JET's final nuclear fusion experiment produced a record-breaking 69 megajoules of heat. Nice.

Clean energy could be ‘closer than ever’ after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record::JET’s final nuclear fusion experiment produced a record-breaking 69 megajoules of heat. Nice.

  • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the problem that Uranium has a half-life of a couple hundred million years, while the half life of beryllium is less than a second?

    Only Beryllium-10 has a long half-life for beta decay. Adding another neutron drops that back down to a few seconds and additional neutrons drop it back to a fraction of a second. So as long as that specific type of Beryllium isn’t used, it would be fine, right?

    Edit: https://www.thoughtco.com/beryllium-isotopes-603868

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Those quick half-lives decay right away, losing a neutron, right? So that Berillium-11 just decays back into Berillium-10.

      The problem is that the blanket is constantly absorbing neutrons from the fusion reactions, that’s it’s job. So despite using simple berillium 5 to build your blanket, you end up with these heavy isotopes over time, and because the heavier ones quickly decay into lighter ones, you basically end up with a whole lot of berillium-10.