Fusion

JohnEggGio

Will they use it to boil water?

Tspud1

frazzdaddy said:

31 years ago we didn't have internet or cell phones.

"What will we know tomorrow that we don't know today"

ask Bob Seger

Botch

It was interesting to see that helium is a byproduct of this process, something we can't "make" any other way.  Six or seven years ago we were pretty worried that the Earth's supply (within natural gas pockets, as a result of nuclear decay of the Heavy elements) would run out, but I guess that's not the case anymore (rest easy, balloon-animal clowns).  
 
It was also interesting to see that tritium is one of the "fuels" of this process; that sh*t's incredibly dangerous (used in nuclear weapons) and I know of one building that's been sealed, for decades, because of a leak (no way to clean it up?)  

nolaegghead

Botch said:

It was interesting to see that helium is a byproduct of this process, something we can't "make" any other way.  Six or seven years ago we were pretty worried that the Earth's supply (within natural gas pockets, as a result of nuclear decay of the Heavy elements) would run out, but I guess that's not the case anymore (rest easy, balloon-animal clowns).  
 
It was also interesting to see that tritium is one of the "fuels" of this process; that sh*t's incredibly dangerous (used in nuclear weapons) and I know of one building that's been sealed, for decades, because of a leak (no way to clean it up?)  

Tritium helps keep nukes "clean" and more efficiently consume all the fuel in the explosive reaction. 

We use so much helium it wouldn't be practical to "make" it.  There was a shortage but some new sources have been discovered in (of course) unstable political environments.  The US strategic reserve has been tapped recently and there's no shortage but the price is paradoxically still higher than ever given the supply side of the equation.

Our labs have switched, where we can, from helium as a carrier gas for gas chromatography application to hydrogen, which is abundant and, in some cases, we make it from water.  But it's cheap.

Since tritium is a gas at room temp, I would think a leak in a building would be a matter of venting the gas or capturing it...burning it and collecting the tritiated water.  Then it can be converted back to tritium gas through simple electrolysis.

nolaegghead

Tritium has a half life of 12.5 years.  Around 5% of tritium decays into helium-3 per year.  Of all tritium on the planet.

Botch

nolaegghead said:
Since tritium is a gas at room temp, I would think a leak in a building would be a matter of venting the gas or capturing it...burning it and collecting the tritiated water.  Then it can be converted back to tritium gas through simple electrolysis. 

That may be the case; I only learned the above during a tour at a place somewhere (classified), and I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed (plus it was 28 years and a lot of brain cells ago).