Nuclear waste might one day be used to create tritium to fuel fusion power plants

An aerial view of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the USA. There a number of low-rise office-type buildings surrounded by forest with cloud-topped mountains in the distance

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Los Alamos National Lab team is modelling the efficiency and cost of reactor designs that can generate tritium from waste

A team of scientists at the US government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory is working to turn nuclear waste into tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that could one day fuel nuclear fusion power plants. The work was presented by Terence Tarnowsky, a physicist from Los Alamos, at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington DC.