{"id":209346,"date":"2025-03-21T02:15:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T07:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/producing-nuclear-fusion-fuel-is-banned-in-the-us-for-being-too-toxic-researchers-find-an-alternative"},"modified":"2025-03-21T02:15:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T07:15:59","slug":"producing-nuclear-fusion-fuel-is-banned-in-the-us-for-being-too-toxic-researchers-find-an-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/producing-nuclear-fusion-fuel-is-banned-in-the-us-for-being-too-toxic-researchers-find-an-alternative","title":{"rendered":"Producing nuclear fusion fuel is banned in the US for being too toxic: Researchers find an alternative"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/producing-nuclear-fusion-fuel-is-banned-in-the-us-for-being-too-toxic-researchers-find-an-alternative.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lithium-6 is essential for producing nuclear fusion fuel, but isolating it from the much more common isotope, lithium-7, usually requires liquid mercury, which is extremely toxic. Now, researchers have developed a mercury-free method to isolate lithium-6 that is as effective as the conventional method. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/chem\/fulltext\/S2451-9294(25)00076-2\" target=\"_blank\">new method<\/a> is presented in the journal <i>Chem<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a step towards addressing a major roadblock to nuclear energy,\u201d says chemist and senior author Sarbajit Banerjee of ETH Z\u00fcrich and Texas A&amp;M University. \u201cLithium-6 is a critical material for the renaissance of nuclear energy, and this method could represent a viable approach to isotope separation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The conventional method used to isolate lithium-6, called the COLEX process, involves liquid mercury and has been banned in the United States since 1963 due to pollution concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lithium-6 is essential for producing nuclear fusion fuel, but isolating it from the much more common isotope, lithium-7, usually requires liquid mercury, which is extremely toxic. Now, researchers have developed a mercury-free method to isolate lithium-6 that is as effective as the conventional method. The new method is presented in the journal Chem. \u201cThis is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,873],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}