Tritium ordinary hydrogen, but they do fuse the small minority of deuterium nuclei. Like the other isotopes of hydrogen, tritium is difficult to confine. Rubber, plastic, and some kinds of steel are all somewhat permeable. This has raised concerns that if tritium were used in large quantities, in particular for fusion reactors, it may contribute to radioactive contamination, although its short half-life should prevent significant long-term accumulation in the atmosphere. The high levels of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing that took place prior to the enactment of the Partial Test Ban Treaty proved to be unexpectedly useful to oceanographers. The high levels
Tritium for watches and instruments, and, along with deuterium, as a fuel for nuclear fusion reactions with applications in energy generation and weapons. The name of this isotope is derived . While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, the National Institute of Standards and Technology lists (). It decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation: and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron's kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium