The world’s appetite for electricity is climbing fast, driven by everything from electric vehicles (EVs) to artificial intelligence.
Meeting that demand with low-carbon sources has become one of the century’s biggest challenges. Among the most promising solutions is nuclear fusion, a reaction that fuses hydrogen atoms to release enormous amounts of clean energy.
But while fusion offers the allure of abundant power with little radioactive waste, it faces a major obstacle: the scarcity of tritium, a rare hydrogen isotope that serves as its critical fuel.
Now, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) believe the answer to this shortage could lie in an unlikely place – America’s stockpiles of nuclear waste.
The scarcity of tritium
Tritium is essential for many proposed fusion designs, yet it exists naturally only in trace amounts in the atmosphere.
Current global reserves amount to just a few dozen pounds, mostly produced as a byproduct of Canadian fission reactors.
With a price tag of around $15m per pound, tritium is among the most expensive substances on Earth, and the United States has no domestic source.
Without a reliable supply, fusion power risks being delayed for decades, no matter how quickly reactor technology advances.
Nuclear waste: A surprising resource
Meanwhile, the US is grappling with the opposite problem when it comes to nuclear waste.
Commercial fission plants have produced thousands of tons of highly radioactive material that requires costly, long-term storage. This waste poses risks to ecosystems and human health if containment ever fails.
Physicist Terence Tarnowsky at LNNL has been exploring a bold idea: turning this liability into an asset by using nuclear waste as a source of tritium.
His research suggests the US could generate its own supply by reimagining how it handles radioactive byproducts.
How the concept works
Instead of relying on chain reactions in conventional fission reactors, Tarnowsky’s system uses a particle accelerator to bombard nuclear waste with energy.
The process sets off a controlled series of reactions that ultimately produce tritium. Because the accelerator can be switched on and off, it avoids the runaway risks of traditional reactor designs.
Computer models indicate that a facility running at one gigawatt – the rough equivalent of powering 800,000 homes – could produce about 4.4 pounds of tritium annually.
That output would rival the combined production of all reactors in Canada, but with a higher efficiency rate.
In fact, Tarnowsky’s calculations suggest this approach could generate more than ten times as much tritium as a fusion plant of the same size.
Engineering challenges ahead
Turning simulations into reality won’t be simple. Tarnowsky is now refining models to assess costs, safety, and scalability.
One promising option involves enclosing nuclear waste in molten lithium salt, which acts as both a coolant and a safeguard against weapons-grade material extraction.
Many of the building blocks for such a system already exist, but they’ve never been combined in this way. The research is less about inventing from scratch and more about rethinking how established technologies might work together.
Accelerating fusion energy development
If successful, the approach could solve two problems simultaneously: reducing the burden of nuclear waste storage and supplying the fuel needed to make fusion a viable power source.
The idea remains in the experimental stage, but its implications are vast. Instead of viewing nuclear waste solely as a dangerous byproduct, it could be reframed as a valuable resource in the global clean energy transition.
By turning waste into fuel, researchers may be able to cut costs, reduce risks, and bring the dream of limitless clean power closer to reality.
