Exchange deuterium enrichment by

Now let us examine deuterium enrichment—first the scale of the current effort, and a projection of the deuterium requirements in the future. The United States has constructed two plants, each capable of producing 500 tons of D2O per year. One of these plants Is dismantled, and the second plant Is currently operating at about one third of Its capacity, producing 180 tons of D2O per year. In Canada, two plants with a combined output of 1600 tons D2O per year have recently been completed (21). 

D2O is used as a neutron moderator and heat transfer medium for power reactors. The DjO requirement Is about one ton D2O per megawatt of electrical capacity. In the United States the development of power reactors has moved toward reactors fuelled with enriched using light water as moderator and either 

It Is of Interest to project the deuterium requirements for use as a fusion fuel In controlled thermonuclear reactors (CTR). Robert Hlrsch, Director of the U.S.A.E.C. Division of Controlled Thermonuclear Research has predicted the production of significant amounts of fusion energy by 1980, and fusion power commercialization before the turn of the century (22). A report prepared by a group at Brookhaven National Laboratory (23) can be used for estimating energy and deuterium requirements in a future fusion-based energy regime. In which all fossil fuels (except for ship and petrochemical feed requirements) are replaced with synthetic fuels produced by D-D fusion reactors, and all electricity production is by CTR. They estimate that by the year 2020, 

500 X 10l5 bTU of fusion energy would be required to supply all U.S. energy needs (with exceptions noted above). The total amount of deuterium needed to produce this energy (assuming 100% efficiency for the D-D fusion reaction) would be only 1000 tons D2 per year (5000 tons D2O). If the technical problems can be overcome, the fusion process promises to be astonishingly efficient from the standpoint of resource consumption  

of the many processes proposed and used for deuterium 

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