We are nowhere near practical fusion power yet, but already the quadrillion dollar helium-3 rush to the moon is on. It would greatly increase the energy available from fusion, and reduce neutron output. That in turn would limit radioactive buildup in the containment vessel.
It has often been said that practical fusion energy is thirty years away, and always will be. Large-scale surface mining on the moon is even further away. So why the rush now, by India, China, and the US? Well, there is plenty of money and glory to be had in the quest, long before we can talk about practicality.
Mar 14, 2019 — In 1986, scientists at the Institute of Fusion Technology at the University of Wisconsin estimated that the
lunar “soil”, called the regolith, contains one million tons of helium-3 (3He), a material that could be used as fuel to produce energy by nuclear fusion. According to the study, mining it would be a profitable undertaking: the energy produced by the helium-3 would be 250 times greater than that needed to extract this resource from the Moon and transport it to Earth, where the lunar reserves of helium-3 could supply human needs for centuries.
Helium-3 (He3) is gas that has the potential to be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. There is very little helium-3 available on the Earth. However, there are thought to be significant supplies on the Moon.
As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 — or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth — could power the United States for a year. This means that helium-3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne — making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities.
In addition to the information below, you can also find out more about this topic in my Mining the Moon video or in my BBC interview here. There is also a good article by Fabrizio Bozzato in this June 2014 article for The Diplomat, which in turn is based on his extensive and excellent paper here. There is also a very good recent article here.
You may also want to checkout my broader page on resources from space.
MIT Achieves Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion
New experiments with helium-3 in a magnetic confinement tokamak have produced exciting results for the future of fusion energy, including a tenfold increase in ion energy.
By Jay Bennett
THE LOW-DOWN ABOUT NUCLEAR FUSION AND HELIUM-3
The technology is still in its infancy, and previous estimates of having a commercially viable working fusion prototype reactor have ranged from 10 to 30 years in the future.
As soon as He-3 is introduced as fuel into the fusion reactor equation, the risk factor, building cost and service life changes greatly for the better.
Only 3% of radioactive materials versus fission are produced in Deuterium - Helium-3 reactions. Reactor wall replacements are no longer an issue, because they last for the full lifetime of the structure without having to replace them at short intervals. In the worst case scenario (catastrophic failure), no evacuation is needed and no fatalities are expected.
The source of radioactive byproducts in fusion reactors would be from neutrons irradiating the reactor walls and producing radioactive isotopes.
Helium-3 is a light, non-radioactive isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon than on Earth, having been embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind.
Neutrons: 1
Symbol: 3He
Half-life: stable
Names: helium-3, He-3, Helium-3, He-3
Jan 4, 2019 — Helium-3 dramatically improves the ability of doctors to
image the lungs in a range of diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, cystic fibrosis, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which happens particularly in premature infants. Specifically, helium-3 is useful in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a procedure that creates images from within the body for diagnostic purposes.
He-3 is also useful for detecting plutonium, by absorbing neutrons and turning into radioactive tritium.
China is going to mine the Moon for helium-3 fusion fuel — Extreme Tech
by A Kleinschneider - 2014
Helium-3 is a rare isotope on Earth, but it is abundant on the Moon. Throughout the space community lunar Helium-3 is often cited as a major reason to return to the Moon. Despite the potential of lunar Helium-3 mining, little research has been conducted on a full end-to-end mission. This abstract presents the results of a feasibility study conducted by students from Delft University of Technology.
Harnessing Power from the Moon | NASA
Jun 19, 2015 — Helium-3, if used as fuel in a nuclear fusion reactor, could become a significant lunar export for power generation around the world.
Olson and his colleagues are aiming at a complete ground unit built and tested in 2015. “That’s our goal…designing a small-scale prototype of our extraction system.”
India
ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 Will Hunt For This Trillion Dollar Worth Fuel On the Moon!
July 2, 2018
ISRO’s second mission to the moon – Chandrayaan-2 is expected to launch later this year in October. It is primarily set to discover information about Helium 3 deposits.
Helium-3 is a resource that could be worth at least a trillion dollars as an estimate of its economic value for fusion fuel are as high as $3bn/ton.
China
China’s New Wealth-Creation Scheme: Mining the Moon
June 13, 2019
America has a history of catching up and then taking the lead in the space race. It’s time again for it to repeat that cycle.
Indeed, the space industry is forecast to be worth $2.7 trillion by 2040, as CNBC reported in October 2017. Much of the dividends will come from the lunar surface, including the far side of the moon and the lunar poles, where resources such as titanium, helium-3, and water — water is essential for spacecraft propulsion — may be found in substantial quantities. The Chang’e-4 probe is, in fact, closely connected to these ambitions and has as a primary mission goal the “topographic and geological survey of lunar samples,” to help pave the way for a permanent Chinese lunar research base.
US
Construction Company Caterpillar Wants To Mine the Moon
What would it take for Earth's autonomous mining technology to reach outer space?
Autonomous construction and mining equipment has been in use for decades. Early pioneers in the field, such as Komatsu, Caterpillar, and John Deere developed operator-less heavy vehicles as early as the 1980s.
NASA…hosts an annual robotic mining competition that brings teams from across the country to Kennedy Space Center to show and test their designs on a simulated Martian surface, and NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program funded two proposals earlier this year that take aim at space mining.
Robert Zubrin Makes a Strong Case for Space Development
Space luminary Robert Zubrin has released
The Case for Space, a book that expands the motif of his seminal
The Case for Mars throughout the solar system. While the founder and President of
The Mars Society has long been associated with efforts to colonize the Red Planet, his book makes it clear that he does not suffer from planetary myopia.
In his book, Zubrin’s digs right into the issues of lunar resource extraction, energy generation, manufacturing and transportation that will drive the quick settlement of Earth’s “eighth continent.” Zubrin leaves no moon rock unturned in either closing or rejecting the business case for each idea. For instance, in considering the likely (relative) abundance of the He-3 isotope of helium on the moon, Zubrin delves into the physics of fusion reactors and why lunar He-3 is the preferable fuel for Earth’s emissions-free energy future. He looks at everything from the physical practicality of extracting this material to the economics of transporting it. All of these topics are addressed in a style that any space enthusiast will easily follow and enjoy.
Europe
Mining the moon ready to lift off by 2025
European scientists have announced plans to start mining the moon as early as 2025, though what they’ll be extracting is neither gold nor diamonds, but waste-free nuclear energy thought to be worth trillions of dollars.
The goal is to place a lander on the lunar surface to mine and process regolith for water, oxygen, metals and an isotope called helium-3, which may prove useful for fueling future fusion reactors.
The mission will be in charge of the European Space Agency in partnership with ArianeGroup, Popular Mechanics reported. It will also count with the participation of Part-Time Scientists, a German group and former Google Lunar XPrize contestant.
There are an estimated one million tonnes of helium-3 in the moon, though only 25% of that could be brought to Earth, Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council told Bloomberg last year.
But that’s enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and maybe as many as five, centuries, said the expert, who estimates that helium-3 is worth almost $5 billion a tonne.
Friday, Mar 20, 2020 · 1:10:38 PM +00:00
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Mokurai
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Russia Plans Mine On The Moon By 2020
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) Jan 25, 2006
Russia is planning to mine a rare fuel on the moon by 2020 with a permanent base and a heavy-cargo transport link, a Russian space official said Wednesday.
"We are planning to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015 and by 2020 we can begin the industrial-scale delivery... of the rare isotope Helium-3," Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Energia space corporation, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying at an academic conference.
Ah, well.
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