Nuclear waste could supply rare hydrogen fuel for US fusion reactors

Scientists in the United States are exploring a novel method to recycle nuclear waste to produce tritium, a rare isotope of hydrogen essential for nuclear fusion reactors. Nuclear fusion, which fuses atoms to release large amounts of nearly emission-free energy, requires both deuterium and tritium as fuel. While deuterium is abundant, tritium is scarce and expensive, with current commercial prices around $15 million per pound. The US lacks domestic tritium production capability and relies on limited global supplies, primarily from Canadian reactors. Given the US’s vast stockpiles of radioactive nuclear waste from fission power plants, researchers see an opportunity to generate tritium from this waste, potentially turning a costly disposal problem into a valuable resource. Physicist Terence Tarnowsky at Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted computer simulations of reactor designs that use particle accelerators to initiate atom-splitting reactions in nuclear waste. These reactions release neutrons that, through subsequent nuclear transitions, produce trit