Researchers Develop Mercury-Free Method for Producing Lithium-6, Key to Fusion Energy

The new process, discovered during groundwater cleanup research, offers a safer and scalable alternative to the banned COLEX method.

• Scientists at Texas A&M University and ETH Zürich have created a mercury-free method to isolate lithium-6 using zeta-vanadium oxide (zeta-V2O5).
• The method enriches lithium-6 by 5.7% per cycle and can achieve fusion-grade enrichment levels (30%) after 25 cycles.
• Lithium-6 is essential for breeding tritium, a critical fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, but U.S. production has been halted since 1963 due to environmental concerns with the COLEX process.
• The discovery was made accidentally while developing membranes for cleaning groundwater contaminated during oil and gas extraction.
• Efforts are now underway to scale the method for industrial production, addressing a major supply chain bottleneck for nuclear fusion energy.

4 Articles

Interesting Engineering Tech Xplore Gizmodo New Scientist