Environmentally Friendly Nuclear Fuel under Development

A potentially revolutionary new type of environmentally friendly nuclear fuel is being developed in Sweden that weighs 100,000 times more than water, and has greater density than the Sun’s core.   The Swedish researchers’ ultimate aim is to create a product that impacts less on climate change than the current generation of nuclear power, and that offers greater sustainability.

To date, the material has only been created in minute form.  However, according to recently-published information on it, the atoms present in the material have much less space between them than is the norm.  And this fact, according to the University of Gothenburg’s Professor Leif Holmlid, represents significant progress towards material of this kind being used by industry at large.

The material is created from deuterium or “heavy hydrogen”.  Deuterium exists abundantly in water and in living organisms, and is burnt by fusion processes when stars are formed in space.

Nuclear Fuel Technology

However, said Professor Holmlid, “ultra-dense deuterium” could also be highly useful in terms of developing new nuclear fuel technology.

“One important justification for our research is that ultra-dense deuterium may be a very efficient fuel in laser driven nuclear fusion”, he explained.

“It is possible to achieve nuclear fusion between deuterium nuclei using high-power lasers, releasing vast amounts of energy”.

Deuterium Fusion

Previous tests of so-termed “deuterium ice” – frozen deuterium, effectively – involving these lasers have yielded unsatisfactory results, but the much higher density of ultra-dense deuterium has simplified the deuterium fusion process.

“If we can produce large quantities of ultra-dense deuterium, the fusion process may become the energy source of the future... much earlier than we have thought possible”, Holmlid stated.

On the subjects of risks to human health and benefits to the environment, he added:

“Further, we believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. It will not be necessary to deal with the highly radioactive tritium that is planned for use in other types of future fusion reactors, and this means that laser-driven nuclear fusion as we envisage it will be both more sustainable and less damaging to the environment than other methods that are being developed.”

Ultra-Dense Deuterium image copyright of and provided by Professor Leif Holmlid