If Climate Change Is a Problem Then Lunar Helium-3 Fueled Fusion Is the Solution (examiner.com) 267
MarkWhittington writes: With the Paris Climate Conference apparently ending in failure and experts such as Matt Ridley suggesting that, in any case, global warming is not a cause for immediate concern, the private sector is casting about to fund "green" energy solutions. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are starting a renewable energy research and development fund, for example. The Chicago Tribune pointed to a possible area of investment that Gates and Zuckerberg might look into if they would like to get out of the solar and wind box that many green energy enthusiasts find themselves in. The key to evolving from a fossil fuel energy economy, perhaps, is fusion energy powered by helium-3 from the moon.
Lunatic (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a lunatic's solution
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That summary sounds like something you'd read in The Onion.
Re:Lunatic (Score:5, Insightful)
That summary sounds like something you'd read in The Onion.
That is where it belongs. Helium-3 is the dumbest, most impractical solution to our energy problems imaginable. Unicorn farts would be a more realistic power source. We don't actual have any helium-3, and even if we did, it is far harder to fuse, with far less energy out, than deuterium, and deuterium fusion still isn't anywhere near breakeven after 60 years of effort.
The old joke.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Solar is the energy of the future, and always will be." And that was true in a very sad way for the last 30 years. But NOW solar and wind are actually happening. They are already more economical than the market replacement costs of coal and oil, and that's without including the externalized environmental costs of fossil fuels.
So just at the moment when the joke is on fossil fuels for the first time ever, this joker suggest what? That we dump renewables for an unreachable and unproven fantasy? Yeah, th
Re:The old joke.... (Score:4, Informative)
People, companies and investors chase dollars. There's a reason people are STILL building those large polluting pieces of shit.
Is it because they're Chinese? Because in the United States, 170 coal power plants have been cancelled over the last 15 years, with only 40 completed, and are 20 still in development and 17 whose current status is unknown. There's also 12 "abandoned" plants but I'm not sure what the difference between abandoned and cancelled is. All of this is according to SourceWatch [sourcewatch.org]. If those numbers are accurate it means that Americans aren't really building many new coal plants, and the even the ones they did plan to build, two thirds of them have been cancelled.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration [eia.gov], 1,507 MW of new coal plants were added in 2013. However, in the same year 6,861 MW of natural gas and 2,959 of solar was added. For the math challenged that means almost twice as much new solar was added compared to new coal (and over 4 times as much natural gas). There was also 1,032 MW of new wind added. Sure it was only 2/3rd of coal in 2013 (partly because of a subsidy deadline for end of 2012 where 10x the amount of solar was completed in 2012 compared to 2013), but I would bet that new wind projects will continue growing while new coal projects continue to disappear.
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...deuterium fusion still isn't anywhere near breakeven after 60 years of effort.
Define effort... in those 60 years, have we put as much "effort" into fusion development as we have in politically stabilizing the middle east in the last 12?
"THE" solution? If there is ONE it's p-B! (Score:5, Interesting)
[the Onion is] where it belongs. Helium-3 is the dumbest, most impractical solution to our energy problems imaginable. Unicorn farts would be a more realistic power source. We don't actual have any helium-3, and even if we did, it is far harder to fuse, with far less energy out, than deuterium, and deuterium fusion still isn't anywhere near breakeven after 60 years of effort.
If you're going for a harder-than-deuterium/tritium reaction as your one great hope, Helium 3 is not it.
The logical candidate is p-B (Proton, i.e. light hydrogen, fusing with Boron 11). While it's even a bit harder to light than 2xHe3, and produces about 2/3 the power per reaction. But it's also aneutronic (i.e. 1% of the reactions produce a neutron - in this case about 0.2%). Nearly all of the fusion energy can be extracted as electricity - DC at several voltages in the vicinity of 2 kV - almost trivially, by decelerating and "catching" the reaction product alpha particles. The kicker, though, is that both H1 and B11 are common on Earth, so you don't have to import them from the moon.
Re:Lunatic Unicorn Farts (Score:4, Informative)
That is where it belongs. Helium-3 is the dumbest, most impractical solution to our energy problems imaginable. Unicorn farts would be a more realistic power source. We don't actual have any helium-3, and even if we did, it is far harder to fuse, with far less energy out, than deuterium, and deuterium fusion still isn't anywhere near breakeven after 60 years of effort.
Well said. Though you'll find yourself arguing with people who thought you said it's a dumb idea. It's a great idea --- good enough for practical old NASA to drop it into their distant-futurist visions of lunar colonies --- but a dumb solution for Earth right now, even directed research. There's an energy crisis happening down here.
Lunar H3 mining along with the idea of solar energy collected in orbit are 'fails' in my book because both would place Earth society in the grip of the consortium that manages the infrastructure, and that infrastructure (though awesome) would become an absurdly simple single point of failure. These ideas lead directly to One World Government and it's probably not the one you want. Even if it works out it's lights out for mankind when the first Bad Thing, Who'da Thunk It happens.
In order to ensure that nations can maintain their sovereignty, even to ensure there are nations at all, the fossil free energy solution we pursue should comprise power generated directly from elements that can be mined locally with a reasonable footprint, technology that can be manufactured and maintained locally. Mining is a 'given'. If you think wind and PV solar are mining-free solutions, you haven't looked into the process or run the numbers necessary to scale them. Wind and solar and the chemistry necessary for grid storage are environmental disasters waiting to happen.
Grid electricity should become the universal medium of exchange and should be used for almost all ground transportation, and must be available in such abundance that we can use it to manufacture synthetic fuels for air and sea travel. Continental grids should consist of power plants pushing HVDC into regional 'loops' from which tuned HVAC is extracted from several points to power the legacy grids, which can then be separated into smaller islands than are currently used. Efficiently doing DC/AC conversion and the means to better switch and properly utilize HVDC should be a top research priority --- what ever the energy source.
We are also approaching a time when the purification of ocean/waste water and its transport will become a top priority on a scale that exceeds any present oil and gas pipelines. Within fifty to a hundred years' time, additional terawatts of energy will be needed to bring fresh water into regions that are presently depleting water tables faster than they replenish. I'm not just talking tap water. Our food supply relies on massive irrigation [google.com]. If you think wind and solar could purify and move this much water, let alone power an industrial society, please think again.
It's time to finish taming fire. Nuclear fission [slashdot.org] and specifically the two fluid molten salt reactor with active processing [slashdot.org] with it's "safe in 300 years" waste decay profile is the single best and most practical solution yet devised to produce energy on the scale necessary to survive and prosper.
I'm not fond of these so-called "small scale micro-fission reactors" either, where conventional nuclear power manufacturers re trying to trump the safety issue (while aggravating the waste generation problem) by proposing a great many smaller light and heavy water reactors. Yes of course they want to sell one to every town, including yours. It's an absurd notion borne out of the an
Re:Lunatic (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as we're nowhere near practical nuclear fusion, Helium 3 is indeed the domain of lunatics. (and yes, I see what you did there) Anyone who seriously suggests it be used as an energy source in any time scale less than 50 years from now is either completely clueless or batshit insane.
3He isn't even a first-generation fusion fuel, so until we have any fusion at all, it's not worth spending a single penny on. Unless you want exceptionally light party balloons, I suppose.
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"3He isn't even a first-generation fusion fuel, so until we have any fusion at all, it's not worth spending a single penny on. Unless you want exceptionally light party balloons, I suppose."
Meh just use hydrogen, then light the birthday candles.
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Trust the man who built Facebook rather than learn how to socialize in person to be in agreement with a Rube Goldberg solution.
Oh, for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, golly, as long as we can discount the decades of research, engineering, and implementation that would be required to (a) establish a huge industrial presence on the Moon, (b) extract helium-3 in bulk from the lunar crust, (c) transport that He3 in bulk to Earth's surface, and (d) successfully fuse that He3 on an industrial scale to produce power, why don't we hedge our bets with giant space-constructed solar shades and thorough terraforming of Mars?
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Well, golly, as long as we can discount the decades of research, engineering, and implementation that would be required to (a) establish a huge industrial presence on the Moon, (b) extract helium-3 in bulk from the lunar crust, (c) transport that He3 in bulk to Earth's surface, and (d) successfully fuse that He3 on an industrial scale to produce power, why don't we hedge our bets with giant space-constructed solar shades and thorough terraforming of Mars?
And if you accomplish all that, the flat-earth lobby will still hate you and keep filing baseless lawsuits against your projects. Instead, wait for the right point on the economic cycle where lack of jobs is seen by the public as a major issue, and then ram through a fleet of standardized latest-generation fission reactors. The hatred will be the same, but you will get usable carbon-free power a lot sooner.
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Two separate hedges. Shades for Earth, mirrors and huge greenhouse-gas generators for Mars.
Re:Oh, for... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with shades for the Earth is that by reducing the sunlight that hits the Earth you also reduce the amount of photosynthesis that occurs. That would lower crop yields and the general productivity of the biosphere. Also it doesn't do anything to stop ocean acidification.
Re:Oh, for... (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with shades for the Earth is that by reducing the sunlight that hits the Earth you also reduce the amount of photosynthesis that occurs.
An obvious solution would be to only shade the Earth at night.
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Shades have solar arrays on the sun-facing side.
Now to get all that sweet, sweet power down here...
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The gravity ignoring fantasy doesn't go far enough - if you are going to have delusions, they may as well be grand delusions. It's like seeing the solution to 19th century transport as being a cyborg horse with a motor instead of a better road+rail and things zooming about on wheels.
Re:Oh, for... (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, you think the Nazis on the moon are just gonna hand over all that moon helium?
Re: Oh, for... (Score:3)
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Or you do all that on the moon and beam it back via microwave accepting that the massive losses from using microwave transmission are still far better than the massive losses associated with moving mass.
Moving mass requires lots of energy. Moving energy is free, it moves on its own, stopping it from moving is actually the problem.
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That's gonna be one heck of a nuclear plant to outshine the Sun at 400,000 kilometers.
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I guess hydrogen and oxygen could be considered "fossil fuels", but it's a bit far-fetched, given that one is a "fossil" of the Big Bang itself and the other a "fossil" of stellar nucleosynthesis...
Moon (the movie) (Score:5, Informative)
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I liked "Moon", and for those others who also like that genre, I suggest "The Island", "The Thirteenth Floor", and "Dark City".
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I don't understand why The Island is so hated. I thought it was a pretty good effort, especially for a Micheal Bay movie.
earth helium (Score:2)
why couldn't we just use earth helium?
Re: earth helium (Score:3)
1) the vast majority of earth helium is He4, which has some undesirable properties for fusion
2) even if it was all He3, there's not a lot of helium. He is light enough that it simply floats away from the earth
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You can make helium-3 by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons. As a bonus, you also get plenty of tritium.
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Helium on earth is rare (we have almost depleted our natural H2). H3 is not found on earth in abundant supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Apologies. You're correct.
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AFAIK, we extract/chemically produce a great deal of the Helium used.
Re:earth helium (Score:5, Interesting)
I was paying ~$110/Liter STP in quantity a decade back; I got it from the Russkies. It's more expensive now, since they are running out of surplus Tritium.
The thing is, it is vastly cheaper, by orders of magnitude, to simply make 3He here on Earth.
First thing needed is an old Nuclear Reactor, and then a decent source of cheap Deuterium and 6Lithium. (~$18/gm for the Deuts from Chalk River, in the form of 2H2-18O. Pure 6Li is best, but Garden Variety will do- a few bucks a Kilogram.)
Mix together, and start drawing off the Tritium. Let that start to decay, and draw off the 3He. The extraction is the easiest part.
Half of the Tritium decays to 3He in toughly 12.3 years. Interesting things can be done with the accompanying Beta Decays in the meanwhile.
Mining the Moon for 3He is the domain of Bad Science Fiction, and "Engineers" with a BS in BS. 3He is just about the most volatile Element that we know of; it simply doesn't hang around. The SS Cylinders that the Russkies sold us screamed Mass 3 under vacuum on the Residual Gas Analyzers. Even Implanted, straight 3He on the Moon doesn't hang around very long.
We _know_ this. We did all sorts of Isotopic Analyses on returned Moon Rocks, including my favorite, a thin sintered disc probed for 136Xe.
There was more Xenon than 3He, in terms of Parts Per Quadrillion. (Xenon freezes out in the Colder Lunar regions and adsorbs; 3He doesn't freeze out anywhere.)
"In 1985, engineers from the University of Wisconsin discovered that lunar soil samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions contained unexpectedly high concentrations of it."
"Unexpectedly high" meant barely measurable. They weren't expecting to see any at all. Now there can be reasons for this, and it involves the Chemistry of Helium.
Normally, Helium has no Chemistry to speak of. A decade after the Wisconsin Experiments, it was discovered that Helium can form stable compounds in Ionic States. That is, Helium Hydride is ridiculously easy to manufacture as a +1 Ion in a thin Plasma, like those Plasmas found near the Sun. (I made some small contributions to this field.) If an Electron attaches, Helium Hydride dis-associates, but fairly slowly. In the conditions found in certain regions of the Moon, very slowly. It's all very Plasma Chemistry, and I wasn't involved in that aspect of it. I just found a way to make a lot, relatively, of the damn stuff, in what is known as an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source. (ECR-IS)
Note that in the Sources for this all-too-familiar Timothy Jerk-Off, there is no mention of Gates or Zuckerberg and of their Mining the Moon for 3He, which is still a damn stupid idea.
Timothy just felt that he had something Extra-Special to contribute yet again on a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about. Dammit Timmy!
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And then a comment like this comes along, and makes me wish I had kept my mouth shut or posted anonymously, just for the privilege of modding it up. Interesting, Informative, Insightful, Underrated, take your pick...
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what i would do is use electricity from fusion power plants to power facilities to make more He3... the supply is limitless once you have the electricity.
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There isn't much Helium-3 on Earth. Most of it is Helium-4, produced through radioactive decay. Helium-3 is easy to fuse whereas Helium-4 is quite difficult.
The moon has far more, collected from the solar wind over long periods of time. Still, not exactly tons, but enough that it might be worth going there to get it.
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why would you think that the moon has a lot if the earth doesn't? on earth the helium rises to the top of the atmosphere then gets blown away. wouldn't that happen immediately on the moon as well?
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Re:earth helium (Score:5, Interesting)
3He is hard to find, but relatively easy to make. Pile up some tritium and wait. It decays to 3He with a half-life of 12.3 years.
If we ever get fusion power plants at all we'll start with D-T reactors, which means we'll have to have enough tritium breeding capacity to fuel our reactors, which means we'll have enough production capacity to fuel our 3He reactors with the decay products.
Cheaper than mining the Moon, I would guess.
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A far easier way is to use a Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Rod [doe.gov]. (pdf link) Rather than putting UO2 in the fuel pellet, put lithium aluminate (LiAlO2) in there.
This has been going on at the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear power station [wikipedia.org] since 2004. Sure, more tritium has leaked into the coolant than expected, but tritium is a pretty benign radioactivity source.
Harvest the tritium, which decays into He-3. Voila. Far easier than going to the moon. S
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There are 10 energetically positive fusion reactions [wikipedia.org], and He-4 is the product of most of them. He-3 reacts with itself to form He-4 and two protons, and most importantly, no neutrons, and it has a high energy yield and relatively low Lawson Criterion [wikipedia.org] so the ignition temperature is near current excitation methods. Deuterium-tritium reactions have a lower Lawson criterion and higher energy yield, but it generates most of it's energy as neutrons which leaves the magnetic confinement field and destroys the re
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I left out 'it reacts with itself and deuterium, boy do I wish there was an edit feature on /. sometimes...
Pink Floyd (Score:2)
"the nearest source is the dark side of the moon"
So Roger Waters should be able to make Money off of this
Easy solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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Actually, we need to build more hydrogen bombs, since milking our existing stock of bombs supplies our current world consumption of helium-3.
That, and hydrogen bombs represent our sole existing solution for exceeding break-even yield from fusion (excepting, of course, solar power). They just require a rather large cylinder and piston to harness their output.
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Google "pacer fusion".
Hint: it doesn't work. Not technically, that's easy. Economically, not so easy.
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Fission is uneconomical, fusion will be too (Score:4, Interesting)
In short, fission and fusion will both always cost significantly more than the alternatives, because alternatives require less capital and do direct conversion of energy to electricity.
Citations:
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/... [ornl.gov]
https://matter2energy.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
Okay, so where's the Paris news? (Score:2)
I'm having trouble finding any news on any network about the Paris climate talks. If someone has a link that actually covers what's been going on there in depth, I'd appreciate it.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/search/index.php?searchinput=climate&dateId=0&programId=0
NPR has had some decent coverage.
Re:Okay, so where's the Paris news? (Score:4, Informative)
Look at the website of any major media outside the US. Lots of coverage. BBC, CTV, CBC, The Globe and Mail, the Guardian ... or download their apps.
Also, the first sentence of the summary, "With the Paris Climate Conference apparently ending in failure" is total BS. The summit is only 1/3 through, has 8 days left to go, and is making progress. But of course anyone listening to US media wouldn't know that. Same as the rest of the world knew Saddam wasn't making centrifuges when Colin Powell was lying in the UN.
Oh? (Score:2)
Has anyone ever built a working H3 plant? That's a rhetorical question. It may be cleaner and easier to extract energy from H3 because it's aneutronic, but it's not going to be any easier to get to steady state fusion with H3-Deuterium than it is with Deuterium-Deuterium. We still don't know how to do this, and it's entirely possible it will never be something that's practical for commercial power.
Let's get a D-D plant working first and then start thinking about whether mining H3 from the moon makes sen
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Actually, fusion shouldn't be a priority at all (Score:2)
The economic case for fusion is just too weak.
The problem is that so much capital will be tied up in the reactor + thermal conversion, that an equivalent capacity of solar/wind will always cost less. Lots less.
Citations:
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/... [ornl.gov]
https://matter2energy.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
--PM
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Solar is nice during the day and all, but fusion solves a bunch of problems solar doesn't, from heating load over winter nights to industrial power. (Plus, a big chunk of power consumption, about half of industrial use is never electrical energy, but thermal used directly).
"experts such as Matt Ridley"????? (Score:2)
I laughed so hard I had to go change my shorts after I read that.
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Perhaps not, but he's been debunked [theguardian.com] repeatedly [skepticalscience.com]. I find it amusing that slashdot would label a politician with no background in science as an "expert" on climate change and the best guys like you can come up to defend this guy are lame dismissals.
Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"????? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
As for slashdot labeling a politician with no background in science as an "expert" on climate change -- that's just part of the new SlashDice business model:
(1) Post a provocative headline or summary.
(2) Generate traffic to the site.
(3) Collect ad-clicks.
(4) Profit!
Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"????? (Score:4, Informative)
You know, it's the climate science deniers that pay more attention to Al Gore than the rest of us.
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The only thing I'd call Matt Ridley and expert in is climate science denial. But he has motivation because his family owns coal mines.
Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"????? (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I'd call Matt Ridley and expert in is climate science denial. But he has motivation because his family owns coal mines.
He has also invested heavily in fracking, and is opposed to regulating same.
Oh, and he is extremely hostile to wind and solar power.
He must really be panicking about solar and wind since the deployment costs have plummeted, and expansion rates have been averaging 25% annually, year after year. Currently wind and solar 11% of the entire annual electricity production in the EU, yet Ridley keeps asserting that it is impossible for these to make any significant contribution.
Anything to promote burning fossil fuels, which puts dollars directly into his pocket.
Let's get deuterium-tritium fusion working first (Score:2)
Humanity has struggled to create a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor for decades. We're not there yet.
Getting helium-3 fusion to work is even harder [wikipedia.org] because of the higher Coulomb barriers presented by the helium-3 nucleus. The higher barriers demand higher temperatures to be overcome.
Iron Sky (Score:2)
Oooh... who's been watching that great movie Iron Sky [wikipedia.org]?
The Nazis have tanks of Helium 3 already stashed on the moon!
Helium-3 Solution (Score:2)
Gag me, thats so 19990's.
How about something we can use now, and is much more abundant?
I am of course talking about Thorium.
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Re:Helium-3 Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
India has been doing things with thorium but the promising efforts (eg. the accelerated thorium reactor that can also get a lot more out of used uranium fuel rods from other reactor) have been slowed down a bit due to India being offered a lot of the 1970s uranium technology from those same culprits in the US nuclear industry.
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> One of the low points of the US nuclear industry was when they lobbied to get thorium research shut down during the Clinton administration
Ummm, you mean the Nixon administration perhaps?
Thorium power, the Bernie Sanders of energy. A bunch of people who have no idea what they're talking about love what they hear and defend the him/the-concept to the death while everyone around them rolls their eyes.
> India has been doing things with thorium
India has been working on thorium since the *1950's* and have
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Maybe then as well but I'm describing the more recent incident.
As for "conspiracy", are you joking or are you just using that as an excuse for not being aware of the topic? It has been very overt, very public and even PR people paid money to get messages out FFS!
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Why do I keep getting these losers who think that there is only one other person on the internet? Different usernames imply different people FFS.
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Sadly, it might just be.
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Gag me, thats so 19990's.
How about something we can use now, and is much more abundant?
I am of course talking about Thorium.
How about uranium? We actually have plant designs ready to build that can use that stuff.
Clones! (Score:2)
What are we waiting for? Let's hurry up and send a bunch of clones of Sam Rockwell to the dark side of the moon and get mining already!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Space: it costs tens of thousands of dollars a kilogram to ship stuff into LEO.
Yeah, but this is helium! It'll float to Earth all on its own!
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He3 is a far superior fuel if you can make it work. It only produces charged particles, which is exactly what you want.
Clearly we can't build an H-T reactor any more than we can build a D-T reactor. But describing it as an "inferior" fuel is going a bit far.
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> He3 is a far superior fuel if you can make it work ::rolleyes::
It's ONE THOUSAND TIMES HARDER to make He3 generate electricity. We've been working on D-T fusion since 1948 and it's still not working. You can masturbate to your techno-fetish all you want, but the rest of us have actual problems to solve, now.
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It's also not the only aneutronic fuel. If you can build aneutronic He-3 reactors that produce useful power, you can probably do the same with p-B11 or p-Li7, with the advantage of not having to scoop up continent-scale areas of lunar surface to find fuel.
On What Planet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is Matt Ridley an expert?
Only at the Wall Street Journal.
Ridiculous (Score:2)
The technology needed to mine the moon effectively and cheaply wil arrive much later than Energy storages which you can attach to renewable power plants to store the Energy.
The "key" as always is no monoculture (Score:3)
But you need Red Mercury ... (Score:2)
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The Betteridge answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG, not the stupid lunar He-3 myth again. - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1 [thespacereview.com]
There are currently NO better-than-break-even fusion reactors.
There are no He-3 fusion reactors.
Any currently purposed theories/technologies which could (theoretically) use the difficult and rare He-3 + H-2 could instead use the far more common B-11 + H-1.
Saying that there's a lot of He-3 on the moon is like saying there's a lot of gold in the ocean.
Technically true, but practically useless.
WHAT BOX? (Score:4, Insightful)
It gets crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
So, solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy sources are just pie-in-the-sky hippie fantasies because technological advances are just too far off, but energy from Moon helium is a solid, practical solution?
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Let's break down what you say:
OK! We have a taker.
Wait a minute. "...using current technology"? If we're comparing something to mining space helium, then why are you limiting this to "current technology"?
unicorn vomit (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, why not look at using unicorn vomit as a fuel. It is more easily obtained and utilized than using He3 from the moon as a fusion fuel.
Re:Wouldn't it be a little cheaper to just, (Score:5, Funny)
harvest antimatter from the van allen belts? I mean if your going to go down the h3 route, just jump the gun and go straight to antimatter.
Fuck it, we're going to h5.
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1. we have a space elevator..
But we have to bring the helium down from the Moon, and helium rises, so it'll take a lot of energy to drag it down to the surface.
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But we have to bring the helium down from the Moon, and helium rises, so it'll take a lot of energy to drag it down to the surface.
Have you ever had a helium tank fall on your toe? They are secured to keep them from falling, not to keep them from floating away.
Compress the helium enough and it will not rise, no matter what container it's in.
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Leave the helium at standard pressure, and it will still fall -- in a vacuum.
Sort of like the joke apparently did.
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You can find answers to your questions here! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But in summary... The "waste" is Helium-4, which is also called "the normal everyday helium we have on Earth". Not enough would be produced to be meaningful in any way compared to the value of the electricity produced, but fusion in general can be considered clean; its output is generally safe stuff. We do currently produce Helium-3 industrially, and value has recently raised from $100/L to $2000/L; this value would probably i
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