Now that Petroleum resources in Earth are coming to an end by the century,
researchers are hoping to find an alternate fuel source on the moon that could
provide all of our energy requirements for 1000's of years - Helium-3 for
nuclear fusion.
Space.com article:
Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium-3 as the perfect fuel source.
By Julie Wakefield
Special to SPACE.com
posted: 05:30 pm ET
30 June 2000
Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium 3 as the perfect fuel source:
extremely potent, nonpolluting, withvirtually no radioactive by-product.
Proponents claim its the fuel of the 21st century. The trouble is, hardly any
of it is found on Earth.But there is plenty of it on the moon.
Society is straining to keep pace withenergy demands, expected to increase
eightfold by 2050 as the world populationswells toward 12 billion. The
moon just may be the answer.
"Helium 3 fusion energy may be thekey to future space exploration and
settlement," said Gerald Kulcinski,Director of the Fusion Technology Institute
(FTI) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Scientists estimate there are about1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon,
enough to power the world for thousandsof years. The equivalent of a single
space shuttle load or roughly 25 tonscould supply the entire United States'
energy needs for a year, accordingto Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher
Harrison Schmitt.
Cash crop of the moon
When the solar wind, the rapid streamof charged particles emitted by the sun,
strikes the moon, helium 3 isdeposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of
years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout
the top several meters ofthe lunar surface.
"Helium 3 could be the cash crop forthe moon," said Kulcinski, a longtime
advocate and leading pioneer in thefield, who envisions the moon becoming "the
Hudson Bay Store of Earth."Today helium 3 would have a cash value of $4 billion
a ton in terms ofits energy equivalent in oil, he estimates. "When the moon
becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."
~
Fusion research began in 1951 in theUnited States under military auspices.
After its declassification in 1957scientists began looking for a candidate fuel
source that wouldn't produceneutrons. Although Louie Alvarez and Robert Cornog
discovered helium 3in 1939, only a few hundred pounds (kilograms) were known to
exist on Earth,most the by-product of nuclear-weapon production.
Apollo astronauts found helium 3 onthe moon in 1969, but the link between the
isotope and lunar resourceswas not made until 1986. "It took 15 years for us
[lunar geologists andfusion pioneers] to stumble across each other," said
Schmitt, the lastastronaut to leave footprints on the moon.
For solving long-term energy needs,proponents contend helium 3 is a better
choice than first generation nuclearfuels like deuterium and tritium (isotopes
of hydrogen), which are nowbeing tested on a large scale worldwide in tokamak
thermonuclear reactors.Such approaches, which generally use strong magnetic
fields to containthe tremendously hot, electrically charged gas or plasma in
which fusionoccurs, have cost billions and yielded little. The International
ThermonuclearExperimental Reactor or ITER tokamak, for example, won't produce a
singlewatt of electricity for several years yet.
Increases production and safety costs
"I don't doubt it will eventually work,"Kulcinski said. "But I have serious
doubts it will ever provide an economicpower source on Earth or in space."
That's because reactors that exploit the fusion of deuterium and tritium
release 80 percent of their energyin the form of radioactive neutrons, which
exponentially increase productionand safety costs.
In contrast, helium 3 fusion wouldproduce little residual radioactivity. Helium
3, an isotope of the familiarhelium used to inflate balloons and blimps, has a
nucleus with two protonsand one neutron. A nuclear reactor based on the fusion
of helium 3 anddeuterium, which has a single nuclear proton and neutron, would
producevery few neutrons -- about 1 percent of the number generated by the
deuterium-tritiumreaction. "You could safely build a helium 3 plant in the
middle of a bigcity," Kulcinski said.
Helium 3 fusion is also ideal for poweringspacecraft and interstellar travel.
While offering the high performancepower of fusion -- "a classic Buck Rogers
propulsion system" -- helium3 rockets would require less radioactive shielding,
lightening the load,said Robert Frisbee, an advanced propulsion engineer at
NASA's Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena California.
Recently Kulcinski's team reports progresstoward making helium 3 fusion
possible. Inside a lab chamber, the Wisconsinresearchers have produced protons
from a steady-state deuterium-helium3 plasma at a rate of 2.6 million reactions
per second. That's fast enoughto produce fusion power but not churn out
electricity. "It's proof of principle,but a long way from producing electricity
or making a power source outof it," Kulcinski said. He will present the results
in Amsterdam in midJuly at the Fourth International Conference on Exploration
and Utilizationof the Moon.
Size of a basketball
The chamber, which is roughly the sizeof a basketball, relies on the
electrostatic focusing of ions into a densecore by using a spherical grid,
explained Wisconsin colleague John Santarius,a study co-author. With some
refinement, such Inertial Electrostatic Confinement(IEC) fusion systems could
produce high-energy neutrons and protons usefulin industry and medicine. For
example, the technology could generate short-livedPET (positron emission
tomography) isotopes on site at hospitals, enablingsafe brain scans of young
children and even pregnant women. Portable IECdevices could bridge the gap
between today's science-based research andthe ultimate goal of generating
electricity, Santarius said.
~
This fall, the University of Wisconsinteam hopes to demonstrate a
third-generation fusion reaction between helium3 and helium 3 particles in the
lab. The reaction would be completely voidof radiation.
"Although helium 3 would be very exciting,"says Bryan Palaszewski, leader of
advanced fuels at NASA Glenn ResearchCenter at Lewis Field, "first we have to
go back to the moon and be capableof doing significant operations there."
Economically unfeasible
Indeed for now, the economics of extractingand transporting helium 3 from the
moon are also problematic. Even if scientists solved the physics of helium 3
fusion, "it would be economically unfeasible,"asserted Jim Benson, chairman of
SpaceDev in Poway, California, which strivesto be one of the first commercial
space-exploration companies. "UnlessI'm mistaken, you'd have to strip-mine
large surfaces of the moon."
While it's true that to produce roughly70 tons of helium 3, for example, a
million tons of lunar soil would needto be heated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit
(800 degrees Celsius) to liberatethe gas, proponents say lunar strip mining is
not the goal. "There's enoughin the Mare Tranquillitatis alone to last for
several hundred years," Schmittsaid. The moon would be a stepping stone to
other helium 3-rich sources,such as the atmospheres of Saturn and Uranus.
Benson agreed that finding fuel sourcesin space is the way to go. But for him,
H2O and not helium 3 is the idealfuel source. His personal goal is to create
gas stations in space by miningasteroids for water. The water can be
electrolyzed into hydrogen or oxygenfuel or used straight as a propellant by
superheating with solar arrays."Water is more practical and believable in the
short run," he said.
But proponents believe only helium3 can pay its own way.
"Water just isn't that valuable," Schmittsaid. Besides the helium, a mining
process would produce water and oxygenas by-products, he says.
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