AUGH

[james_davis_nicoll]

Timon Singh
Could mining helium-3 from the Moon solve Earth's energy problems?

Comments

[oh6]

Someone needs to popularize the concept of mining Earth's radiation belts for antimatter that I recall seeing here some time ago. Closer to home, and will for sure yield nuclear energy!

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

You haven't forgotten the rule about headlines that end with a question mark, have you?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I was going to bring up Betteridge's Law, but you got here first.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

"No"

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

I mean... wouldn't it be easier to just use nuclear fission, instead? There's plenty of uranium right here! Although I suspect that a lot of people boosting helium-3 as the grand new power source of the future haven't quite realized that it would be used in nuclear fusion reactors of the sort that Greenpeace has already come out against, because of COURSE they have.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Wait, Greenpeace is against commercial scale fusion reactors?

It's a little odd to oppose something that not only doesn't exist, but that at this point looks unlikely to every exist.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

And it's easy to make He3 here, too!

Lithium deuteride is a good moderator for fission reactors - denser than heavy water, so you can use it in the core of light water reactors if you are silly enough to not use a proper CANDU reactor design. If you mix in some extra lithium, you'll soon get lithium triteride (not as good a moderator as lithium deuteride, but not bad). Store your old moderator in a chamber, and collect the He3 as it forms from decaying tritium and escapes. Sure, it'll take a few decades before your daily He3 output is enough to support a fusion reactor, but in the meantime (as you said) we have plenty of uranium.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Speak of your zombie ideas... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/the-ultimate-zombie-idea/?_r=0 http://skepdic.com/zombieidea.html

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Because I care. (http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Orcutt_TSTF_Novel_Press_Release_011415.pdf)

Please do not throw me into this briar patch

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Only a cruel person would pay me to review that novel, or for that matter William R. Forstchen's Pillar to the Sky.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Over at Centauri Dreams the replies to one of their recent posts, advocating manned space exploration, include one arguing that He3 is a good reason for building a moonbase. Other responses included the always popular "We have to go into space to ensure mankind survives!" and someone claiming letting free enterprise loose in space will help foster manned space exploration. As to the latter I'm not sure what is stopping some big company with lots of money sending people into space now, other than the very obvious question of what would allow them to make a profit.

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

There are nontrivial legal questions, actually. Can you even MAKE a profit in space legally? Or anything you take from space be held or sold legally? or...?

Space law is the wild, wild west right now. it needs either legislation or test cases. or both.

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

As to the latter I'm not sure what is stopping some big company with lots of money sending people into space now, other than the very obvious question of

DINGDINGDING Danger, Will Robinson! Do not ask that question, or you will get many answers about Lack of Vision, Meddling Bureaucrats, Hysterically Anti-Technology Public Opinion, and so on.

What you will not get is a business case that comes within an AU of closing.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"Could" may involve impressively low probabilities.

[redbird]

Step 1: Collect helium-3.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Power!

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

The seven lost cities of Cibola have migrated to the Moon, and their streets are paved with flowing streams of helium-3.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Liquid helium-3? This would be Eris's Moon, right?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

You know, you keep going "auggh", but where's the handy resource showing why this is a bad idea? (Apart from the fact that D-He3 fusion is even harder than the D-T fusion we can't do, of course.)

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

You know how, to a mining engineer, the distinction between "ore" and "dirt" rests on the possibility of profitable extraction? (There is, after all, some copper just about everywhere, but extracting parts per million out of someone's front lawn isn't profitable.)

As I understand it, the Moon is in that sense "dirt" for He3. Yes, there's been solar wind hitting the lunar regolith for a long time, but that still doesn't do much for the concentration. Digging up the top couple metres of the moon and gently prying the He3 out of it would require more energy than you'd be able to recover from fusing the dinky amounts recovered per cubic metre of regolith.

And then there's "this isn't especially good fusion fuel" and the "we can't do fusion at all" and the "can't we make it from lithium? that would be orders of magnitude cheaper than going to the Moon to establish mining industries" parts of the problem.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Back in June, I came up with a figure of 55,000 tons of regolith per day to be scooped and processed to keep up with the current US demand for energy in the form of He-3, but I see now that there is such a thing as this Bagger 288 (about 1/4 way down)

http://www.losapos.com/openpitmines

that scoops 220,000 tons a day, so it's merely a matter of setting up the worlds largest strip mining rig + refinery + laying a conveyor back to the refinery, since is has to go out through the He-3-bearing top layer instead of down.

On the moon.

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

By "setting up" I assume you mean the SelenoBagger 576 will cleverly unfold itself like a satellite's antenna or solar panels, or else be fabricated by nanoassemblers from native titanium.

Because otherwise we'd be talking about the thousands of people, thousands of tons of ancillary equipment, and hundreds of thousands of working hours that go into the startup of any large mining/refining operation before the first dollar of revenue comes in.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Wait, helium-3 is actually a thing? I thought it was in the same category as unobtainium and handwavium.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's real and it can be used lower neutron output fusion reactions.

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's a real thing. When and if -- make that if and when -- we know a lot more about fusion reactor science and engineering, it might just possibly be an important thing.

But the seemingly unkillable meme that "He3 from the moon should now motivate and will pay for the Great Expansion Into Space" is fantasy of purest ray serene.