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.

Comments

Lunatic

[penguinoid]

Sounds like a lunatic's solution

Re:Lunatic

[riverat1]

That summary sounds like something you'd read in The Onion.

Re:Lunatic

[Megane]

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.

Re:Lunatic

[haruchai]

Trust the man who built Facebook rather than learn how to socialize in person to be in agreement with a Rube Goldberg solution.

Re:Lunatic

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."
Meh just use hydrogen, then light the birthday candles.

Re:Lunatic

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Lunatic

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, building a more practical fusion reactor is already so expensive that they may never be economical. But, once your fuel source is on the moon, well it's practically free!

Re:Lunatic

[JoeMerchant]

...deuterium fusion still isn't anywhere near breakeven after 60 years of effort.

Define effort... in those 60 years, have we put as much "effort" into fusion development as we have in politically stabilizing the middle east in the last 12?

Re:Lunatic

[Anonymous Coward]

Sending tens of thousands of soldiers over to the Middle East to wreak havoc turns out to be a lot easier than creating new technologies. Amazingly enough, scientists don't just invent stuff just because the government or a general screams at them.

Re:Lunatic

[LynnwoodRooster]

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.

Especially since unicorns HATE to eat beans...

Re:Lunatic

[spauldo]

That's why you use Japanese unicorns, which love sweet potatoes.

Any Japanese person can tell you it's sweet potatoes that make you fart.

Re:Lunatic

[Rei]

And we can burn it in an electronium chamber by harnessing the power of sunspots to produce cognitive radiation to run the dynamos.

Re:Lunatic

[Hognoxious]

How it ended up on Slashdot, I have no idea.

Simple answer: timothy.

Re:Lunatic

[Rei]

Not to mention, we can produce He3 here on Earth (albeit it takes a neutron source greater than one would get from burning the He3); there are lots of isotopes that lead to He3 in their collision or decay pathways, which is what supplies Earth's industry as-is (it's used, for example, for supercooling down below the limits of He4). Tritium, for example. And it's not even that common on the moon - parts per billion quantities (average 44ppb), mixed with parts per million regular He4 (average 28ppm).

He3 is a solution in search of a problem while simultaneously in search of a way to be a solution to that problem without creating far more, much larger problems.

Re:Lunatic

[Zobeid]

Scientists are eager to work on this stuff. They do need to be paid, though. It's very easy to look back and see how technologies have advanced when money was spent to research them and stagnated when funding dried up. Nuclear fusion research has limped along on a shoestring for decades -- with the exception of ITER, which is horribly mismanaged. (As I've noted before. . . If we managed the Apollo program like ITER, people today would be semi-joking that "A moon landing is 40 years away -- and always will be!")

I personally suspect that we could have had commercial, power-generating, fusion power plants running by 2000 if the whole field had been funded and supported at an appropriate level.

Re:Lunatic

[sh00z]

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.

You don't seem to understand the physics. The first step of accomplishing Deuterium fusion is to create Helium-3. So, having Helium-3 would enable a fusion reactor to skip the first step in the proton-proton chain reaction. So no, if you had Helium-3, it would be far EASIER to fuse, and with far MORE energy out.

The problem is, as you said, that we don't have Helium-3. Helium-3 from the sun, arriving on Earth, exists only in rarefied quantities at the top of the atmosphere. The moon, having no atmosphere, has ~4 Billion years' worth of Helium-3 accumulated in the top 1-meter thickness of its soil.

You can "mine" Helium-3 from lunar soil by simply heating it to ~600 degrees F. It gasifies, and can be collected and compressed. This requires VASTLY less energy than creating the Deuterium-to-Helium reaction. The problem, of course, is to get the cost (energy expenditure) of the soil collection and heating process down to reasonable levels.

Clearly, laying out all of the numbers involved would require several hundred pages of calculations, but many have concluded that in the long run, it would be more "efficient" to bring Helium-3 from the moon than to continue to attempt to design fusion reactors that require a Deuterium-to-Helium-3 initial step.

Re:Lunatic

[delt0r]

You don't understand the physics. He3/D reaction and the DD reaction have comparable reaction cross sections, but you get far more xray losses from He3 options making the whole thing far far harder.

DD fusion has a branching probability of 50% with half resulting in a He3 and the other half a T. That is right He3 is DD fusion *ash*. Which can then also be burnt as well as the T.

You cannot simply mine He3. It is in the parts per billion range, and even at 100% efficiency you would need one of the biggest mines ever just to run a few plants back on earth. On the moon. It is stupid. It is sheer desperation on part of people who need a reason to go to the moon. There really isn't one outside tourism.

DD fusion is about 10x harder than DT fusion and has 65x less power for the same size power plant. We can't even do DT fusion. In fact DT fusion needs to be so exceedingly easy before we could even consider DD or He3 or DHe3 fusion.

Re:Lunatic

[delt0r]

Even if you did have a He3 fusion reactor, mining He3 is still a really stupid idea. It would be easier to breed he3 in a specalized DD reactor. And if you can do He3 you can do DD.

Re:Lunatic

[Teancum]

We don't actual have any helium-3

That isn't even remotely true. Helium-3 is commonly used by a number of researchers even now, and you can order some reasonable quantities if you want to obtain a sample... for a price of course. Its number one use right now (other than for fusion research) is as a refrigerant, as it is the one pure gas that you can chill down the most and have it remain in a gas.

I don't know how many refrigerators that need to get down to 3 degrees Kelvin are required by researchers and industry, but if you need such a cryogenic system, it is something that does have a practical use.

Of the various fusion fuels though, the one that seems to be most promising is the Proton/Boron-11 fusion process. Boron is so cheap and plentiful that people use it as laundry detergent and you can pick up a few kilograms of the stuff for just a couple bucks at Wal-Mart or your favorite mass retail store. It also turns out that one of the largest deposits of Boron happens to be in Nevada, so there isn't even a need to worry about "foreign imports" if it becomes something used in a widespread manner.

Otherwise, I agree with you that sending groups to mine Helium-3 from the Moon is sort of silly... unless like I said they want to start making some really efficient refrigerators that can chill things down to very cold temperatures.

Re:Lunatic

[Grishnakh]

It is sheer desperation on part of people who need a reason to go to the moon. There really isn't one outside tourism.

Sure there is: manufacturing and mining. There probably isn't a lot of really valuable ore there, but there should be some not-very-valuable stuff that can be useful for constructing things that would be used either on the Moon, or in space (spaceship components). It'd be cheaper than lifting all that mass from the Earth, if you're doing a lot of construction for things destined for use offworld. Manufacturing can also be done there, for similar reasons: it has some gravity, which is helpful because most of our manufacturing processes require it, and it's a lot cheaper to lift mass off the Moon than the Earth since the gravity is so low and there's no annoying atmosphere.

Now obviously, this all depends on actually having a need for building a lot of stuff to be used offworld to begin with. But once that exists, there will be a reason to go to the Moon besides tourism.

In the meantime, tourism itself should be a pretty good driver for Moon transport. How many people would pay, say, $10k to take a week-long trip to the Moon? I sure would. If they could get the costs down to that, and build a nice hotel on the Moon for tourists to stay at, it'd be a profitable business I think. But of course it depends on getting costs way down and building up volume. Not many people can afford $10M to travel to the Moon as a tourist, but get it down to 5 figures and there's a lot more takers; get it down to 4 figures and countless middle-class people will be doing it.

Re:Lunatic

[martinfb]

Sounds like a lunatic's solution

That's "lunARtic"! ;-)

Re:Lunatic

[stoatwblr]

"Nuclear fusion research has limped along on a shoestring for decades"

ALL nuclear research (except bombmaking) has limped along for decades.

The only reason we have water-moderated uranium civil reactors at all is because the US Navy was willing to bankroll the research to get them into their submarines.

The reason we don't have Molten Salt Reactors is because until recently noone in private industry was willing to invest the research to make them practical after the US cancelled its 1950s-60s in the 1970s in favour of breeder reactors ("jobs for the boys" in California being the main driver) with liquid sodium coolant for kicks (yeah, like a metal that catches fire on exposure to air is really good idea around a nuclear plant. Thanks Mr Nixon.)

Current nuclear technology (and all the coal/oil/gas burning plants too) are effectively a giant tea-kettle driving a steam engine and they don't run hot enough to be efficient (Yes, I know about gas turbine generators, but they're not economic without a steam plant running off the exhaust gas). It's time for the next-generation plants which run hotter, more efficiently and don't produce toxic lakes of sludge (coal) or risk venting radioactive crap in a steam explosion.

Re:Lunatic

[stoatwblr]

"Sure there is: manufacturing and mining"

Anything that you can obtain from the moon you can also obtain from asteroids with far less effort and don't have to fight a gravity well.

Re:Lunatic

[stoatwblr]

Why mess with Deuterium when you can produce mega-quantities of tritium in an existing Fission system?

It's one of the nuisance byproducts of a LFTR and only "not a nuisance" in water-moderated systems because it's contained within the fuel rods.

Re:Lunatic

[Grishnakh]

Not necessarily. If you need to get the minerals to a refinery on the Moon, then it's easier to get them right there instead of chasing around asteroids. Now that's of course assuming the refinery is on the Moon instead of floating in space at the L1 or L2 point or something, but it seems like with our current technology it'd be a lot easier to build a smelter on the Moon instead of a free-floating one. A lot of industrial processes may not even be easily converted to zero-g operation, though I guess if you build a giant rotating station you might be able to get around that.

Re:Lunatic

[delt0r]

I don't think you understand the quantities involved. A 1 GW plant would use kgs of He3 per year. Yet getting even 1 kg of tritium is huge amount and would require a long time. Fission reactors don't make many neutrons per unit power compared to fusion and a lot of neutrons are lost to other poisons etc. This means the total yields for these breeder rods and other methods (no LFTR are not especially good for tritium production) is very low. In fact most tritium we ever had was about 200kg and its much much less now and that was mostly from bombs. It is very useful in small quantities as a booster in fission bombs. But this would be very impractical method of breeding He3.

Oh, for...

[jeffb (2.718)]

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?

Re:Oh, for...

[Applehu Akbar]

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?

And if you accomplish all that, the flat-earth lobby will still hate you and keep filing baseless lawsuits against your projects. Instead, wait for the right point on the economic cycle where lack of jobs is seen by the public as a major issue, and then ram through a fleet of standardized latest-generation fission reactors. The hatred will be the same, but you will get usable carbon-free power a lot sooner.

Re:Oh, for...

[tsotha]

Shades? What Mars needs is a giant mirror to concentrate sunlight. Shades is going in the wrong direction.

Re:Oh, for...

[jeffb (2.718)]

Two separate hedges. Shades for Earth, mirrors and huge greenhouse-gas generators for Mars.

Re:Oh, for...

[dbIII]

If we get that far it makes a vast amount of sense to use that energy to do something on the moon.
The gravity ignoring fantasy doesn't go far enough - if you are going to have delusions, they may as well be grand delusions. It's like seeing the solution to 19th century transport as being a cyborg horse with a motor instead of a better road+rail and things zooming about on wheels.

Re:Oh, for...

[riverat1]

The problem with shades for the Earth is that by reducing the sunlight that hits the Earth you also reduce the amount of photosynthesis that occurs. That would lower crop yields and the general productivity of the biosphere. Also it doesn't do anything to stop ocean acidification.

Re:Oh, for...

[PopeRatzo]

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?

Plus, you think the Nazis on the moon are just gonna hand over all that moon helium?

Re: Oh, for...

[Squiddie]

Alsp, he's just a journalist, a winner of the Hayek prize. Gee, I wonder why he doesn't think it's a problem. Nice to put ideology before facts.

Re:Oh, for...

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that puzzles me. If we put up giant shades to reduce energy going into the earth-system, and also put up solar panels to *collect* additional energy to put into the earth-system, won't those two essentially cancel one-another out in a thermodynamical sense (energy conservation and all that)?

Re:Oh, for...

[ShanghaiBill]

The problem with shades for the Earth is that by reducing the sunlight that hits the Earth you also reduce the amount of photosynthesis that occurs.

An obvious solution would be to only shade the Earth at night.

Re: Oh, for...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the environmentalist lobby will be against it because it would necessitate defacing the surface of the moon in order to harvest the He3.

Re:Oh, for...

[rickb928]

Shades have solar arrays on the sun-facing side.

Now to get all that sweet, sweet power down here...

Re:Oh, for...

[BitZtream]

Or you do all that on the moon and beam it back via microwave accepting that the massive losses from using microwave transmission are still far better than the massive losses associated with moving mass.

Moving mass requires lots of energy. Moving energy is free, it moves on its own, stopping it from moving is actually the problem.

Re:Oh, for...

[ultranova]

Or you do all that on the moon and beam it back via microwave accepting that the massive losses from using microwave transmission are still far better than the massive losses associated with moving mass.

That's gonna be one heck of a nuclear plant to outshine the Sun at 400,000 kilometers.

Re:Oh, for...

[jeffb (2.718)]

I guess hydrogen and oxygen could be considered "fossil fuels", but it's a bit far-fetched, given that one is a "fossil" of the Big Bang itself and the other a "fossil" of stellar nucleosynthesis...

Re:Oh, for...

[Gavagai80]

Shading the arctic during the summer wouldn't be a crop yield concern, and that's the area of fasted temperature increase.

Re:Oh, for...

[bondsbw]

That shouldn't be hard. Just put huge spotlights on the other side projecting down toward earth, and harvest the energy with solar panels on the ground.

Re:Oh, for...

[Richard Kirk]

Gates and Zuckerberg need the helium-3 for their giant flying robot army, so they can get all Iron Sky on yo ass. But maybe they can get one of the bigger robots to darken the sun a bit, so there's nothing to worry about, right?

Re:Oh, for...

[Altus]

Its not hard to move mass down a gravity well.

Re:Oh, for...

[blindseer]

I don't have a problem so much with the people that claim man made climate change is a problem as much as I have a problem with how they intend to deal with it. I'll give a few examples.

One problematic solution is the government telling me what kind of light bulbs I can buy. I bought some CFL lights and was horribly disappointed. I put them in the bedroom fixtures only to see them fail prematurely. Upon closer inspection of the box they came in I see that they are not to be use in enclosed fixtures. All my light fixtures are enclosed. I am a tall man in a house with standard eight foot ceilings, any fixture that hangs down more than a typical ceiling fan will hit me on the head as I walk beneath them, I can't just hang chandeliers in every room to accommodate the failings of CFL lighting. Also, I thought I was going insane with my TV remote not working intermittently. That was until I figured out that CFL lights produce infrared with enough intensity that it can jam a typical TV remote. Given the climate I live in the heat produced by incandescent lights is a good thing, it reduces the load on my furnace and keeps the rooms at a more even temperature. In the summer my lighting needs are minimal as daylight is plentiful. This is even more silly given how little of the energy we use is for lighting.

Ethanol in my fuel reduces my miles per tank filing. This was not a problem before since I could easily go two weeks between filling with my old car and my old job. My new job requires me to be at work, with a greater distance to travel, regardless of the weather. That means I now drive a 4WD truck. Without the ethanol in the fuel I can drive a week without filling up, now I can't do that. That might seem trivial with the supposed reductions in carbon output but there is no evidence from these scientists that we're actually saving any carbon. The ethanol is moved by diesel powered trains, because transporting it by pipes would corrode them. The corn is harvested by diesel powered tractors, and "cooked" with coal fired refineries. I do see some potential sanity in this if we had the tractors, trucks, and trains powered by the ethanol that was cooked by the coal, since it is converting an inexpensive commodity like coal into a more valuable one like ethanol, but it cannot do so at a rate better than if we just drilled for more oil.

What would be a workable solution is to have nuclear fission power my lights, then we wouldn't care what kind of lighting we used. It would also improve the carbon footprint of all electric devices, not just lighting. I could sit in my well lit and warm house and not be driven insane from having to duck under my light fixtures or my TV remote not working. If we had nuclear power convert that corn into ethanol then we'd have a much less impact on carbon produced. Even better would be to use that nuclear power to convert trash and sewage into fuel, we have that technology. That would mean more corn available for my corn flakes and whiskey (the breakfast of champions).

I don't believe the scientists that claim burning fossil fuels is destroying the environment largely because the solutions they give means making my life less convenient, less free, more costly, and more uncomfortable. We can reduce our carbon output and still keep our conveniences, we just need to use nuclear power. Not the nuclear power that requires mining the moon. It's stuff like this that makes these people sound insane. If they want to convince me that they want to solve this supposed problem of burning fossil fuels then they need to admit that nuclear fission is a solution. It doesn't have to be the only solution, I like wind power when and where it makes sense as well as some other things these scientists come up with, but nuclear fission must be a part of the solution or I cannot bear to think what other insanity these people will come up with.

Moon (the movie)

[DavidMZ]

It is the topic of the movie Moon, which I strongly recommend to all hard SF fans.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[glitch!]

I liked "Moon", and for those others who also like that genre, I suggest "The Island", "The Thirteenth Floor", and "Dark City".

Re:Moon (the movie)

[MozeeToby]

I don't understand why The Island is so hated. I thought it was a pretty good effort, especially for a Micheal Bay movie.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[SuricouRaven]

Partially for the absolutely awful science. Partially because it's a blatant but unacknowledged rip-off of 'Parts,' a much older and lower-budget film.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[delt0r]

Only it is bullshit. It is not hard. He3 in moons surface is in the 1 part per billion to 50 parts per billion. ie almost nothing. Also it only in the first 1-5 meters of surface. It would be one of human kinds biggest mining operation ever. And would provide enough He3 to run 2 -3 power stations *only*. Oh and you can run a mining operation like that with only one person, you can run it with non and have a teleoperated robot or something.

Moon the movie was a lot of things. Hard SF it was not.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[delt0r]

WTF. The island and Moon are both pretty equal on the science footing. aka shit. What would you expect. Oh and when it comes to any of these styles of movies, there are plenty that are similar that came first.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[delt0r]

Yea like i went out after the movie an immediately got a flying bike, and flew to the cinema next town over and watch a bond film. Oh wait...

Re:Moon (the movie)

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

What was the point of advertising Xbox to the clones anyway? Weren't they given everything they needed? Until they were needed, anyway?

Re:Moon (the movie)

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Every time I hear "spoilers", I think about time travel.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[SuricouRaven]

Moon has an advantage that the science is of very little importance to the plot. All that matters is that there is Stuff on the moon, and he is there to get it. With The Island, sciency nonsense is more critical to the story. Not the organ bank part - that's perfectly within the realms of acceptable movie science. Even the accelerated growth. But then you get on to his psychic memory powers, and even the audience can tell that bit is nonsense.

Re:Moon (the movie)

[Lost Race]

Iron Sky also features lunar He3 and is about as scientifically accurate as Moon (i.e. not at all).

earth helium

[Noah Haders]

why couldn't we just use earth helium?

Re: earth helium

[bucky0]

1) the vast majority of earth helium is He4, which has some undesirable properties for fusion

2) even if it was all He3, there's not a lot of helium. He is light enough that it simply floats away from the earth

Re:earth helium

[Jack9]

Helium on earth is rare (we have almost depleted our natural H2). H3 is not found on earth in abundant supply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:earth helium

[hcs_$reboot]

Hum.. it's He ...

Re:earth helium

[MoonlessNights]

There isn't much Helium-3 on Earth. Most of it is Helium-4, produced through radioactive decay. Helium-3 is easy to fuse whereas Helium-4 is quite difficult.

The moon has far more, collected from the solar wind over long periods of time. Still, not exactly tons, but enough that it might be worth going there to get it.

Re:earth helium

[thinkwaitfast]

I used He3 in my lab (He4 also (refrigerators)). It cost a couple hundred $/liter.

Re:earth helium

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

3He is hard to find, but relatively easy to make. Pile up some tritium and wait. It decays to 3He with a half-life of 12.3 years.

If we ever get fusion power plants at all we'll start with D-T reactors, which means we'll have to have enough tritium breeding capacity to fuel our reactors, which means we'll have enough production capacity to fuel our 3He reactors with the decay products.

Cheaper than mining the Moon, I would guess.

Re:earth helium

[Hussman32]

There are 10 energetically positive fusion reactions, and He-4 is the product of most of them. He-3 reacts with itself to form He-4 and two protons, and most importantly, no neutrons, and it has a high energy yield and relatively low Lawson Criterion so the ignition temperature is near current excitation methods. Deuterium-tritium reactions have a lower Lawson criterion and higher energy yield, but it generates most of it's energy as neutrons which leaves the magnetic confinement field and destroys the reactor materials.

As others have noted, very little He-3 is on the Earth's surface, the nearest source is the dark side of the moon (as the article notes).

Re:earth helium

[Jack9]

Apologies. You're correct.

Re:earth helium

[Jack9]

AFAIK, we extract/chemically produce a great deal of the Helium used.

Re:earth helium

[Hussman32]

I left out 'it reacts with itself and deuterium, boy do I wish there was an edit feature on /. sometimes...

Re:earth helium

[Noah Haders]

why would you think that the moon has a lot if the earth doesn't? on earth the helium rises to the top of the atmosphere then gets blown away. wouldn't that happen immediately on the moon as well?

Re:earth helium

[Noah Haders]

what i would do is use electricity from fusion power plants to power facilities to make more He3... the supply is limitless once you have the electricity.

Re: earth helium

[ShanghaiBill]

You can make helium-3 by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons. As a bonus, you also get plenty of tritium.

Re:earth helium

[bigfinger76]

The moon lacks an atmosphere, for starters.

Re:earth helium

[thermopile]

Going to the moon is a really dumb way to get your He3.

A far easier way is to use a Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Rod. (pdf link) Rather than putting UO2 in the fuel pellet, put lithium aluminate (LiAlO2) in there.

This has been going on at the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear power station since 2004. Sure, more tritium has leaked into the coolant than expected, but tritium is a pretty benign radioactivity source.

Harvest the tritium, which decays into He-3. Voila. Far easier than going to the moon. Sheesh.

Re:earth helium

[Anonymous Coward]

I was paying ~$110/Liter STP in quantity a decade back; I got it from the Russkies. It's more expensive now, since they are running out of surplus Tritium.
The thing is, it is vastly cheaper, by orders of magnitude, to simply make 3He here on Earth.
First thing needed is an old Nuclear Reactor, and then a decent source of cheap Deuterium and 6Lithium. (~$18/gm for the Deuts from Chalk River, in the form of 2H2-18O. Pure 6Li is best, but Garden Variety will do- a few bucks a Kilogram.)
Mix together, and start drawing off the Tritium. Let that start to decay, and draw off the 3He. The extraction is the easiest part.
Half of the Tritium decays to 3He in toughly 12.3 years. Interesting things can be done with the accompanying Beta Decays in the meanwhile.

Mining the Moon for 3He is the domain of Bad Science Fiction, and "Engineers" with a BS in BS. 3He is just about the most volatile Element that we know of; it simply doesn't hang around. The SS Cylinders that the Russkies sold us screamed Mass 3 under vacuum on the Residual Gas Analyzers. Even Implanted, straight 3He on the Moon doesn't hang around very long.
We _know_ this. We did all sorts of Isotopic Analyses on returned Moon Rocks, including my favorite, a thin sintered disc probed for 136Xe.
There was more Xenon than 3He, in terms of Parts Per Quadrillion. (Xenon freezes out in the Colder Lunar regions and adsorbs; 3He doesn't freeze out anywhere.)

"In 1985, engineers from the University of Wisconsin discovered that lunar soil samples brought back to Earth by the Apollo missions contained unexpectedly high concentrations of it."
"Unexpectedly high" meant barely measurable. They weren't expecting to see any at all. Now there can be reasons for this, and it involves the Chemistry of Helium.
Normally, Helium has no Chemistry to speak of. A decade after the Wisconsin Experiments, it was discovered that Helium can form stable compounds in Ionic States. That is, Helium Hydride is ridiculously easy to manufacture as a +1 Ion in a thin Plasma, like those Plasmas found near the Sun. (I made some small contributions to this field.) If an Electron attaches, Helium Hydride dis-associates, but fairly slowly. In the conditions found in certain regions of the Moon, very slowly. It's all very Plasma Chemistry, and I wasn't involved in that aspect of it. I just found a way to make a lot, relatively, of the damn stuff, in what is known as an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source. (ECR-IS)

Note that in the Sources for this all-too-familiar Timothy Jerk-Off, there is no mention of Gates or Zuckerberg and of their Mining the Moon for 3He, which is still a damn stupid idea.
Timothy just felt that he had something Extra-Special to contribute yet again on a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about. Dammit Timmy!

Re:earth helium

[jeffb (2.718)]

And then a comment like this comes along, and makes me wish I had kept my mouth shut or posted anonymously, just for the privilege of modding it up. Interesting, Informative, Insightful, Underrated, take your pick...

Re:earth helium

[thinkwaitfast]

Most He comes along with natural gas. It's also a fission product in nuclear reactions and decay.

Re:earth helium

[angel'o'sphere]

Must be a really bad article, if they write: the nearest source is the dark side of the moon (as the article notes).

The moon as aside pointing to earth, and one pointing away. Both sides have an ordinary day/night cycle like earth ... with the small difference that a "day" on the moon is ~28 "earth days" long.

Likely they ment the "far side" of the moon ...

Re: earth helium

[Falconhell]

These kind of comments keep this place worth reading. Thank you sir.

Re:earth helium

[Hussman32]

Yes, it's a great candidate, and boron-11 is more available. In comparison to He-3, it has a higher ignition temperature, the energy yield is lower, and there are high bremstrahlung emissions.

Re: earth helium

[bucky0]

That's true. I wonder what the $/kg for mining lunar He3 compares with building a ton of nuclear bombardment facilities works out. Not that any of it is at all practical anyway...

Re:earth helium

[martinfb]

...Not enough practical H3.

Easy solution

[The123king]

Build more nuclear plants

Re:Easy solution

[jeffb (2.718)]

Actually, we need to build more hydrogen bombs, since milking our existing stock of bombs supplies our current world consumption of helium-3.

That, and hydrogen bombs represent our sole existing solution for exceeding break-even yield from fusion (excepting, of course, solar power). They just require a rather large cylinder and piston to harness their output.

Re:Easy solution

[kenai_alpenglow]

I know you're joking, but it sounds like a interesting, if outrageous, problem. Assume that the cylinder/piston won't vaporize/etc, how big would they need to be? how long a throw? how to you connect it to the generator? How do you get the materiel into the cylinder & set it off? Then, figure out cost of the material vs amount of power generated--too lazy to work it out myself, but wonder if it would actually be profitable...or even break even.

Re:Easy solution

[tsotha]

I would pay all my money to see that in action.

Re:Easy solution

[Maury Markowitz]

Google "pacer fusion".

Hint: it doesn't work. Not technically, that's easy. Economically, not so easy.

Okay, so where's the Paris news?

[Sowelu]

I'm having trouble finding any news on any network about the Paris climate talks. If someone has a link that actually covers what's been going on there in depth, I'd appreciate it.

Re:Okay, so where's the Paris news?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.npr.org/templates/search/index.php?searchinput=climate&dateId=0&programId=0

NPR has had some decent coverage.

Re:Okay, so where's the Paris news?

[BarbaraHudson]

Look at the website of any major media outside the US. Lots of coverage. BBC, CTV, CBC, The Globe and Mail, the Guardian ... or download their apps.

Also, the first sentence of the summary, "With the Paris Climate Conference apparently ending in failure" is total BS. The summit is only 1/3 through, has 8 days left to go, and is making progress. But of course anyone listening to US media wouldn't know that. Same as the rest of the world knew Saddam wasn't making centrifuges when Colin Powell was lying in the UN.

Re:Wouldn't it be a little cheaper to just,

[ClickOnThis]

harvest antimatter from the van allen belts? I mean if your going to go down the h3 route, just jump the gun and go straight to antimatter.

Fuck it, we're going to h5.

Oh?

[tsotha]

Has anyone ever built a working H3 plant? That's a rhetorical question. It may be cleaner and easier to extract energy from H3 because it's aneutronic, but it's not going to be any easier to get to steady state fusion with H3-Deuterium than it is with Deuterium-Deuterium. We still don't know how to do this, and it's entirely possible it will never be something that's practical for commercial power.

Let's get a D-D plant working first and then start thinking about whether mining H3 from the moon makes sense. I suspect it will be easier to just deal with tritium and activated shielding than to go all the way to the moon for H3.

Re:Oh?

[benjfowler]

There's progress on the materials front. But there's still tons of risk that needs to be retired.

It's a bit concerning though that nobody's built a working tritium breeding blanket yet. And afaict, ITER's test blanket module program is going to be a bit half-arsed. This should be a top priority.

"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[riverat1]

I laughed so hard I had to go change my shorts after I read that.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[jcr]

Is having an incontinent detractor supposed to convince us that Ridley is wrong about something?

-jcr

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps not, but he's been debunked repeatedly. I find it amusing that slashdot would label a politician with no background in science as an "expert" on climate change and the best guys like you can come up to defend this guy are lame dismissals.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[ClickOnThis]

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!

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[riverat1]

The only thing I'd call Matt Ridley and expert in is climate science denial. But he has motivation because his family owns coal mines.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[riverat1]

You know, it's the climate science deniers that pay more attention to Al Gore than the rest of us.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[careysub]

The only thing I'd call Matt Ridley and expert in is climate science denial. But he has motivation because his family owns coal mines.

He has also invested heavily in fracking, and is opposed to regulating same.

Oh, and he is extremely hostile to wind and solar power.

He must really be panicking about solar and wind since the deployment costs have plummeted, and expansion rates have been averaging 25% annually, year after year. Currently wind and solar 11% of the entire annual electricity production in the EU, yet Ridley keeps asserting that it is impossible for these to make any significant contribution.

Anything to promote burning fossil fuels, which puts dollars directly into his pocket.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[ClickOnThis]

[...] Matt Ridley has a Ph.D. from Oxford university in biological sciences. And he wrote a number of books in the popular science category. Wouldn't call that "no background in science"

Actually his degree is a DPhil (same as PhD) in zoology.

I wouldn't call that "no background in science" either. However, I'd say that it gives him less excuse rather than more authority.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[chipschap]

You know, it's the climate science deniers that pay more attention to Al Gore than the rest of us.

That's unfortunate, because Al Gore is so ridiculous that he undermines the issue. Non-deniers (is that the term?) ought to pay attention to those who in attempting to help only weaken the position.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[riverat1]

The "position" is based on science. Nothing Gore does can weaken that.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[chipschap]

You miss the point. Of course the "position" is based on science. But not everyone gets that. They see a clown like Al Gore and they blow off the science right along with the arrogance and self-promotion.

Science should speak for itself but some people get in the way, even advocates.

Re:"experts such as Matt Ridley"?????

[riverat1]

It's true that some people base their positions on some things based on what some other people they either admire or revile think about it. Not much I can do about that.

Let's get deuterium-tritium fusion working first

[ClickOnThis]

Humanity has struggled to create a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor for decades. We're not there yet.

Getting helium-3 fusion to work is even harder because of the higher Coulomb barriers presented by the helium-3 nucleus. The higher barriers demand higher temperatures to be overcome.

Re:well, we have several things..

[jeffb (2.718)]

1. we have a space elevator..

But we have to bring the helium down from the Moon, and helium rises, so it'll take a lot of energy to drag it down to the surface.

Iron Sky

[NewtonsLaw]

Oooh... who's been watching that great movie Iron Sky?

The Nazis have tanks of Helium 3 already stashed on the moon!

Helium-3 Solution

[hackus]

Gag me, thats so 19990's.

How about something we can use now, and is much more abundant?

I am of course talking about Thorium.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[thinkwaitfast]

Could we use space Thorium?

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[dbIII]

One of the low points of the US nuclear industry was when they lobbied to get thorium research shut down during the Clinton administration. Nuclear fanboys should take note that the current players just want to collect the rent on 1970s technology and anything better than what they have endangers their cash flow - real progress is limited to military spinoffs. For anything better it's going to have to be government research opposing that lobby group or imported technology.
India has been doing things with thorium but the promising efforts (eg. the accelerated thorium reactor that can also get a lot more out of used uranium fuel rods from other reactor) have been slowed down a bit due to India being offered a lot of the 1970s uranium technology from those same culprits in the US nuclear industry.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[tsotha]

Gag me, thats so 19990's.

Sadly, it might just be.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[careysub]

Gag me, thats so 19990's.

How about something we can use now, and is much more abundant?

I am of course talking about Thorium.

How about uranium? We actually have plant designs ready to build that can use that stuff.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[Maury Markowitz]

> One of the low points of the US nuclear industry was when they lobbied to get thorium research shut down during the Clinton administration

Ummm, you mean the Nixon administration perhaps?

Thorium power, the Bernie Sanders of energy. A bunch of people who have no idea what they're talking about love what they hear and defend the him/the-concept to the death while everyone around them rolls their eyes.

> India has been doing things with thorium

India has been working on thorium since the *1950's* and have *exactly zero* to show for it. This is the sort of thing that makes the eyes roll.

But go ahead, re-post all the conspiracy theories you read on some web site somewhere and call everyone in the world stupid for not believing in your zero-for-a-thousand-tries energy source.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[dbIII]

Ummm, you mean the Nixon administration perhaps

Maybe then as well but I'm describing the more recent incident.
As for "conspiracy", are you joking or are you just using that as an excuse for not being aware of the topic? It has been very overt, very public and even PR people paid money to get messages out FFS!

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[dbIII]

in the world stupid for not believing in your zero-for-a-thousand-tries energy source.

Why do I keep getting these losers who think that there is only one other person on the internet? Different usernames imply different people FFS.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[angel'o'sphere]

If you manage to build a Thorium fusion reactor, you will be famous ;D

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[angel'o'sphere]

No no! You get it all wrong! He ment indeed Clinton, because he hates him. But obviously he was wrong, too ... and you are right!

Did that make sense?

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[Maury Markowitz]

> As for "conspiracy", are you joking or are you just using that as an excuse for not being
> aware of the topic?

I guess I am just not aware of the topic then. Please, enlighten me on the PR companies in question and how they are keeping thorium down.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[netwiz]

Famous for wasting money, time, and energy. Fusing any element larger than iron is energy-negative.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[dbIII]

Are you joking? For decades Westinghouse etc have had bigger PR budgets than their R&D budgets.

Re:Helium-3 Solution

[angel'o'sphere]

You missed the ;D at the end of the line.

Re:well, we have several things..

[Sowelu]

You can find answers to your questions here! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But in summary... The "waste" is Helium-4, which is also called "the normal everyday helium we have on Earth". Not enough would be produced to be meaningful in any way compared to the value of the electricity produced, but fusion in general can be considered clean; its output is generally safe stuff. We do currently produce Helium-3 industrially, and value has recently raised from $100/L to $2000/L; this value would probably increase more if we actually used it for electricity, but we don't right now, and we would quickly outstrip supply (I think we only get it as a side effect of doing other nuclear stuff and we can't ramp that up for more Helium-3). There's more of it on the moon because the moon doesn't have the kind of magnetic field the Earth does, so it gets nailed by all the nasty space radiation that we are spared from.

Clones!

[Dan East]

What are we waiting for? Let's hurry up and send a bunch of clones of Sam Rockwell to the dark side of the moon and get mining already!

This is stupid

[benjfowler]

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.

Re:This is stupid

[Megane]

Space: it costs tens of thousands of dollars a kilogram to ship stuff into LEO.

Yeah, but this is helium! It'll float to Earth all on its own!

Re:This is stupid

[tsotha]

He3 is a far superior fuel if you can make it work. It only produces charged particles, which is exactly what you want.

Clearly we can't build an H-T reactor any more than we can build a D-T reactor. But describing it as an "inferior" fuel is going a bit far.

Re:This is stupid

[Maury Markowitz]

> He3 is a far superior fuel if you can make it work ::rolleyes::

It's ONE THOUSAND TIMES HARDER to make He3 generate electricity. We've been working on D-T fusion since 1948 and it's still not working. You can masturbate to your techno-fetish all you want, but the rest of us have actual problems to solve, now.

Re:This is stupid

[cjameshuff]

It's also not the only aneutronic fuel. If you can build aneutronic He-3 reactors that produce useful power, you can probably do the same with p-B11 or p-Li7, with the advantage of not having to scoop up continent-scale areas of lunar surface to find fuel.

Re:This is stupid

[delt0r]

He3 and DD have at least a 65x power density penalty. No mater what magic is used in the reactor. It will produce the better part of 100x less power. Making it the better part of 100x more expensive.

Re:This is stupid

[gweihir]

Are the Ray Kurzweil and singularity fanbois / public masturbators off their meds again?

Really stupid people will cheer on anything that promises them things, no matter how inane. Of course, none of these miracles have ever manifested or ever will, but stupid people do not look at history or facts or what became of their earlier fetishes, they just find something new to hail as the second coming.

Re:The Moooooon is for Cows

[mark-t]

So what you're saying is that all of the cows that jumped over the moon got stuck there, on the back side?

On What Planet

[denissmith]

Is Matt Ridley an expert?

Re:On What Planet

[BarbaraHudson]

Is Matt Ridley an expert?

Only at the Wall Street Journal.

Re:On What Planet

[gweihir]

In conning the stupid part of the public? Seems like it.

Ridiculous

[drolli]

The technology needed to mine the moon effectively and cheaply wil arrive much later than Energy storages which you can attach to renewable power plants to store the Energy.

The "key" as always is no monoculture

[dbIII]

The "one true energy" bullshit is the stuff of people who benefit from that form of energy production or cargo cult fanboys that know next to nothing about that form of energy production. Nothing covers every niche without having vulnerable points of failure. A few dry years and even hydro has trouble.

But you need Red Mercury ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

To get the Lunar Helium3 cheaply you need to use rockets powered by red mercury.

Has Matt Ridley been watching Iron Sky?

[matbury]

What Matt Ridley fails to recognise is that the Nazis are already on the dark side of the Moon and are hoarding all the helium-3 for their impending return to Earth, invasion, and subjugation of the inferior races... Did Matt Ridley watch Iron Sky http://www.imdb.com/title/tt10... and think it was a documentary?

The Betteridge answer.

[AnotherBlackHat]

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.

Re:The Betteridge answer.

[mykepredko]

For personal energy, I would recommend B-12.

WHAT BOX?

[MountainLogic]

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.

If it were a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

If global warming were a problem, then those pushing it as a problem would be demanding CAP-ONLY instead of CAP AND TRADE.

All CAP AND TRADE does is make some people rich. It doesn't diminish the amount of supposed pollution.

Durp.

Re:If it were a problem.

[BarbaraHudson]

Agreed, it's stupid. Cap and trade wouldn't work for any other resource - "So what if I'm dumping toxic waste into your water supply. I have bought toxic waste credits."

Let's not mess up the moon

[blogagog]

You know if we go to the moon, sooner or later we will cause man-made moonal warming and the moon oceans will start to rise and then drown us out. It's true. Michael Mann told me so. It's just not worth it, people.

It gets crazy

[PopeRatzo]

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?

Re:It gets crazy

[blindseer]

Having had the math of solar, wind, geothermal and other unreliable energy sources explained to me I'd think that mining the moon for helium is a more logical solution. Don't trust me on this, do the math yourself. Go figure out how much real estate it would take to collect enough wind, solar, or whatever with current technology. Then compute the real and actual cost of building all this infrastructure with current technology. Then compare this to things like real and actual functioning coal and nuclear power that exists now.

If you want to claim that advancement of price to energy output of things like wind and solar will make nuclear power a fool's choice then you must also consider that in that same time that technology can improve on nuclear power as well. Right now the best we can do is get 20% or so from solar power, and we've dumped a lot of money into that development. Right now we can get 1% of the energy from uranium with current technology. Right now nuclear power can operate profitably without government subsidy, and solar cannot. We have lots of room to improve nuclear power before we hit physical limits of converting that energy and it works now. Solar power is already getting close to physical limits on energy conversion, there just isn't much room to improve upon. You can claim that solar power can continue to improve at the rate it has in the past but it simply cannot, you're going to hit a thermodynamic wall before you can beat nuclear.

Mining the moon for anything is insane, we just don't have the technology. What we do have is real and actual working nuclear power plants right now. All we have to do is build more. While we are at it we can do things like develop molten salt reactors that promise to provide a much improved efficiency over current designs and also improve upon the already high safety rate that nuclear power provides. Talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima if you like but I'm not changing my mind. The deaths per energy produced with nuclear power is a vast improvement over that of wind and solar. People might not get radiation poisoning from building solar panels and windmills but people fall from roofs, get electrocuted, have machines tear them apart, and all kind of industrial accidents that don't make the news because some guy falling from a windmill here and there don't make the news outside of the local obit page. A nuclear reactor blowing its top will make the news, even if no one dies from it.

Re:It gets crazy

[PopeRatzo]

Let's break down what you say:

Having had the math of solar, wind, geothermal and other unreliable energy sources explained to me I'd think that mining the moon for helium is a more logical solution.

OK! We have a taker.

Go figure out how much real estate it would take to collect enough wind, solar, or whatever with current technology.

Wait a minute. "...using current technology"? If we're comparing something to mining space helium, then why are you limiting this to "current technology"?

Mining the moon for anything is insane, we just don't have the technology.

How can something be "more logical" and "insane" at the same time? And how can it be more logical than renewable energy which are being used by millions of people worldwide right now?

Re:It gets crazy

[Zobeid]

The summary (not TFA) did not, in fact, say that renewable energy sources are "just pie-in-the-sky hippie fantasies". That's something you dreamed up, I guess. What it did say is "get out of the solar and wind box that many green energy enthusiasts find themselves in". Which I think is very true. Many of them actively oppose nuclear fission and never give a passing thought to nuclear fusion or even geothermal power, or anything really aside from their beloved wind and sun.

Wind and solar energy are indeed growing nicely now. However, both wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, and wind power is geographically limited. To expect them to carry everything is a stretch, and unnecessary.

Re:It gets crazy

[gweihir]

Indeed. The level of stupidity expressed is truly amazing.

Re: It gets crazy

[blindseer]

My dear blindseer, gaze into your crystal ball, and learn that the math has been done. For solar, an estimate says 200,000 square miles for the whole world. Huge on the personal scale, but spread across the globe, not so much, especially given how much can be taken from empty roofs today.

For that to work there would have to be a grid that connects across vast areas so that areas in the dark (night, weather, whatever) can be powered by those in the light. Few people propose doing this because island nations cannot possibly do this, they'd have to rely on expensive underwater cables and the continued benevolence of their neighbors. What would be more feasible, but still wildly expensive, is a mix of large grids and energy storage. This would still be exceedingly expensive and not very practical for areas with little sunlight. Even mixing in energy sources like wind, hydro, geothermal and this idea is impractical, mostly due to the cost of the energy sources compared to existing sources like coal and nuclear, and due to the cost of the large infrastructure of the grid and storage.

That brings us to your next point...

True, we would have to increase production of solar panels to achieve it in a timely manner, but that would reduce some costs as well. And they have fallen to a fifth of what they were in the 1970s.

Because of these large leaps in efficiency in the past there is not much room left for improvement in the future. We can still make solar cheaper but not with the large gains we've had in the past. Much of the cost to make solar power is based on the materials. Materials like aluminum take large amounts of energy to mine and refine, meaning its cost is based for the most part on the cost of the energy. We have cheap aluminum now because we have cheap fossil fuels. No cheap fossil fuels and we'll be refining aluminum with expensive solar energy. This is a plan that may work theoretically but the cost will skyrocket in actual application.

You make no mention of the cost of storage, perhaps because you believe we can build transpacific power cables to collect solar power from the far side of the world. Again that is not practical, politically, as it would mean the Americas would rely on the good graces of China and Russia to sell them power. The storage needs required to allow any electrical grid that relies on solar to a large extent would be astronomical. There is not enough lead in the earth's crust to make all the batteries we'd need. It might be possible to dig up enough iron and nickel to make batteries but they'd have to be very large, as in the area of a large state up the height of a skyscraper.

And given how much coal and other fossil fuels cost in environmental harm, it would not be unreasonable to factor that against it.

How much harm to the environment would we cause in digging up all these minerals needed to build this vast global electrical grid? Do you even know what goes into making a solar panel? Did you know that arsenic is used in making them? There's an environmental disaster for you, solar power. We'd have to dig up vast areas of land, refine out mountain sized chunks for the aluminum, iron, lead, arsenic, mercury, and so forth. After that we'd be building solar panels on a large scale continuously, because they wear out in 20 years or so. After those panels, which contain arsenic, have worn out then how do we dispose of them? I assume that they can be recycled but what kind of poisonous chemicals does that involve?

By comparison coal would we an improvement. But then I'm not advocating for the use of coal, I propose we use nuclear fission. Not only is the environmental impact much less than anything else we have now the use of it does not require any future improvements to make it work. Solar power advocates claim we can do better in the future if only something something, but we don't have to wait for any technological advancement for nuc

Re:It gets crazy

[blindseer]

Wait a minute. "...using current technology"? If we're comparing something to mining space helium, then why are you limiting this to "current technology"?

Because I know that as of right now we have a workable solution in nuclear fission to power the world. If you want to bring up future technology like advancements in solar photovoltaic or nuclear fission then I want to bring up future advancements in fission technology too. If you want to mine the moon for helium then I can mine the ocean for uranium. We don't have a viable technology now to mine the ocean for uranium but we might in fifty years. If we are going to speculate on future advancement in technology then I want to speculate on advancements in fission. But, again, I don't have to speculate since nuclear fission already works. The only thing holding back nuclear fission as a primary energy source is politics, not technology.

Oh, speaking of politics... Won't you think that by mining the moon for energy might be a political problem? I mean if China and Russia start building rockets capable of lifting tons of materials to the moon that places like USA, UK, and India might get a bit nervous?

How can something be "more logical" and "insane" at the same time?

Because there are levels of insanity. It is insane to think we can mine the moon for energy. It's a deeper level of insanity to think we can power a first world economy on wind and solar power. Mining the moon at least allows us to build rockets, nuclear reactors, heavy industry, and so forth so that we can harvest an energy source that we can cheaply store (in the form of the mined material) and use upon demand. Collecting solar and wind relies on building an expensive global electrical grid because wind and solar is not so easily mined on demand, and storing it is also difficult and expensive.

Powering an airplane from solar power would require quite the process of synthesizing fuels. Solar power cannot reach the same temperatures as nuclear power and wind cannot provide the gobs of electricity on demand like nuclear. Synthesizing aircraft fuel from nuclear power is a solved problem, doing so from wind and solar is not. People have investigated means of doing so but they are not nearly as far along as the nuclear people are.

And how can it be more logical than renewable energy which are being used by millions of people worldwide right now?

How much of the world's electricity is from unreliable sources? Let's look... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Renewable energy makes up less than 5%. Nuclear power makes up more than 10%. Hydro provides more than 15%, which is excellent, but we cannot simply dam up more rivers since we've run out of rivers to dam. There is growth potential in nuclear because it does not rely on geography or weather to function. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and so forth, rely on favorable geography and/or climate. Even bio-fuels require land suitable for growing crops. Mining the moon for helium does not require large amounts of valuable land area on earth. It does require some insane levels of engineering though. Using nuclear fission from materials we can mine on earth, with technology that exists now, is quite logical.

If we add cost into the equation then things look even better for nuclear power. Right now nuclear power is on par with coal, combined cycle natural gas, and hydro. Wind and natural gas turbines cost nearly double those I listed before. Solar, even in favorable environments, is double or triple anything else we have. For solar to compete it's is going to take some serious improvements in technology. If you add in storage technology that does make solar look better but then it also makes nuclear look better. Those batteries don't care if they are charged up with nuclear or solar power but the utilities will. The utility that buy

Re:It gets crazy

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm going to skip a lot of what you said because you obviously misinterpreted what he wrote. But there's a few things I have to address.

Collecting solar and wind relies on building an expensive global electrical grid because wind and solar is not so easily mined on demand, and storing it is also difficult and expensive.

Storing electricity is neither difficult nor all that expensive, and it's getting cheaper fast. A single Tesla Powerwall configured for 10 kWh costs $3500, storing enough power for a week worth of cloudy days for most households. Tesla's Gigafactory will cut that price by 30% in 2 years. Not 50 years. 2 years. Not speculatively, either. It's just mass production of a well-known industrial technique. As for the difficulty, it's two hours of an electrician's time to install it in your basement or on your garage wall. Done. And then it just works, for years. What could be easier? No super-expensive national grid upgrade required. Quite the opposite. When the Powerwall is charged by the solar panels on the roof of the building it's housed in, the residential grid starts to go away entirely. Only the commercial grid is necessary.

Synthesizing aircraft fuel from nuclear power is a solved problem, doing so from wind and solar is not.

Synthesizing a hydrocarbon fuel from any power source is a solved problem. The source of the power is irrelevant.

How much of the world's electricity is from unreliable sources? Let's look... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Renewable energy makes up less than 5%. Nuclear power makes up more than 10%.

Wikipedia is substantially out of date. Solar and wind now make up 11%, while nuclear makes up quite a bit less than 10%. Solar and wind deployments have been happening like crazy for the past 3 years, and Japan shut down all of their nuclear plants. It shifted the balance dramatically.

There is growth potential in nuclear because it does not rely on geography or weather to function.

Current nuclear power plants are very much restricted by geography. They can not function in the absence of copious amounts of water without dramatically increasing their operating costs. Nuclear plants are built on rivers and lakes for a reason. Secondary loop coolant water is far cheaper if it comes from a body of water rather than a tank, because it's much cooler than tanked water can reasonably be.

If we add cost into the equation then things look even better for nuclear power. Right now nuclear power is on par with coal, combined cycle natural gas, and hydro. Wind and natural gas turbines cost nearly double those I listed before. Solar, even in favorable environments, is double or triple anything else we have.

Again, your numbers are substantially out of date, and your numbers for nuclear are flat out wrong. Nuclear has never been that cheap, due to cost overruns when building plants. Solar is on par with coal now, and far faster to deploy. I can go online and order a pallet of solar panels, with a nameplate capacity of 7370W, for $7170 and have them on my doorstep by Thursday.

Going to the moon for helium is insane, expecting to rely on wind and solar for energy is even more insane.

Going to the moon for helium is insane. Photovoltaic power is reasonable now, without any further benefits of scale or technological advancement, both of which are coming at a steady pace.

Re:It gets crazy

[blindseer]

Current nuclear power plants are very much restricted by geography. They can not function in the absence of copious amounts of water without dramatically increasing their operating costs.

That's assuming the plant operates with a steam cycle. Also, it's not like water is difficult to find, especially if you have a nuclear reactor to desalinate it for drinking water as well as filling your cooling pond. Newer designs with air cooling do not require large bodies of water for cooling, neither do they need that water as a firefighting reserve since they'd be small enough and safe enough that any fires can be put out by more traditional means.

Nuclear plants are built on rivers and lakes for a reason.

That's because old reactors were built large enough to make them economically viable given the high regulatory costs of building them in most nations. New designs are not high pressure, so they do not require the heavy piping or large containment dome. New designs are just not as large generally as a matter of economics, a new "sweet spot" is in the 50 to 250 megawatt range, not the gigawatt range of old reactors. Those reactor components can fit on a common over the road shipping truck, no need for a barge on water. It might take 300 trips to bring all the large components on site but that is trivial to building a site that can accommodate a barge.

Again, your numbers are substantially out of date, and your numbers for nuclear are flat out wrong. Nuclear has never been that cheap, due to cost overruns when building plants.

No, the costs are due to regulatory pressures. The cost of nuclear power is a political problem, not a technological one. We can solve the political problems in the time it takes for the next election, technology problems aren't so easily overcome.

Solar is on par with coal now, and far faster to deploy. I can go online and order a pallet of solar panels, with a nameplate capacity of 7370W, for $7170 and have them on my doorstep by Thursday.

And you will get that 7kW output for a few hours per day, while the coal plant will do that day and night. Nameplate capacity is "cute" since it has very little relation to actual output. I can build a nuclear or coal power plant in the arctic circle and expect it to keep me warm through the months long night, that pallet of solar panels you have would be nearly worthless.

I won't dispute that at a given nameplate capacity coal, wind, and solar, all are quite likely to be very close to each other. The problem is that during the year the coal plant will produce three times the electrical energy of the wind or solar energy sources. I recall 30% capacity to be typical of wind and solar, no doubt unfavorable conditions will reduce that output, as well as favorable conditions can improve it.

Going to the moon for helium is insane. Photovoltaic power is reasonable now, without any further benefits of scale or technological advancement, both of which are coming at a steady pace.

Okay, you tell me that once the sun goes down. That pallet of solar panels will produce about 30% of it's nameplate capacity every day. That must be made up by storage, you quoted a household unit at $3500. So, to match the same capacity of the coal plant I'd need three times the nameplate capacity in solar panels AND the storage unit to power my house through the night. That $/kw capacity triples because of the reduced capacity factor, and then gets another $/kw hit because of the battery storage. My coal plant cost $1 per kilowatt to build while your solar panel and battery system costs $4 per kilowatt. My research tells me that operating costs are also comparable, rent and maintenance costs for solar are quite large as it take a lot of area and fragile equipment to function, the coal plant will need fuel but the rent and maintain costs are much lower per nameplate capacity.

Wind

You mean global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Temperatures have been dropping below their seasonal averages. What can we do to warm things up?

Re:well, we have several things..

[ClickOnThis]

But we have to bring the helium down from the Moon, and helium rises, so it'll take a lot of energy to drag it down to the surface.

Have you ever had a helium tank fall on your toe? They are secured to keep them from falling, not to keep them from floating away.

Compress the helium enough and it will not rise, no matter what container it's in.

The old joke....

[duckintheface]

"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.

Re:The old joke....

[michelcolman]

So what you're saying is basically "fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be"?

OK, maybe getting helium-3 from the moon is a little bit ridiculous right now, but we should definitely continue research into other sources of energy. If we can ever get fusion to work in a cost-efficient way, all our energy needs are over until we run out of hydrogen atoms. Fusion also works when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Re:The old joke....

[thegarbz]

They are already more economical

[Citation needed]

Oh and please link to some citation that discusses the relative subsidies each power form gets too, and the relative output.

A solar panel on my roof compared to a coal fired steam turbine in my basement? Absolutely more economical.
A solar panel or even solar concentration plant capable of generating 2GW of power? Not even close to as economical as coal.

People, companies and investors chase dollars. There's a reason people are STILL building those large polluting pieces of shit.

Re:The old joke....

[AmiMoJo]

If you want to build a cool space based power system then build a giant solar array in orbit and beam the power back to earth. Talk to JAXA, they have been looking at the problem for a while.

Re:The old joke....

[tbannist]

People, companies and investors chase dollars. There's a reason people are STILL building those large polluting pieces of shit.

Is it because they're Chinese? Because in the United States, 170 coal power plants have been cancelled over the last 15 years, with only 40 completed, and are 20 still in development and 17 whose current status is unknown. There's also 12 "abandoned" plants but I'm not sure what the difference between abandoned and cancelled is. All of this is according to SourceWatch. If those numbers are accurate it means that Americans aren't really building many new coal plants, and the even the ones they did plan to build, two thirds of them have been cancelled.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 1,507 MW of new coal plants were added in 2013. However, in the same year 6,861 MW of natural gas and 2,959 of solar was added. For the math challenged that means almost twice as much new solar was added compared to new coal (and over 4 times as much natural gas). There was also 1,032 MW of new wind added. Sure it was only 2/3rd of coal in 2013 (partly because of a subsidy deadline for end of 2012 where 10x the amount of solar was completed in 2012 compared to 2013), but I would bet that new wind projects will continue growing while new coal projects continue to disappear.

Re:The old joke....

[Ol Olsoc]

So what you're saying is basically "fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be"?

OK, maybe getting helium-3 from the moon is a little bit ridiculous right now, but we should definitely continue research into other sources of energy. If we can ever get fusion to work in a cost-efficient way, all our energy needs are over until we run out of hydrogen atoms. Fusion also works when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Too bad there is no way of storing that power, eh?

No doubt fusion could be pretty tremendous, but in a world where you might have to foot the cost of the power lines and poles delivering archaic grid power to your house, solar and wind can have a big cost advantage.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be writing that one day.

Re:The old joke....

[Ol Olsoc]

A solar panel on my roof compared to a coal fired steam turbine in my basement? Absolutely more economical. A solar panel or even solar concentration plant capable of generating 2GW of power? Not even close to as economical as coal.

You are locked into gridthink. I have no need to generate 2 GW or even 1GW of power. In addition, in a world where being attached to the power grid is becoming more and more of a problem, and less of a solution, economy is only one of the advantages. Reliability is another. Try going a week in Northeast US in the dead of winter with no power. That was what started me into realizing that the power grid was an anachronism. Since then, I've been steadily working on weaning myself to where my power needs are in my hands, not some drunk guy who runs into a mainline power pole, or a squirrel vaporizing itself in taking out a substation, or some weather event.

Think outside the grid.

Re:The old joke....

[Ol Olsoc]

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 1,507 MW of new coal plants were added in 2013. However, in the same year 6,861 MW of natural gas and 2,959 of solar was added. For the math challenged that means almost twice as much new solar was added compared to new coal (and over 4 times as much natural gas). There was also 1,032 MW of new wind added.

Please stop! You're giving the Fox News "Germany is sunnier than the US" crowd a cognitive dissonance headache!

Re:The old joke....

[morgauxo]

Wind, coal and hydroelectric (which you didn't mention) are all solar powered.

Re:The old joke....

[thegarbz]

Think outside the grid.

I'd love to but that's where my power comes from when the sun doesn't shine.

Re:The old joke....

[Teancum]

One of the reasons why new coal plants are not coming on line has to do with what amounts to be a war on coal power plants by the Obama administration. You may agree with the policy and the desire to eliminate coal powered plants in America, but it is due to political decisions and not economics which is driving a huge reduction in coal production.

I would be willing to bet that coal power plants would likely be dominating in electric power production if it was laid open to a pure market where economics was dominating.... and solar power plants would simply disappear except in remote locations where it is impractical to build something like a large scale coal electric production facility. Even in remote locations I tend to see Diesel or some other petroleum-based fuel as the most likely fuel source although solar panels are making a big splash in that direction.

Re:The old joke....

[dgatwood]

No doubt fusion could be pretty tremendous, but in a world where you might have to foot the cost of the power lines and poles delivering archaic grid power to your house, solar and wind can have a big cost advantage.

Especially when you factor in the cost of power lines all the way to the moon. :-D

Re:The old joke....

[Ol Olsoc]

Think outside the grid.

I'd love to but that's where my power comes from when the sun doesn't shine.

Pity that storage batteries don't exit in your universe.

Re:The old joke....

[Ol Olsoc]

No doubt fusion could be pretty tremendous, but in a world where you might have to foot the cost of the power lines and poles delivering archaic grid power to your house, solar and wind can have a big cost advantage.

Especially when you factor in the cost of power lines all the way to the moon. :-D

Which reminds me, I was reading an article about some advances in synthetic diamonds as some potential for a space elevator. I'd give the citation, but I was browsing on another computer at the time.

Sounds fanciful, but imagine how much power could be had with tether generation?

Re:The old joke....

[thegarbz]

They don't in any kind of affordable way unfortunately.

Re:The old joke....

[stoatwblr]

2,959MW Solar, 1,032 MW wind

Sure. Peak output. Solar doesn't work at night, so halve that. It's only at peak output at local solar noon, so reduce it again, starting and ending at zero at dawn and suck, on a sine curve.

The reality is that your 2959MW only outputs about 15% of that as an annualised average and that 15% isn't going to comfort you much on those cold dark winter nights of the future when burning gas or oil for heating is banned. In any case it's only the same as 3-4 _small_ gas-fired congeneration plants which can run 24*7

Similar issues apply to wind, with the end-result figure being around the same or slightly lower.

"Storage", people cry. Sure, why not? Throw 30% of the generated energy as overall losses from charging/discharging batteries (it's even worse if you try compressing air), so you need to make your wind/solar farm that much bigger. (Pumped storage systems are about as efficient overall as batteries and there are only a tiny number of suitable locations for them, usually nowhere near the generation sites.)

Fusion is the fuel of the future - the far future - well beyond the end of this century. Fission is needed now, with gas plants covering the period until they're online. That's going to have to be conventional water-cooled/moderated fission plants until LFTRs (or similar tech) is commercialised in 20 years time.

Get building. Those cold dark winter nights are one problem that's going to be here a lot sooner than you might think and I wouldn't worry so much about ocean levels rising in the next 100 years as what happens when the ocean dieoffs we're already seeing the start of start snowballing in the next 20-50 (see: "Global Anoxic Event")

Re:The old joke....

[riverat1]

I would be willing to bet that coal power plants would likely be dominating in electric power production if it was laid open to a pure market where economics was dominating....

If coal power plants weren't allowed to externalize the cost of their pollution they'd disappear even faster.

Re:The old joke....

[lucien86]

Also with current tech wherever solar or wind dominate they need those diesel or oil power backups for the night time or the times when the wind doesn't blow. Even with full battery backup solar still requires at least about 2x its nominal output capacity to reach a stable 24 hrs supply. Wind is much more unpredictable and much much worse than solar, way beyond the capacities of batteries.. Wind is the oil industries secret weapon to stay in business for the next 100 years..

Actually, fusion shouldn't be a priority at all

[PeterM from Berkeley]

The economic case for fusion is just too weak.

The problem is that so much capital will be tied up in the reactor + thermal conversion, that an equivalent capacity of solar/wind will always cost less. Lots less.

Citations:

http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...
https://matter2energy.wordpres...

--PM

Re:Actually, fusion shouldn't be a priority at all

[lgw]

Solar is nice during the day and all, but fusion solves a bunch of problems solar doesn't, from heating load over winter nights to industrial power. (Plus, a big chunk of power consumption, about half of industrial use is never electrical energy, but thermal used directly).

Dunning-Kruger Effect

[JustBoo]

Luke, the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE) are strong in some of these ones. Cognative dissonace emanates. Luke, I tell you these very same people, in the same breath, will then tell us we need to launch for Mars tomorrow, but yet see no need to go to the moon. DKE palpable. Dunning-Kruger Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Fission is uneconomical, fusion will be too

[PeterM from Berkeley]

In short, fission and fusion will both always cost significantly more than the alternatives, because alternatives require less capital and do direct conversion of energy to electricity.

Citations:

http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...

https://matter2energy.wordpres...

Re: Fission is uneconomical, fusion will be too

[Maury Markowitz]

That's simply not true. Nuclear economics scales with reactor size, so larger reactors are more efficient. To compete with ever falling prices of other sources, like natural gas, reactors have grown. As a result they are more expensive to build, and that makes that capital more expensive die to time dimension risk. And that's why the banks won't lend money for reactors and that's the only reason they don't get built. If you wish to see more nuclear power, be sure you actually understand the problem before suggesting a solution, or add you do here, simply throw up your hands and blame"someone" for it.

Global Warming is not just CO2

[anastasd]

Global Warming is not caused only by CO2 emissions. Every joule of thermal energy we use, rises further the temperature. Even the "greenest" energy sources heat the planet, so does nuclear fusion.

Re:Global Warming is not just CO2

[gweihir]

Seriously? Are you _that_ stupid and unaware of the facts? The thing heating up the planet is the SUN! The problem is that the CO2 prevents that energy from radiating back into SPACE.

unicorn vomit

[mschaffer]

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.

Re:well, we have several things..

[jeffb (2.718)]

Leave the helium at standard pressure, and it will still fall -- in a vacuum.

Sort of like the joke apparently did.

Pink Floyd

[rossdee]

"the nearest source is the dark side of the moon"

So Roger Waters should be able to make Money off of this

Re:Pink Floyd

[Falconhell]

Very droll.

"THE" solution? If there is ONE it's p-B!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

[the Onion 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.

If you're going for a harder-than-deuterium/tritium reaction as your one great hope, Helium 3 is not it.

The logical candidate is p-B (Proton, i.e. light hydrogen, fusing with Boron 11). While it's even a bit harder to light than 2xHe3, and produces about 2/3 the power per reaction. But it's also aneutronic (i.e. 1% of the reactions produce a neutron - in this case about 0.2%). Nearly all of the fusion energy can be extracted as electricity - DC at several voltages in the vicinity of 2 kV - almost trivially, by decelerating and "catching" the reaction product alpha particles. The kicker, though, is that both H1 and B11 are common on Earth, so you don't have to import them from the moon.

No, nuclear fission is the solution.

[blindseer]

Assuming global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels is the cause then we have much better ways to solve this problem than...
- Making a better than break even He3 fusion reactor
- Building moon mining equipment
- Launching that equipment to the moon
- Mining the helium and shipping it back to earth
- Doing all of this before we bake ourselves burning coal in the mean time

We have the technology to get carbon free energy right now, with nuclear fission. Bonus to nuclear fission is that we can make that helium as a byproduct. We don't have to go to the moon, we can make it here.

Claiming we can just mine the moon for helium before we even figure out how to make the reactor work is optimism beyond sanity. I propose we invest in what we know can work, fission works. If we are going to mine the moon for anything I propose we mine it for thorium, there's much more thorium on the moon than helium, and we've already figured out how to get energy from that.

Aneutronic Fusion *sigh*

[Henning Rogge]

There is only ONE reason why Helium-3 fusion could be good... it doesn't produce neutrons, which means all byproducts can be captured by magnetic fields and we don't produce radioactive waste...

BUT (as quite a few people here said)
a) we don't have a working fusion reactor (no matter what reaction)
b) He3 fusion is a lot harder to do than D-T fusion
c) He3 on Earth is practically non-existent. He3 exists in low concentrations in the Lunar Dust...

so lets first get the current energy problems resolved with existing tech (solar, wind, water, ...), then lets get D-T fusion running, then lets colonize the Moon (and maybe a couple of other planets)... and when we arrive at Jupiter and Saturn, we can think about He3 fusion again. ;)

Completely pointless, just use solar mirrors

[Antique Geekmeister]

If we establish the technologies to harvest He-3 from raw lunar rock and ship it to Earth for use as fuel, you've established large scale space flight. You may as well use a known technology, with much safer handling, than the amazingly high pressures and temperatures needed for He-3 fusion. He-3 fusion is _much_ harder than H-2 and H-3 fusion, it takes far more pressure and/or temperature.

Moreover, it's not clean. Straight from Wikipedia:

            Therefore fusion using D-3He fuel may produce a somewhat lower neutron flux than D-T fusion, but is by no means clean, negating some of its main attraction.

If we achieve bulk space flight, it's vastly safer, simpler, and requires no fundamentally new technologies to deploy solar sails as power collection mirrors. At over 1 KWatt/square meter, solar reflectors are easily deployed with very flimsy films and focused as desired on units to focus or re-transmit the energy as desired elsewhere. able to beam down power at night since satellites in skewed orbits can transmit to arbitrary ground locations from outside the Earth's shadow, and without being blocked by clouds. It's all based on existing, tested technologies: it needs a great deal of scaling up, but requires no fundamentally new technologies.

Re:Lunatic Unicorn Farts

[TheRealHocusLocus]

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.

Well said. Though you'll find yourself arguing with people who thought you said it's a dumb idea. It's a great idea --- good enough for practical old NASA to drop it into their distant-futurist visions of lunar colonies --- but a dumb solution for Earth right now, even directed research. There's an energy crisis happening down here.

Lunar H3 mining along with the idea of solar energy collected in orbit are 'fails' in my book because both would place Earth society in the grip of the consortium that manages the infrastructure, and that infrastructure (though awesome) would become an absurdly simple single point of failure. These ideas lead directly to One World Government and it's probably not the one you want. Even if it works out it's lights out for mankind when the first Bad Thing, Who'da Thunk It happens.

In order to ensure that nations can maintain their sovereignty, even to ensure there are nations at all, the fossil free energy solution we pursue should comprise power generated directly from elements that can be mined locally with a reasonable footprint, technology that can be manufactured and maintained locally. Mining is a 'given'. If you think wind and PV solar are mining-free solutions, you haven't looked into the process or run the numbers necessary to scale them. Wind and solar and the chemistry necessary for grid storage are environmental disasters waiting to happen.

Grid electricity should become the universal medium of exchange and should be used for almost all ground transportation, and must be available in such abundance that we can use it to manufacture synthetic fuels for air and sea travel. Continental grids should consist of power plants pushing HVDC into regional 'loops' from which tuned HVAC is extracted from several points to power the legacy grids, which can then be separated into smaller islands than are currently used. Efficiently doing DC/AC conversion and the means to better switch and properly utilize HVDC should be a top research priority --- what ever the energy source.

We are also approaching a time when the purification of ocean/waste water and its transport will become a top priority on a scale that exceeds any present oil and gas pipelines. Within fifty to a hundred years' time, additional terawatts of energy will be needed to bring fresh water into regions that are presently depleting water tables faster than they replenish. I'm not just talking tap water. Our food supply relies on massive irrigation. If you think wind and solar could purify and move this much water, let alone power an industrial society, please think again.

It's time to finish taming fire. Nuclear fission and specifically the two fluid molten salt reactor with active processing with it's "safe in 300 years" waste decay profile is the single best and most practical solution yet devised to produce energy on the scale necessary to survive and prosper.

I'm not fond of these so-called "small scale micro-fission reactors" either, where conventional nuclear power manufacturers re trying to trump the safety issue (while aggravating the waste generation problem) by proposing a great many smaller light and heavy water reactors. Yes of course they want to sell one to every town, including yours. It's an absurd notion borne out of the an

BECAUSE IT IS

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Helium 3 is NOT A VIABLE FUSION FUEL, PERIOD. There is no such thing as Helium 3 fusion power, it simply cannot be viable. Where this idiotic notion of 'Lunar Helium 3' came from I don't know, but people should frigging do a tiny bit of basic research before they blort out this kind of nonsense.

3He fusion requires temperatures on the order of 10 BILLION Kelvins (Celsius), and the reaction rates are so low that the smallest viable reactor size would be on the order of a 100 gigawatt power plant.

Assuming we were able to build a tokamak that was commercially viable (which is unknown) then it would require something like an equally large step to reach 3He-D fusion. Not to mention the need to find the 3He, and Lunar mining would NOT be cheap.

p-B fusion is a MUCH more viable target, maybe not as cute in terms of being aneutronic, but VASTLY easier to achieve. Nobody is going to achieve Helium 3 fusion in this century, that's almost a given.

Re:BECAUSE IT IS

[gweihir]

The thing is, the cretins that want to believe that climate change is not a real problem or not an immediate concern are so stupid that they will believe anything. This is just a symptom.

Incidentally, it is not even certain that viable Deuterium-Tritium fusion will be available this century. I certainly hope it will be, because without an abundant energy source it is curtains for human civilization and most of its members not so far in the future. I sincerely doubt that the current crop of utterly incapable "leaders" will even manage the 4 Degrees Celsius goal.

Yep, energy of the future

[daninaustin]

and always will be.

Re:Let's get deuterium-tritium fusion working firs

[gweihir]

Humanity actually has been at this for about half a century. It is still unclear whether we will make it work to any reasonable and useful degree. Anybody talking about 3He as a real possibility has his head so far up his backside it is not funny anymore.

Obviously this is a case of "whatever lie will server so we do not have to do anything about climate change".

Re:Not Again

[gweihir]

Yes. And we have been about 70 years at trying to get it to work reliably and are still wayyyy of from making it generating enough energy to be a practical replacement for other tech.

Re:Lunatic Unicorn Farts

[jrvz]

I agree 97%. Nuclear fission is the right solution for grid electricity at least for the next 50 years. But there is more to the energy story than grid electricity. Molten salt reactors can also provide a lot of the necessary process heat (unlike the water cooled reactors which are restricted to lower temperatures). (It might be easier to fund development of those reactors if it isn't necessary to also buy the turbines and generators for producing electricity. At least that's how Terrestrial Energy proposes to attack the problem.) I believe synfuels can be produced more efficiently using process heat rather than electricity. Once that infrastructure is in place, it might be better to produce more synfuels instead of replacing our inventory of cars and trucks with electric vehicles and adding enough grid capacity to keep them charged.

Small Modular Reactors have advantages even if they don't get sold to every village. If they're small enough to build on an assembly line and ship where needed, you can get big improvements in cost and reliability. A utility doesn't have to pay for a 6GW power plant all at once, but can instead install a smaller unit, and let it generate revenue while further units are under construction. It can also adjust the construction rate if the demand growth doesn't match predictions. (That said, I would still like to see most military bases powered and heated by their own nuclear reactors.)

Re:Wouldn't it be a little cheaper to just,

[dgatwood]

Amazon Review: The product listing claimed to be for Helium-5, but when I opened the box a microsecond later, I found that it was really just Helium-4 and a bunch of stray electrons. Would not buy again.

Explaining the benefits of fusion power

[purplie]

Fusion should allow us to push out the limit of our unbridled exponential population growth for an extra ... decade or so. Increases the chances of the Malthusian catastrophe happening after my lifetime.

So please, we need fusion ASAP.

Oh, yeah, I guess we could start to think about some population planning too. Might be nice.

Coming Soon

[brunnegd]

Fusion energy is just 10 years away, and has been for 50 years.