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If Climate Change Is a Problem Then Lunar Helium-3 Fueled Fusion Is the Solution (examiner.com)
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.
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?
Build more nuclear plants
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Are the Ray Kurzweil and singularity fanbois / public masturbators off their meds again?
Fusion: D-T fuel is the best fuel for any prospective fusion power plant on the horizon. Heating and confinement are solved problems. Materials that can withstand the massive heat/radiation loads of working reactors are the biggest problems right now. These machines weigh hundreds of thousands of tons. You're NOT going to ship a fusion reactor into space any time soon.
Space: it costs tens of thousands of dollars a kilogram to ship stuff into LEO. And these stupid basement-dwellers are seriously talking about bootstrapping an ENTIRE industrial infrastructure in space to mine a resource which is actually an inferior fuel, for fusion plants that don't exist yet.
It should be a criminal offense (or at least happy-slappable offence) to air such inanity and stupidity in public.
Is Matt Ridley an expert?
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
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.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
OMG, not the stupid lunar He-3 myth again. - http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1
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.
From the Summary: "get out of the solar and wind box." Solar and wind is scaling-up very nicely. It is becoming more and more cost effective and is already cheaper than many incumbent solutions. Storage is coming on line with both substation batteries and large scale solutions like pumped hydro. Pumped hydro in the US already has 25 GW built or in development. It is a very interesting way to store energy closer to where you need it such as SoCal storing Pacific Northwest hydro and wind energy that can be transported down at lower current rates off peak for later peak use. Peak power plants can be very expensive as they sit idle, not generating profit, most of the day just waiting for everyone to get home from work and turn on their AC for a few hours.
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?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
"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, that's funny.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
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.