America Needs Heavy Water Again. Could Delaware Help Lead the Way?

As America searches for secure supply chains for critical technologies, an overlooked opportunity may be hiding in one of the world's most important industrial materials.

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, although the descriptor fits.  We are talking about heavy water.

Naturally occurring heavy water, or deuterium oxide (D₂O), looks almost identical to the ordinary water (H₂O) people use every day, but at the atomic level it is meaningfully different. 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). Historically, large-scale production was tied to nuclear reactor programs, especially heavy water reactor systems. Today, India is widely described as one of the largest active producers through its government-owned Heavy Water Board, which oversees the country's heavy water production and supply for nuclear and industrial applications.  Canada retains significant expertise derived from its CANDU nuclear reactor program, although Canada has not produced heavy water since 1999 and demolished the infrastructure at its production facilities in 2006 with a final license to abandon issued in 2014. Its current supplies will likely be depleted before the turn of the decade.

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. Whether the design uses magnetic confinement or inertial approaches, fusion ultimately depends on reliable access to deuterium. Because heavy water is the most scalable source of deuterium, it sits near the base of any serious fusion supply chain. In that sense, heavy water is not peripheral to fusion commercialization; it is foundational. When fusion moves from demonstration to deployment over the coming years, demand for deuterium-bearing feedstocks could become far more strategic. States that position themselves early within these emerging supply chains may benefit from the next generation of advanced energy investment and manufacturing.

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 help reduce unwanted side effects. Recent scientific literature highlights the expanding role of deuteration in medicinal chemistry, including late-stage deuteration methods that use D₂O directly as the deuterium source. Research published in Nature and journals of the Royal Society of Chemistry describe deuteration as an important tool for improving drug performance, while broader reviews note that multiple deuterated drugs are already approved and more candidates remain in development.

Heavy water is also essential for specialized laboratory solvents used in deuterated nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a common technique for analyzing chemical compounds, as well as metabolic tracer studies. 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?

For policymakers and economic development leaders, the lesson is straightforward: strategic industries often depend on strategic materials. The states that recognize those opportunities early may be best positioned to capture future investment, research, and manufacturing activity.

In the years ahead, nations will compete not only for energy, data, and manufacturing capacity, but also for the specialized inputs that make those systems possible. China’s strategy of economic weaponization is well documented. Recent years have highlighted the risks of relying on foreign suppliers for critical materials and supply chains. 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.

Heavy water is a prime example of a strategic material hiding in plain sight. Although it resembles ordinary water, it supports some of the most consequential technologies of the 21st century, including fusion energy, advanced medicine, semiconductor fabrication, and quantum research. With supply concentrated in a handful of unfriendly countries and demand likely to expand as these sectors grow, heavy water deserves to be viewed not as a niche relic from the first nuclear age, but as a cornerstone of the modern industrial ecosystem.

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 longstanding leadership in chemicals, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing innovation, the First State is well positioned to be part of that conversation.

About the Author: 

Andrew Cottone, Ph.D., is a Delaware entrepreneur, inventor, and investor involved in advanced energy, domestic manufacturing and technology ventures.

Disclosure: The author holds and has filed patents, investments, and business interests related to heavy water, deuterium and tritium technologies.

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