ELI5. Why do you need to use heavy hydrogen to start a fusion reaction?

Question

I am pretty sure the sun fuses just standard one proton hydrogen. So why do we need to use deuterium and tritium for our bombs?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Tritium and Deuterium are much more likely to react than just H-1. So reactions run quicker.

Most importantly, they’re abundant. Deuterium is present in sea water, and tritium is made when lithium decays in the incredibly intense neutron bombardment. So by making the fuel lithium – deuteride, you have all the components in one solid form.