Even the Ruskies know about Peak Oil. Are we going back to the moon for Helium-3?

[tex]

Moon plan to give U.S. control over energy sources'

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JAN. 25. The United States is planning to use the Moon as a source of energy fuel that should help it establish ultimate supremacy on the Earth, a Russian newspaper said.

An ambitious programme to build a manned base on the Moon by 2020 unveiled by the U.S. President, George W. Bush, earlier this month was not a re-election gimmick as American and international media described it, but a strategic economically project, the authoritative Izvestia newspaper said.

A lunar base will enable the U.S. to bring back to Earth shiploads of Helium-3, a valuable fuel for thermonuclear reactors, which is abundant on the Moon but practically absent on the Earth. The newspaper quoted academician, Erick Galimov, as saying that a couple of shuttle spacecraft can bring to Earth enough liquified Helium-3 to meet all global energy needs for 12 months.

"If we had a thermonuclear reactor technology, it would be economically more efficient to deliver Helium-3 from the Moon today than generate power from fossil fuels or uranium," said Mr. Galimov, who heads the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Using Helium-3 in thermonuclear synthesis may prove the best way to meet global energy needs." The paper draws attention to the fact that the 2020 deadline Mr. Bush set for building a lunar base coincides with the expected construction of a thermonuclear reactor and a global energy crisis. With energy consumption in industrially developed countries growing at a rate of 10 per cent a year, thermonuclear power stations may be the only way to overcome an impending energy crux.

"Helium is ideal ecologically-safe fuel for thermonuclear technology," Mr. Galimov said. "The cost of bringing Helium from the Moon will be a fraction of the price of electric power generated today at nuclear plants." The Moon has an estimated 500 million tonnes of Helium-3 trapped in the upper layers of the lunar rock, whereas the Earth may have no more than a few hundred kg of the isotope, which is moreover embedded deep inside our planet.

The Moon colonisation plan announced by Mr. Bush will "enable the U.S. to establish its control of the global energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out," the daily said.

However, Mr. Galimov believes that Russia can complete with the U.S. in the race for the Moon. "Russia can well afford an economically profitable and inexpensive project to mine Helium-3 on the Moon," the Russian scientist said. "It will cost a mere $25-30 millions to extract Helium-3 by warming lunar soil and scraping the isotope from the surface with the help of lunar bulldozers."

[Sarge]

Helium 3.............only now do people catch on. And we'll be there first. Better save all your money now Saudi Arabia. You'll have absolutely nothing to offer anyone when we no longer need your oil.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

If that's true...that's pretty cool.

[Hitman56]

Now we have to worry about the Big Helium lobby.

[OURYEAR#56]

I can see it now" Race to the Moon II, the battle for Helium -3. I ....forget it

[BG]

They have to prove the reactor can work safely first. Also, the moon could run out of helium and then what? From what I uderstand, the chemical comes from solar winds. It doesn't grow. It is pieces frozen up from the sun.

Wonder if there could eventually be a way to create it syntheticly?

[tex]

Originally posted by IAMBG

They have to prove the reactor can work safely first. Also, the moon could run out of helium and then what? From what I uderstand, the chemical comes from solar winds. It doesn't grow. It is pieces frozen up from the sun.

Wonder if there could eventually be a way to create it syntheticly?

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21850&highlight=helium

Originally posted by tex

Its importance lies in the fact that it could be an efficient fuel for nuclear fusion reactors.

Fusion reactors are still under development and it will be many decades, if ever, before they provide power commercially.

But they have many advantages over conventional nuclear reactors in that they produce far more power and produce much less radioactive waste.

Today's design of fusion reactor uses tritium as a fuel, an isotope of hydrogen extracted from sea water. But Helium-3 would be even more efficient and produce even less radioactive waste.

Researchers and space enthusiasts see helium 3 as the perfect fuel source: extremely potent, nonpolluting, with virtually no radioactive by-product. Proponents claim it’s 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 with energy demands, expected to increase eightfold by 2050 as the world population swells toward 12 billion. The moon just may be the answer.

"Helium 3 fusion energy may be the key 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 about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt.

Cash crop of the moon

When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface.

"Helium 3 could be the cash crop for the moon," said Kulcinski, a longtime advocate and leading pioneer in the field, 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 of its energy equivalent in oil, he estimates. "When the moon becomes an independent country, it will have something to trade."

Economically unfeasible

Indeed for now, the economics of extracting and 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 strives to be one of the first commercial space-exploration companies. "Unless I'm mistaken, you'd have to strip-mine large surfaces of the moon."

While it's true that to produce roughly 70 tons of helium 3, for example, a million tons of lunar soil would need to be heated to 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius) to liberate the gas, proponents say lunar strip mining is not the goal. "There's enough in the Mare Tranquillitatis alone to last for several hundred years," Schmitt said. 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 sources in space is the way to go. But for him, H2O and not helium 3 is the ideal fuel source. His personal goal is to create gas stations in space by mining asteroids for water. The water can be electrolyzed into hydrogen or oxygen fuel 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 helium 3 can pay its own way.

"Water just isn't that valuable," Schmitt said. Besides the helium, a mining process would produce water and oxygen as by-products, he says.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/helium3_000630.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/226053.stm

[Johnny Punani2]

Cool...I wonder if Helium-3 will make you sound like an Umpa Lumpa?