Russia to Mine on the Moon by 2020

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."

Comments

A bit early perhaps

[Councilor Hart]

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?

Re:All I gotta say is...

[WinkyN]

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.