Deuterium is used in heavy water moderated fission reactors, usually as liquid HO, to slow neutrons without the high neutron absorption of ordinary hydrogen. This is a common commercial use for larger amounts of deuterium.
In research reactors, liquid H is used in cold sources to moderate neutrons to very low energies and wavelengths appropriate for scattering experiments.
Experimentally, deuterium is the most common nuclide used in fusion reactor designs, especially in combination with tritium, because of the large reaction rate (or nuclear cross section) and high energy yield of the deuterium–tritium (DT) reaction. There is an even higher-yield H–He fusion reaction, though the breakeven point of H–He is higher than that of most other fusion reactions; together with the scarcity of He, this makes it implausible as a practical power source, at least until DT and deuterium–deuterium (DD) fusion have been performed on a commercial scale. Commercial nuclear fusion is not yet an accomplished technology.