The Race to Mine the Moon's Helium
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles 
on 08.24.07
While much attention has been focused of late on the scramble by several countries to claim the Arctic floor and its rich supply of natural resources, a broader, more consequential race for resources may be looming on the horizon. Many of the world's leading powers, including the U.S., Russia, China and India, are setting their sights on the moon — specifically on its vast supply of helium-3, a substance rarely found on Earth that some believe could hold the key to fusion reaction.
NASA's Vision for Space Exploration is making plans to send astronauts to the moon in 2020 and on erecting a permanent base there by 2024 while Russia has set the more ambitious goal of building its first base by 2015 - 2020 — for the explicit purpose of extracting helium-3. China, for its part, will be orbiting a satellite around the moon in the coming months and hopes to land an unmanned vehicle in 2011; India, not to be left out, will send out a probe, named Chandrayaan-1, next year and a surface rover in 2010 or 2011.
This then raises the important question: how viable really is fusion power as a long-term solution to our energy needs? According to experts' best estimates, practical nuclear fusion is still almost 5 decades away and its commercial application, at best, is several more. Supporters of the technology argue that current efforts to develop fusion plants are impractical since they rely on the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle — a dangerous reaction that results in the release of high-energy neutrons. These could potentially destroy the reactor's containment vessel and unleash a large amount of radioactive waste. Helium-3 advocates claim that the element is non-radioactive and that it would thus eliminate most of these problems.
Critics of this approach counter that He3-based fusion is highly unwieldy and impractical on a large scale. Frank Close, a theoretical physicist at Oxford University and helium-3 skeptic, recently published an article lashing out against the "fantastical" claims made by "helium aficionados."
One of the only (modestly) successful applications of the He3-based technology so far has been a small plant built by Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Running on a six-figure annual budget, it only contains a spherical plasma about 10 cm in diameter that can produce sustained fusion with 200 million reactions per second — and requires 1 kilowatt of power to make 1 milliwatt.
While it may sound unimpressive, Kulcinski's reactor, which uses a technology known as inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC), has shown at the very least that fusion is feasible though not yet practical. "He3-He3 is not an easy reaction to promote," Kulcinski said. "But He3-He3 fusion has the greatest potential." That's due in part to the fact that helium-3, unlike tritium, is non-radioactive and that the protons it produces have charges that can be successfully contained using magnetic and electric fields — making direct electricity generation possible.
Still, He3-based fusion is very unlikely to provide a solution to our energy needs and, at best, will take many decades before it becomes a sufficiently viable technology to be mass-produced. Best to stick with our currents efforts to develop new renewable sources of energy and minimize fossil fuel consumption.
Via ::Technology Review: Mining the Moon (news website)
See also: ::Up, Up, And Away With My Beautiful Green Balloons, ::Fusion vs Breeder Reactor, ::Fly Me to the Moon--I Need Unlimited Natural Resources
Image courtesy of Kevin via flickr
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The moon has vast mineral wealth and sooner or later we earthlings will seek to exploit this. Whether its He-3, metals, or water for future lunar colonies/rocket fuel mining the moon is inevitable. We should concentrate on making sure it is done right. Although it is most likely devoid of life as we know it the moon should still be treated with respect and its resources used for the good of all humankind. The same can be said for the arctic floor as well.
If we take all of the helium from the moon, won't it fall out of the sky?
In his book "Mining the Sky," John S. Lewis mentions mining lunar He3. This is pretty hard to do since you'll be processing rock, a method that causes lots of equipment breakdown. But, he says an automated mission to Neptune or Uranus would be able to harvest it from the atmosphere in a much easier process and send it back to Earth. And with the right reactors it could be done at a huge profit.
Exploiting extra-terrestrial resources is the only way humanity is going to survive in the long term. And it's much better for our biosphere than exploiting terrestrial resources. I'm glad to see Treehugger isn't ignoring this.
I can't see mining the moon for He-3 to ever be economical for an importation status. However, I can see lunar colonies having lots of cheap electricity.
Aneutronic Fusion beats going to the moon for H3
I thought your readers would be interested in looking at these energy technologies and EPS’s theoretic base for ball lighting.
Aneutronic Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts.
There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems
Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion
He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other “Big” science efforts
Here are the links:
http://www.electronpowersystems.com/
Recent support has also come from one of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, when he got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the May issue of Scientific American,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00032CE5-13B7-1264-8F9683414B7FFE9F
Dwyer’s paper:
http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Gammarays.pdf
Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion (Below Is an excerpt).
“for larger plant sizes
Time to small-scale Cost to achieve net if the small-scale
Concept Description net energy production energy concept works:
Koloc Spherical Plasma: 10 years(time frame), $25 million (cost), 80%(chance of success)
Field Reversed Configuration: 8 years $75 million 60%
(Eric Lerner)Plasma Focus: 6 years $18 million 80%”
Looks like Eric Lerner is moving down the road!!
U.S., Chilean Labs to Collaborate on Testing Scientific Feasibility of Focus Fusion http://pesn.com/2006/03/18/9600250_LPP_Chilean_Nuclear_Commission/
The learning curve is so steep now, and with the resources of the online community, I’m sure we can rally greater support to solve this paramount problem of our time.
However, short of a Energy “silver bullet” like fusion , Here is a fully DOABLE technology
The integrated energy strategy offered by Charcoal based Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.
The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade in place:
Terra Preta soils I feel has great possibilities to revolutionize sustainable agriculture into a major CO2 sequestration strategy.
I thought the current news and links on Terra Preta soils and closed-loop pyrolysis would interest you.
SCIAM Article May 15 07
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=5670236C-E7F2-99DF-3E2163B9FB144E40
After many years of reviewing solutions to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) I believe this technology can manage Carbon for the greatest collective benefit at the lowest economic price, on vast scales. It just needs to be seen by ethical globally minded companies.
Even with all the big corporations coming to the GHG negotiation table, like Exxon, Alcoa, .etc, we still need to keep watch as they try to influence how carbon management is legislated in the USA. Carbon must have a fair price, that fair price and the changes in the view of how the soil carbon cycle now can be used as a massive sink verses it now being viewed as a wash, will be of particular value to farmers and a global cool breath of fresh air for us all.
If you have any other questions please feel free to call me or visit the TP web site I’ve been drafted to co-administer. http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
It has been immensely gratifying to see all the major players join the mail list , Cornell folks, T. Beer of Kings Ford Charcoal (Clorox), Novozyne the M-Roots guys(fungus), chemical engineers, Dr. Danny Day of EPRIDA , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who’s back round I don’t know have joined.
Also Here is the Latest BIG Terra Preta Soil news;
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State 04/10/07
Mechabolic , a pyrolysis machine built in the form of a giant worm to eat solid waste and product char & fuel at the “Burning Man” festival ; http://whatiamupto.com/mechabolic/index.html
At least the moon doesn't have any sort of beautiful ecosystems that mining could mess up. You don't have to worry about air pollution or water pollution. So it'll be easier on the Earth, right?