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Russia to Mine on the Moon by 2020

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the no-shortage-of-volunteer-workers dept.

sxmjmae writes to tell us News.com is reporting that Russia has unveiled plans to establish a permanent mining operation on the moon by 2020 in order to extract the rare isotope Helium-3. From the article: "Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope of helium that can be used in nuclear fusion. Rare on earth but plentiful on the moon, it is seen by some experts as an ideal fuel because it is powerful, non-polluting and generates almost no radioactive by-product."

5 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. A bit early perhaps by Councilor+Hart · · Score: 5, Informative
    Nuclear fusion is not expected by 2020, so it's a bit premature.

    Helium-3 is also not necessary to archive fusion. Deuterium-tritium reactions will also work, and you don't have to go to the moon to get those elements. Deuterium can be extracted from the sea and tritium can be created in situ by reactions with lithium embedded in the wall of the reactor.
    The benefit of using helium 3 is that you bypass the radioactive element tritium.

    It's a good idea for the long term, but let us first try to get a working reactor, shall we?

    1. Re:A bit early perhaps by barawn · · Score: 4, Informative

      The benefit of using helium 3 is that you bypass the radioactive element tritium.

      The benefit of Helium-3 is that its fusion reaction is aneutronic. This means that the containing vessel wouldn't be irradiated, and it's more efficient - that is, it should be easier to generate ignition with Helium-3 than with a similar fuel that wouldn't be aneutronic.

      The downside, of course, is that the reaction involved is D+He3, which means you'd have D+D, and He3-He3 side reactions, and D+D does give off neutrons. And D+He3 takes higher temperatures than D+T. So it's a little - um - daring for the Russians to be saying this, although it's not impossible to believe that given a supply of He3, there'd be economic incentive to build a freaking big fusion reactor.

  2. wikipedia by seann · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wikipedias Helium-3 article.

    For people who were as clueless as I was.

    --
    I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
  3. Re:Maybe... by rtaylor · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think if the world's governments all got together to find a renewable clean energy source
    Clean is debatable. Oil was considered clean back when the alternative was a horse crapping on the street or coal powered boilers.

    We think fusion, wind, solar, etc. are clean simply because we haven't put much thought into what would happen if everyone used it on a massive scale.

    For example, we know that wind and solar impact the local microclimate but we don't really have much data on their impact on a wider scale.

    Better than oil? Certainly, but nothing is free and everything will have some kind of negative impact.

    --
    Rod Taylor
  4. Re:All I gotta say is... by WinkyN · · Score: 5, Informative

    Russia may be poor, but their predecessors the Soviets landed unmanned probes on the lunar surface. Here's a Wikipedia link for those missions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_programme

    Many of the attempts failed, but later missions return lunar rock and dust samples as well as included robotic rovers to move across the lunar surface.