American researchers have announced results showing that tritium can be produced from nuclear waste generated by nuclear power plants. Tritium is extremely rare, with commercial tritium priced at $33 million per kilogram. Producing tritium from spent nuclear fuel (radioactive waste) at nuclear power plants not only addresses the troubling issue of radioactive leakage risks in spent fuel disposal but also yields a critical raw material for nuclear fusion, attracting significant attention.

A research team led by Dr. Terence Tarnovsky at Los Alamos National Laboratory announced at the recent American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall Meeting that they can use a particle accelerator to induce additional fission and neutron emission from existing spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants, then absorb the neutrons into molten lithium-6 (Li-6) salt to produce tritium.

Simulation results from the team indicate that a reactor operating at 1 gigawatt (GW) of power could produce 2 kilograms of tritium per year—equivalent to Canada's annual output as the world's largest tritium producer and accounting for about 8% of the current global tritium inventory (approximately 25kg). The team noted that tritium has traditionally been produced mainly as a byproduct from reactors using heavy water as moderator and coolant. This method of utilizing spent nuclear fuel is 10 times more efficient than previous approaches for tritium production and is expected to significantly alleviate the burden of managing spent nuclear fuel (radioactive waste) while simultaneously generating tritium. To this end, the team announced plans to improve reactor efficiency and safety for tritium production.

Nuclear fusion power generation is often called the "ideal energy source" due to its low environmental pollution risk. It generates electricity by harnessing the energy released when tritium and deuterium fuse to form helium. The primary waste from fusion is helium, carrying far lower risks than nuclear fission waste.