Fusion runs on lithium nobody can trace yet.
A fusion power plant burns tritium, which barely exists in nature. So reactors have to make their own, by hitting lithium-6 with neutrons in a "breeder blanket." This page follows that lithium from salt flats and hard-rock mines, through refineries and isotope plants, into the reactor, and shows who could be harmed along the way.
Systems map: six steps from salt flat to reactor
Click a step to see who does it, where, the documented risks, and what is still unknown. The risk filters highlight one kind of harm across the whole chain.
The chain on a globe
Drag to turn the globe. Click a dot for its story. Colors match the six steps above, and choosing a step above highlights its places here.
Pick a place
Click any dot on the globe.
The big picture: lithium is dug up mostly in South America, Australia, and Africa; refined mostly in China; and enriched at scale today only inside weapons programs.
What Sayari shows
Sayari is a knowledge graph built from corporate registries, customs and trade records, procurement data, and sanctions lists. It answers the question the web can't: which named companies actually trade with each other. Each row links to the record in Sayari. A trade link proves the two companies traded, not that a given shipment went to fusion.
| Link found | Kind of evidence | What it means | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Five suppliers in Russia's state nuclear complex → Isoflex USA: NCCP, the Electrochemical Plant (Zelenogorsk), the Siberian Chemical Combine, Elektrokhimpribor, and Isotope JSC | Trade records, filtered to isotope and lithium-chemical product codes | A U.S. isotope distributor imports isotopes or lithium chemicals from Russia's weapons-era nuclear complex. This is the clearest route by which Russian enriched lithium could reach U.S. labs. | Isoflex USA |
| NCCP → China's state nuclear trader CNEIC, the Petten research reactor, Albemarle Germany, battery makers, and nuclear plants | Trade records, product not confirmed | The world's main lithium-7 plant sells into Western research, battery, and lithium supply chains. | NCCP |
| Kurchatov Institute and Mining and Chemical Combine → NCCP | Russian procurement records | NCCP works under contract for central institutions of Russia's nuclear complex, including a former plutonium-production site. | NCCP |
| Xinjiang Nonferrous Metals → Nonferrous Lithium Salt Plant | Corporate ownership records | A group on the U.S. forced-labor entity list has a lithium chemicals unit. | Xinjiang Nonferrous |
| Bikita (Zimbabwe) → Sinomine (Hainan) Lithium → Sinomine sites in Namibia and Tanzania | Trade records, product not confirmed | Zimbabwean lithium enters a Chinese group trading hub, and the trail goes cold there. | Bikita · Sinomine Hainan |
| KME, Linde Kryotechnik, Luvata, and others → Commonwealth Fusion Systems | Trade records | The largest fusion company's visible imports are hardware. No lithium supplier shows up yet, so the chain can't be traced to a fusion buyer today. | CFS |
| Lithium hydroxide exporters by country, 2024 on | Trade records, aggregate counts | China 445, U.S. 247, South Korea 214: refining concentration shows up in customs data. | Sayari |
What Sayari could not show: NCCP's owner (the registry lists only a regional property office), the exact product in each Isoflex shipment, and which SQM buyers take lithium rather than fertilizer. Sayari's own risk scores are not used on this page; only government lists and records are.
Who could be harmed, step by step
The evidence level says who documented the problem: a government, independent reporting, or a structural risk that follows from how the step works. None of these are findings about a specific shipment of fusion lithium, because no fusion company has published where its lithium comes from.
| Step | Who is at risk | Harm | Evidence level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extract (Chile, Argentina) | Indigenous communities, including the Lickanantay and Atacameño | Water loss from brine pumping; projects approved without free, prior and informed consent; 2023 protests in Jujuy | Independent reporting |
| Extract (Zimbabwe) | Children, mine workers, nearby villages | Child labor in lithium; reported displacements, spills, and unsafe work near Bikita | U.S. government list |
| Extract (Australia) | Residents of Greenbushes, Western Australia | Mine dust exceeding licence limits; a state report found a significant health risk | State government report |
| Refine (China) | Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang | State labor transfer programs; lithium is a high-priority sector for U.S. forced-labor enforcement | U.S. government strategy |
| Enrich (past: U.S.) | Residents and workers around Oak Ridge, Tennessee | Hundreds of tonnes of mercury released; cleanup still running in 2027 | U.S. government records |
| Enrich (now: Russia, China) | Workers and neighbors of closed weapons sites; the public, through proliferation | Mercury process with no public oversight; buying supports state weapons complexes, which already trade with a U.S. isotope distributor | Trade records (Sayari) |
| Fabricate, deploy, after use | Plant workers | Tritium and beryllium exposure; waste from spent blankets | Structural risk |
Build fusion's lithium chain clean before it scales
The ask: make public fusion money conditional on knowing where the lithium came from, and fund a lithium-6 supply that does not use mercury or weapons plants.
The problem
Fusion needs little lithium by battery standards, but it needs a special kind. One power-plant blanket holds about 100 tonnes of lithium-6, and almost all of today's enrichment capacity sits inside nuclear-weapons programs in Russia and China that use a mercury process. The last time the United States did it at scale, Oak Ridge lost hundreds of tonnes of mercury into the land and a creek, and the cleanup is still going. Upstream, the same lithium passes through salt flats where Indigenous communities say they were not consulted, Zimbabwean mines on the U.S. child-labor list, and Chinese refining that the U.S. now treats as a forced-labor priority.
Why now
Commercial fusion is roughly a decade from needing tonnes of lithium-6. Supply chains are cheapest to shape before contracts and plants lock them in. Pilot plants in the U.S., U.K., and Europe are already signing material deals, and much of the money is public.
Three recommendations
1. Put conditions on public fusion funding
Any DOE, UKAEA, or ITER-funded project that buys lithium or breeder material should report the mine or brine of origin, the refiner, and the enrichment plant, and show due diligence that follows the OECD guidance for minerals, which applies to all minerals, not only conflict minerals. Brine sources should show evidence of free, prior and informed consent.
Who acts: DOE Office of Science and fusion milestone programs; UKAEA (LIBRTI); ITER Organization procurement.
2. Fund mercury-free lithium-6, and keep public money away from mercury and weapons plants
Use the DOE Isotope Program and grants to scale cleaner methods such as chromatography, crown-ether exchange, and electrochemical separation, which companies like Precision Periodic and Molten Salt Solutions are developing. Do not buy enriched lithium made by COLEX or by plants inside weapons complexes, in line with the Minamata Convention on mercury.
Who acts: DOE Isotope Program; Congress (appropriations); U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
3. Close the isotope gap in trade rules
Make clear that UFLPA lithium enforcement covers enriched lithium and lithium compounds, and add an origin declaration for lithium isotopes at import. Sayari's trade records show why: a U.S. isotope distributor imports isotopes or lithium chemicals from five plants in Russia's state nuclear complex, and a Xinjiang group on the forced-labor entity list runs a lithium salt plant. Isotope distributors sell to research labs, so an origin rule at import would reach material that buyers never see the source of.
Who acts: Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (DHS); U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Commerce (export controls).
The tech piece: a Fusion Lithium Passport
A shared record that travels with each batch of lithium, from mine to blanket. Each step adds who handled it and what they checked. Before a contract is signed, the buyer runs the companies through ownership and trade checks in a tool like Sayari, which is exactly what this page does by hand.
It should also include a complaint channel, so affected communities can attach evidence to a batch record, not just companies.
Limits and trade-offs
- Conditions add cost and could slow early experiments. A phase-in for research quantities, under about 1 kg, would limit that.
- A passport only works if refiners and enrichers take part. Public funding is the lever, because most fusion buyers today are publicly funded.
- Tracing tools see ownership and trade, not working conditions. Audits and community voice are still needed.
- Lithium-6 enrichment is export-controlled because of weapons, so some records will need restricted access.
How we would know it worked
- Share of publicly funded fusion lithium with a known mine of origin.
- Tonnes of lithium-6 made without mercury outside weapons programs.
- Complaints filed by communities and how they were resolved.
How this page was made
Research tools. Every web source was found with Tavily search, and the key claims were checked against the full page text with Tavily extract. That covers government, NGO, academic, news, and company sources. Company and trade evidence came from Sayari's knowledge graph, using entity records and trade relationships rather than shipment name searches, which often return unrelated records. Each source is tagged "via Tavily" or "via Sayari."
Tavily queries used. Lithium-6 enrichment for fusion; ITER breeder blankets; CFS and FLiBe; Y-12 mercury; DOE lithium-6 programs; Atacama Indigenous water rights; Jujuy protests; Zimbabwe lithium labor; the DOL goods list; UFLPA and lithium; China's refining share; UKAEA LIBRTI; CFS lithium suppliers; Greenbushes community impacts; Isoflex; the scope of the OECD minerals guidance.
Sayari methods used. Entity search and profiles to confirm each company's identity by registry number; upstream supply-chain traces filtered by HS product code (Isoflex USA, Commonwealth Fusion Systems); trade relationships (NCCP, Bikita, Sinomine Hainan, SQM); procurement records (NCCP's contractors); ownership trees (Xinjiang Nonferrous); and trade aggregates (lithium hydroxide exporters). Shipment searches by company name returned unrelated records, so they were not used. Sayari's own risk scores are not shown. See the "What Sayari shows" table for every link.
Evidence rules. No company is rated ethical or unethical. Allegations are attributed to whoever reported them. Trade links are labeled "product not confirmed." Projections are labeled as projections.
AI use. The page was coded and drafted with Claude (Anthropic) in Claude Code. Each fact traces to a source listed below. The student author reviewed the sources and owns the conclusions.
Still unknown.
The records behind this page are in research/fusion-lithium-2026-11.json.