Lunar Helium 3 Could Meet Earth's Energy Demands

starannihilator writes "Helium 3, rare on the earth but abundant on the moon, may prove to be a feasible energy source with NASA's Moon-Mars initiative. Despite the American Physical Society's Report that the initiative harms science, the moon may actually benefit humans because it contains 10 times more energy than all the fossil fuels on earth. Long hailed as a potential source of energy, and outlined in detail by the Artemis Project, helium 3 may solve earth's energy crisis without any radioactive byproducts. The only problem: the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy. Read more about the Artemis Project's information about fusion power from the moon here." Reader muditgarg points out that India has just hosted a global conference on Moon exploration and utilization, and adds a link to this related story on KeralaNext.

I should have said He3…

[DaHat]

In my defense... It's been a long time since I gave any thought to chemical symbols.

What they don't mention...

[RsG]

... is that the energy in question comes from thermonuclear fusion, and fusion can be done with terrestrial elements. We don't _need_ he3 to build fusion power plants; we can build them with deuterium/tritium fuel, or even just deuterium alone. Moreover, D/T fusion only requires plasma temperatures about a tenth those of D/He3 fusion. IIRC D/D fusion is also somewhat more attainable than D/He3 (and uses an incredibly abundant fuel available on Earth - deuterium is a stable hydrogen isotope available in quantity from seawater).

The only disadvantage of hydrogen isotope fusion is radioactivity. D/T spits out fast neutrons, while D/D can produce radio-isotopes (I think - someone correct me if I've remembered wrong). Neither technology produces hazardous nuclear waste however, and the radioactivity in question would be very short lived, cooling in decades to centuries, rather than millennia. Moreover, in D/T reactor designs, the only radiation is in the core itself, and said neutron radiation can be used to "breed" tritium fuel. Disposing of fusion waste long term, either by sealing the decommissioned cores, or storing the D/D reaction products, is easier than importing he3 fuel from the moon.

Seen it before

[delibes]

Here [slashdot.org].

Problems:

• The concentration of He3 in the lunar surface may be very low. It could require processing many 100's of tonnes to get a gram/ounce/drop-in-the-ocean of He3. Of course, you could build an automated solar powered mining facility on the lunar surface to do it. You'd need serious $$$ though.
• Getting it back to Earth might be a pain. You could probably wrap it up in some aluminium projectile also mined on the moon, and fire it at Earth with a linear induction track or somthing. The projectile could have an ablative heat shield to protect the tiny precious cargo. More $$$ though.
• You need an efficient fusion power plant to 'burn' the stuff in and convert the heat to electrical energy.

Rather than using it on earth to generate electricity, it might be better used as a propellant for interplanetary spacecraft. The British Interplanetary Society once had plans for something called Daedalus which I think was designed to use He3 mined from the atmosphere of Jupiter. Is that even crazier?

Re:Right.

[confused one]

1.) probably some international treaty says no-one owns it; however, as the saying goes, possession is 9/10th's... 2.) actually, it is renewable. The He3 actually comes from the sun... The moon surface just happens to be efficient at capturing it; and, is conveniently close. 3.) So? It's just 270M miles over that way.

Re:What they don't mention...

[delibes]

The attractive thing about fusion with deuterium and helium-3 is that the main reaction does not produce neutrons. There are side reactions that will still produce neutrons, but overall I think the process is cleaner. Neutrons wlll irradiate the surrounding structures of any fusion plant :(

Recently, BBC News reported that Europe might finally get on with the job of building ITER [iter.org] - the next stage of fusion power plant development. I believe ITER will use D/T fuel.

Re:And you get it how?

[cosmo7]

So the total transportation costs run about $8.25 trillion.

Can I get you to do my taxes?

Apollo didn't cost anything like $110 billion each. Have a look here. [asi.org] The entire budget for the whole Apollo program was less than $80 billion (in 1994 dollars).

Anyway, Apollo wasn't designed to deliver 25 tonnes of Helium from the moon, so it's not surprising to see that it wouldn't be the best tool for the job. You could use Russian Progress spacecraft to deliver over a ton at a time, or actually design a spacecraft to do the job.

Re:Off limits?

[System.out.println()]

First off, what happens if we strip mine that sucker and change its mass significantly? What are the chances of it being pulled in by the Earths gravity?

Consider how large the moon is.... Now consider the odds that we could change that in any remotely significant way by mining H3. Get back to me.

Oh, and while you're at it, go read up on orbital physics. changing the moon's mass would not in any way affect its distance from earth. What might affect it (again, in a very, very slight way) would be the rockets firing off from it to return the stuff to earth. Even if that does become a problem (which would likely push the moon away from us, rather than towards), just start launching from the other side and coming around.

Re:History? We live in 2004, not 1534.

[Zorilla]

For today's more retarded moderators who are inclined to mod the parent as Troll, I give you the Wikipedia entry for the Chinese calendar system [wikipedia.org]

Note that the years relative to the Christian calendar that it has mainly considered to have started on: 2637 B.C. According to Wikipedia, that puts us at year 4641.

I hope you feel more educated about this. See you in metamoderation.

Re:Did you miss the scale?

[ScrewMaster]

Wouldn't need tons of material at those velocities. Inertial weapons have been theorized for quite some time: Pournelle and Niven's novel Footfall quite graphically portrayed the power of such weapons. In that novel, the hostile elephantine aliens simply orbited chunks of rock around our planet, each with a one-shot engine that could halt it's orbital progress upon command and allow it to fall to earth. A guidance system was attached that would allow the falling object to hit designated targets. A fifty pound rock falling from twenty-odd thousand miles can do a lot of damage and needs no explosives.

Because...

[ubera]

Well, apart from being simplistic, jingoistic and offensive, it's wrong


Art. 11 Sec. 2. The moon is not subject to national appropriation by any claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

Re:Did you miss the scale?

[Idarubicin]

A fifty pound rock falling from twenty-odd thousand miles can do a lot of damage and needs no explosives.

Indeed. The total stored energy of TNT is about 4 MJ (megajoules) per kilogram.

The kinetic energy of an object dropped from the Earth-Moon L1 point is about 50 MJ per kilogram. Adding explosives to any such device would be entirely a waste of time.

Re:Wtf?

[BlacKat]

Did you miss the part about there being an estimaged 1,100,000 metric tons of the stuff on the moon?

If *only* the USA was using this source of fuel to power the nation there would be enough to last 44,000 YEARS.

By the time this becomes viable we could in all probability power the entire planet for a few thousand years...

If the technology behind He3 recactors works as theorised we will have viable and clean nuclear power. :)

Also, since our moon has tons of He3 lying around, imagine how much more is out there on the other moons of our solar system.

Also, how far do you think 25 tones of crude oil goes? ;)

I find it amazing...

[Rick Genter]

...that people actually question the effect mining Helium-3 on the Moon would have on the Earth w.r.t. tides and such. How can so many people have no clue as to just how big the Moon is?

The article stated that 200 million metric tons of lunar soil would have to be mined to extract 1 metric ton of Helium-3. It also stated that there is an estimated 1 million tons of Helium-3 on the Moon. Do the math:

200 x 10**6 x 1 x 10**6
200 x 10**12

or 200 trillion tons (billion if you're British ;-) of lunar soil to extract all of the Moon's Helium-3.

The Moon masses approximately 7.4 x 10**22 kg [hypertextbook.com]. So we're talking about extracting 200 x 10**15 kg (1 metric ton = 1000 kg) from 7.4 x 10**22 kg, or about 2.7 millionths of the Moon's mass.

And that's if we take it all . And that's assuming that we don't develop a more efficient means of extracting the Helium-3 over the next few thousand years.

I really wish people would use their brains more than they do...