[Squawk 8888]

Tritium, with a 12-year half-life, decays into helium-3, which can be recovered. I don't follow- how can an isotope of hydrogen decay into an element with one more proton?

[ArrogantBustard]

Tritium, with a 12-year half-life, decays into helium-3, which can be recovered.

I don't follow- how can an isotope of hydrogen decay into an element with one more proton?

Tritium nucleus has three elementary particles in it: one proton, two neutrons.

Tritium is unstable; it undergoes "Beta decay", with a half-life of 12.5 years. This means that one of the neutrons in the Tritium nucleus emits a Beta particle, otherwise known as a high energy electron, and becomes a proton. The resulting nucleus contains one neutron and two protons. It's Helium.

Recall that a proton has a positive electrical charge, an electron has a negative electrical charge, and a neutron has no electrical charge. Also a neutron has slightly greater mass than a proton. The difference is approximately the (much smaller) mass of an electron.

[Vaquero]

I dunno....I am neither a physicist nor a chemist....but I know that Helium 3 exists on the moon because the moon is bombarded by the same solar flares that are filtered by our atmosphere on earth....so we do not get He3 here on earth but the lunar regolith is loaded with the stuff