Comment on Clean energy could be 'closer than ever' after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record
QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 7 months agoSomeone 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?
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Those quick half-lives decay right away, losing a neutron, right? So that Berillium-11 just turns 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.