Stumbled on a curious lithium angle recently. It’s involved in...

Stumbled on a curious lithium angle recently. It’s involved in nuclear fusion research. Fusion is that pie-in-the-sky source of energy that’s been around for decades but always a decade away from practical application.

Because the potential upside is so high, fusion research continues in a number of countries. There are experimental fusion reactors currently operating, but too briefly to bleed off useful energy.

The best known fusion reactor (the sun) fuses hydrogen into helium with significant energy release. The solar conditions allowing that to happen can’t be reproduced on earth but a similar fusion reaction is possible here. This reaction still requires “containment” with huge engineering challenges. The lithium involvement goes something like this:

Instead of fusing hydrogen, earth-based fusion reactors use the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. Plenty of deuterium available (can be extracted from seawater). Tritium is made by bombarding lithium with neutrons – available as a “side-product” from the fusion reaction.

So a theoretical net result from a fusion reaction could be:

Deuterium from 40 litres of seawater plus 5 grams lithium provides heat equivalent of 40 tons of coal.

Remember when Goldman Sachs promoted lithium as “the new gasoline”. That was never correct, but one wonders about the future.