Story by Brendan Knapp 

3 min read

IBM quantum computing system© IBM

Quantum computing is kicking the doors open on a fusion energy problem that has long challenged scientists. IBM, in partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Cleveland Clinic, discovered a new way to model how fusion plants could produce and recover tritium. It’s a rare fuel  found in several common objects that are radioactive. Tritium is created naturally when cosmic rays reach the upper atmosphere, but supplies are limited as its 12-year half-life results in relatively quick decay. 

The lack of tritium is a roadblock to having fusion as a power source. But this radioactive isotype of hydrogen can be produced by exposing more commonly available lithium to neutrons. Tritium is notoriously hard to capture and reuse, but a molten salt known as FLiBe (fluorine, lithium, and beryllium) can surround the fusion reaction like a blanket, helping with this process. Scientists need to know which recipe for doing so is the most efficient, but calculations on this scale are too challenging for classical computers. 

The solution is to use classical computers for simpler modeling and let IBM’s quantum hardware determine the nine specific molecular configurations of this material. It helped them model how the molten salt behaves with and without tritium. IBM calls it the first-known instance of fusion-material computations on quantum computers.

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