off). Global yearly electricity production/usage is currently around 22 TWh so scaling up the production of tritium to meet this demand seems more than feasible to me.

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NetworkLlama t1_iyvn7k3 wrote

I explained in another comment the details and challenges of production. In short, scaling up is difficult and requires either special rods that produce 1.2 grams per 10-foot rod per 500 days of irradiation in a light-water reactor or else heavy water reactors that can create up to 130 grams per 700 MW reactor per year. It's extremely inefficient either way.

Lithium blankets are being researched, but they're not yet proven.

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