So the big hope for the warmie philosophers is fusion. Germany doesn't want to get off Russian natural gas right away, because it wants to stop burning fuels, and stop nuclear. The only hope is fusion.
So, imagine we have a melon. That's the standard hydrogen atom, no good for fusion. Then we use a chopstick and pin on a lemon. That's a neutron and we have deuterium, which is very rare 'heavy water', that was distilled out of water at a tremendous ratio. That isn't good for fusion, so we tack on another lemon. It becomes somewhat unstable and ungainly. This is what we use for fusion.
Tritium has a half-life of about 12 years. So, there is no natural tritium lying around. It all has to be generated by heavy-water nuclear plants, which practically only exist in Canada. It is ironic for the crazy Germans that their only hope depends on Canadian nuclear power.
Tritium production only produces a few jars per year. It's all used for emergency signs because it glows. You can't store it or corner the world's supply because it spoils on you.
Both fission and fusion are used to build big bombs. It's funny that fission has bad vibes about the bombs, but fusion doesn't. Building a bomb is easy because you confine the reaction until your confinement lets go. However, power generation requires a continuous, controllable heat generation, and this was difficult with fission, and will be nearly impossible with fusion.
-to be continued
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