[Scratch-]

No, I'm sure a neutron hitting an atom won’t speed up fusion, your thinking of fission. When U-235 splits it releases 3 neutrons that split other atoms, that’s why its fissionable because of the chain reaction.

[Corvettaholic]

Ah ha, found something that explains my point a little bit better:

http://www.fusion.org.uk/info/reaction.htm

there is an extra neutron, but since it doesn't split anything, I'm not too sure what its good for.

[Scratch-]

Thats H² + H³ = He⁴ + a neutron

Not

H² + H² = He³ + a neutron

I guess it can release an extra neutron but not with two deuterium atoms, only with a deuterium and a tritium atom.

[vulcan2.0]

   now i see about helium but what about hydrogen can u combine it with a metal

[vulcan2.0]

to create a extra light metal that is somewhat stable.

[jdurg]

  now i see about helium but what about hydrogen can u combine it with a metal

Absolutely not.  Think about what you're saying.    If you combine a pound of lead with a quarter pound of feathers, will you make something that weighs less than a pound?  Nope.  Combining two things does not make something lighter.  The law of conservation of mass prevents that from happening.  Also, if you "combine" hydrogen with a metal, you will no longer have a metal.  Instead you'll wind up with a hydride.  Ionic salts are not very strong, and most hydrides that I know of are quite soluble in water.  

[Limpet Chicken]

Tritium doesn't seem too difficult to prepare, it's deuterium that has me stumped, as I cannot be fussing about electrolysing hundreds of liters of water for a tiny bit of D2O

Tritium can be prepared by bombarding 6Li with, I think, neutrons, I think natural Li is about 25% 6Li

Hmmm...this sounds like making tritium in ooohhh say a coke bottle?
3He is also produced, but these could be seperated easily be combining the tritium with oxygen to make T2O

[jdurg]

The only way to get Deuterium is to isolate it from water/hydrogen gas.  It cannot be "made" very easily at all, and it's actually a lot easier to just extract it from water.  VERY time consuming, but pretty much the only way to do it.

[Mitch]

you need to centrifuge a water sample several times to get at the deuterium.

[movies]

I thought that Helium dimers had been observed at extremely low T.  I seem to recall calculating the bond length for these in my quantum mech. class and it was something absurd like 55 ang.  Anyway, I thought that they had observed the vibrational spectra of 3He-4He dimers....

I might be wrong though, and I don't have my notes from that class anymore.