Editing Fusion power (section)

== Disadvantages ==
Fusion power has a number of disadvantages. Because 80 percent of the energy in any reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium appears in the form of neutron streams, such reactors share many of the drawbacks of fission reactors. This includes the production of large quantities of [[#Radioactive waste|radioactive waste]] and serious radiation damage to reactor components. Additionally, naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare. While the hope is that fusion reactors can breed their own tritium, tritium self-sufficiency is extremely challenging, not least because tritium is difficult to contain (tritium has leaked from 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the US<ref>
{{Cite web|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43475479|title=Radioactive tritium leaks found at 48 US nuke sites|last=Donn|first=Jeff|date=June 21, 2011|access-date=July 4, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111214625/https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43475479|archive-date=November 11, 2020|publisher=[[NBC News]] |language=en-US}}</ref>). In any case the reserve and start-up tritium inventory requirements are likely to be unacceptably large.<ref name="TritiumSelfSufficiency_Abdou">{{cite journal |last1=Abdou |first1=M. |display-authors=et al |year=2020 |title=Physics and technology considerations for the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle and conditions for tritium fuel self sufficiency |url=https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/abbf35 |journal=Nuclear Fusion |volume=61 |issue=1 |page=013001 |doi=10.1088/1741-4326/abbf35|s2cid=229444533 }}</ref>

If reactors can be made to operate using only deuterium fuel, then the tritium replenishment issue is eliminated and neutron radiation damage may be reduced. However, the probabilities of deuterium-deuterium reactions are about 20 times lower than for deuterium-tritium. Additionally, the temperature needed is about 3 times higher than for deuterium-tritium (see [[#Cross section|cross section]]). The higher temperatures and lower reaction rates thus significantly complicate the engineering challenges.