³He is so rare that?it must be produced artificially.One way to produce it is through a sequence of reactions that can be carried out in a nuclear reactor, where thermal neutrons are quite common. The reactions are:?

Followed by

Verify that both of these nuclear reactions are exothermic and compute the energy released in each. Check that this process is practical by looking up the fractional abundance of ⁶Li in naturally occurring lithium and the lifetime of ³H. Why should we care about the latter?

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nthermal + Li → 4He + ³H,