Dr. Andrew Cottone is a Visiting Fellow for the Center for Energy & Environmental Policy at the Caesar Rodney Institute. He has business interests related to heavy water and deuterium technologies.
America is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign nations for critical materials needed to power the technologies of the future. From semiconductors and pharmaceuticals to rare earth minerals and advanced batteries, Americans have learned the hard way that supply chains matter. Yet one critical material remains largely absent from the conversation: heavy water.
America’s forgotten strategic material
Materials essential to modern industry — underpinning critical technologies across energy, defense systems, electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing — are controlled by China, Russia, India and Iran. We are not talking about rare earths, though the descriptor fits. We are talking about heavy water.
Instead of containing only common hydrogen (which consists of one proton and one electron), heavy water contains deuterium, a stable form of hydrogen isotope with one proton, one electron and one additional neutron. That extra neutron slightly increases the mass of the molecule, but the consequences are significant, making heavy water essential to a range of advanced technologies. Heavy water has nuclear and chemical properties that make it useful in applications where ordinary water cannot perform the same role. As competition intensifies over the materials needed for advanced energy systems, high-performance manufacturing and national security, heavy water has emerged as an important strategic resource, rather than a scientific curiosity. Industry analyses indicate that supply remains concentrated in a handful of adversarial countries, while demand continues to grow across nuclear, research and industrial applications.
Why America lost production
Heavy water production is highly specialized, capital-intensive and concentrated in a small number of countries (China, Russia, India and Iran.)
The United States stopped producing heavy water in 1982, and its last production facilities at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina — a key part of America’s Cold War nuclear infrastructure — were subsequently closed. As a result, America now lacks domestic production capacity for a material increasingly viewed as strategically important.
Why heavy water matters
The most important reason heavy water matters is that it supports technologies critical to America’s future economic and national security. In fusion energy, deuterium is one of the core fuels for the reaction pathways that many developers are pursuing. Because heavy water is the most scalable source of deuterium, it sits near the base of any serious fusion supply chain.
Heavy water and the deuterium it contains are also increasingly valuable in pharmaceuticals and life sciences. Deuterated compounds — drugs and other molecules in which ordinary hydrogen has been replaced with deuterium — can improve metabolic stability, alter how quickly a drug is broken down and, in some cases, reduce unwanted side effects.
As a result, it serves as a quiet but critical input into biomedical research and drug discovery workflows.
This growing importance extends beyond laboratories. Delaware’s economy has long benefited from leadership in chemicals, pharmaceuticals and advanced materials. As demand for deuterium-based materials continues to grow, the First State may be well positioned to contribute to the supply chains that support these emerging technologies.
Could Delaware help lead the way?
In the years ahead, nations will compete not only for energy, data and manufacturing capacity but for the specialized inputs that make those systems possible. China’s strategy of economic weaponization is well documented. The United States cannot allow the capability to produce and supply heavy water — a strategic material it helped pioneer during the Manhattan Project — to remain concentrated in the hands of geopolitical competitors.
America once led the world in heavy water production but no longer does. As policymakers look to strengthen domestic supply chains, the nation will need to determine where future production, research and industrial capacity should be developed. Given Delaware’s long-standing leadership in chemicals, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing innovation, the First State is well positioned to be part of that conversation.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
