Lunar Helium-3 Mining, Is it worth it?

Hi.

Just watched a documentary on the efforts being undertaken to plan return trips to the Lunar surface - primarily to mine for Helium-3.

What I take issue with is this:

1. They talk about "strip-mining" the Moon. I live in a mining town, and I know the devastation that strip-mining causes to the biosphere, so I'm a little hesitant about this approach. (Then again, there isn't really a biosphere on the Moon.)

2. Isn't the amount of He-3 that we will be able to find on the Moon a finite resource? If it is, then we run into the same problem as using fossil fuels; we will run out of the material some day.

So is it really worth it to undertake this endeavour in our search for new sources of energy?

Consumables and non-renewables will always be needed in some applications for the foreseeable future, because some applications require a level of energy density that we just can't obtain otherwise with present technology or theories.


If you could one day make fusion reactors small enough to power cargo ships' engines, then Helium 3 would surely be worth it.

Moreover, building enormous solar collectors on the moon could be done simultaneous to the He3 projects, and beam the energy to the Earth or to spacecraft who need the energy for mining operations elsewhere in the solar system.

He3 could be used in fusion powered rocketry or space-based refineries in the future, assuming stable reactors with a net gain are ever produced at an appropriate scale.


I thought about using nano-technology and thermoelectrics to fuse exactly one pair of atoms at a time, and so harvest the energy at the atomic scale. Perhaps this would be less wasteful than reactions at macroscopic scales.

Recently, scientists produced a computer chip that actually produces neutron radiation for medical uses at the nano scale.

Surely, that bodes well for nano-scale fusion reactors with a net gain?


If you had a 30% efficient He3 fusion reactor, then at present day SE Louisiana electricity prices, He3 would be worth about 8 million dollars per Kilogram if used for grid power.

As a replacement for diesel fuel in cargo ships, it would actually be worth about 24 million dollars per kilogram, and could fuel a ship at 100,000 horse-power non-stop 24/7 for about 12 years....at 30% efficiency....

This completely misses the point of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Each successful fission or fusion reaction releases neutrons and radiation which assist in the reactions of nearby atoms. Fusing atoms one at a time is a colossal waste of energy, and you greatly underestimate the energies required for fusion.

This post has been edited by flyingbuttressman on May 26 2012, 02:51 AM

Suppose you could build some sort of nano-channel to guide the daughter particles of each nano-reaction into another nearby chamber to power the next reaction.

Maybe the reaction has a preferred orientation regarding initial condition and final direction of release of the neutron, which might be manipulated with properly shaped nano containers.

If possible, this would be more efficient than an open reaction in a large container where neutrons are free to fly in any direction, including impacting the wall of the reactor ( even penetrating it) in a useless waste of energy.



It was only an idea, FBM.

Freaky effects have been discovered at nano-scales which change the properties of ordinary materials in unexpected ways.

Heck, nano-particles blur the difference between the definition of chemical and physical changes now as compared to what was taught 15 years ago.


All I'm saying is there might be ways of doing this which are more practical than a building the size of a football field.

We have them in submarines. The most inefficient part of a nuclear reactor is not the reaction, it's the fact that the only way we can convert nuclear energy to electric energy is through steam turbines.

Nano-technology isn't magic. In the '50s everyone thought that by now, rockets would power our cars and we would be colonizing the solar system. Predictions about the future that don't take into account the practical realities of technology are no different than fantasy.

We have dirty, inefficient fission reactors in submarines.


Ten years ago, directed energy weapons and smart phones weren't practical realities, and graphene hadn't been discovered either; not to mention new GM foods, which for better or worse, will be producing 2 or 3 times the net yield of natural strains, though it remains to be seen whether that's a good and healthy thing in some cases.

We don't have any method of mass-producing nanotechnology at this point. In my opinion, the nature of non-manufacturing will pretty much dictate what we can do with the technology.

This is true, but consider we now mass produce lots of things that were once very hard to produce at all:

Chemicals
Vaccines (which is a nanotechnology in some senses).
Antibiotics.



As much as I am wary of GM foods, there was even an article the other day where they were experimenting with GM for producing human proteins for medical purposes, apparently in vaccines or supplements, by growing them in a plant, since the scientists claimed that it's harder for a plant virus to mutate and produce problems in humans or animals.

Imagine if you could grow a flu vaccine in the stalks of corn or sugar cane, instead of risky, messy eggs.


This is the sort of approach I would ultimately envision even with non-organic nano-technology, which is to use self-replication. The scientists don't know how to do the self replication directly, but they do know how to use GM to trick the existing organic systems into mass replication of the needed proteins.


We already do this in some cases where he nano-scale is not important in every day usage, yet it's actually involved and essential: Vinegar, cheese, yeast, ethanol, sugars, (especially sugar beets since the beet itself is useless before processing, but its structure contains the sugar components.

So even though we don't think of it much, these products actually involve mass produced nano-tech, but we haven't learned to improve or manipulate these systems just yet. With work, you could maybe make a better acetobacter, or a better cheese, or a better yeast, etc.


It may be possible to mass produce substrates or template components through engineered, DNA and DNA origami, which can be mass produced through GM of existing organisms, and then extracted and coated in composite material to make machines that are extremely small and very useful (and I mean primarily in medicine, maintenance, or composite building materials or coatings).


While the technical details of this is beyond our present comprehension, there is no theoretical reason why these techniques wouldn't work.


This could one day allow us to build cybernetic immune systems with the best of both organic and in-organic components, or extremely efficient energy harvesting devices, such as would be needed in any useful nano-machine, or possible future solar panels.


And back on the main topic, it has also become apparent that some micro-organisms are able to distinguish between and sort hydrogen atoms by isotope, somehow. Perhaps an engineered organism could sort He3 by isotope in order to mine, refine, and store it more efficiently, so that you don't have the wrong isotopes contaminating a reaction.

This post has been edited by Quantum_Conundrum on May 26 2012, 07:21 PM

I'm all for Lunar Helium-3 Mining.

1. Strip mining would be what it would take. There is no environment to ruin on the moon other than view outside @ night for that matter all the strip mining could take place on the side you don't see @ night. so the sight pollution could be easily avoided. and the resources gained could be put use to build infrastructure.

2. It is semi-finite admittedly a word I invented. It is constantly being replaced by the Sun. Eventually once the infrastructure is there we could build giant Bussard collectors to both provide power and direct collection.

As FBM pointed out the fusion powered nano technology thing is probably off the table. Solar powered Nano catalysts to separate minerals into elements or scrub CO2 may prove useful though.

I will say this would depend on a sustainable scalable Helium-3 fusion reactor design that has a net positive energy output. There are small scale reactors that have a net + energy output however there is limited run-time and the net + energy output has yet to be harnessed at least according to my sources.

The mining is a great idea that's waiting to happen. It will require sufficient technological infrastructure before it makes 'sense', and that's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

That said, unless we screw up the planet to the point where we cannot afford to develop space (i.e., through resources depletion or ecological devastation), it should happen *someday*. So, to make it happen sooner, if we proactively partake of activities that increase our technological base, we can be part of the 'process'. OTOH, if we help consume biodiversity or nonrenewables *unwisely* it becomes less likely.

So, how you spend *your* time and money really matters.