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Comment by westurner | Hacker News Reader

Helion Energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helion_Energy :

> They are developing a magneto-inertial fusion technology to produce helium-3 and fusion power via aneutronic fusion, [2][3] which could produce low-cost clean electric energy using a fuel that is derived exclusively from water. [4]

Here's the part of the Real Engineering video where it is explained how 3He and 4He Helium isotopes are fusion byproducts and fuel used to generate electricity with nuclear fusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38&t=12m40s

(From "When Will Fusion Energy Light Our Homes?" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34582798)

Doesn't this new nuclear fusion process also change the valuation of the Tritium in [Fukushima Daiichi,] heavy water? Why would you dump money into the ocean?

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> Doesn't this new nuclear fusion process also change the valuation of the Tritium in [Fukushima Daiichi,] heavy water? Why would you dump money into the ocean?

This video provides background to explain some of that, but essentially, 1) It's hard to extract the heavy water from regular water. If you could do that efficiently there wouldn't have to be dumping of tritium into the ocean. 2) There's so little tritium in the released heavy water to be useful for nuclear fusion that isn't commercially viable yet. You'd be holding onto large quantities of water for a long time, as they already were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwFoOVyB40s

FWIU most synthesized tritium is from TPBAR rods (and also separated from drained reactor fluid); so it is possible, there just aren't many research institutions or indeed any production operations that do isotope separation from water?

FWIU evaporation doesn't work because Tritium/He3 crawls up the walls of the container it was in, because gravity.

Presumably nuclear research scientists have already considered centrifugation, titration, pressure / heat / boiling and other phase state transitions, Laser Nuclear Transmutation (*), reuse in a reactor with TPBAR rods designed to collect Tritium for later processing, and as fuel for peaceful civilian e.g. a D-T + (He3, He4) nuclear fusion electricity generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Bar_Nuclear_Plant > Tritium production (w/ TPBAR rods and waste casks that aren't yet repurposed for fusion research)

Fusion that takes heavy water as an input e.g. at a first stage facility that processes radioactive material and yields nonradioactives for a 'second stage' (?) facility would be great.

FWIU, that is what Helion does; though there aren't yet separate stages.

Do old casks of heavy water (dangerous nuclear waste from an old-gen nuclear reactor) contain significant amounts of recoverable Helium-3 due to the 12.3 year typical (*) half-life of Tritium?

Again, Helium-3 is a viable nonradioactive input to nuclear fusion reactions.

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