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Helium-3 advocates claim that it, conversely, would be nonradioactive, obviating all those problems. But a serious critic has charged that in reality, He3-based fusion isn't even a feasible option. In the August issue of Physics World, theoretical physicist Frank Close, at Oxford in the UK, has published an article called "Fears Over Factoids" in which, among other things, he summarizes some claims of the "helium aficionados," then dismisses those claims as essentially fantasy.
Close points out that in a tokamak--a machine that generates a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to confine the superheated plasmas necessary for fusion--deuterium reacts up to 100 times more slowly with helium-3 than it does with tritium. In a plasma contained in a tokamak, Close stresses, all the nuclei in the fuel get mixed together, so what's most probable is that two deuterium nuclei will rapidly fuse and produce a tritium nucleus and proton. That tritium, in turn, will likely fuse with deuterium and finally yield one helium-4 atom and a neutron. In short, Close says, if helium-3 is mined from the moon and brought to Earth, in a standard tokamak the final result will still be deuterium-tritium fusion.
Second, Close rejects the claim that two helium-3 nuclei could realistically be made to fuse with each other to produce deuterium, an alpha particle and energy. That reaction occurs even more slowly than deuterium-tritium fusion, and the fuel would have to be heated to impractically high temperatures--six times the heat of the sun's interior, by some calculations--that would be beyond the reach of any tokamak. Hence, Close concludes, "the lunar-helium-3 story is, to my mind, moonshine."
Close's objection, however, assumes that deuterium-helium-3 fusion and pure helium-3 fusion would take place in tokamak-based reactors. There might be alternatives: for example, Gerald Kulcinski, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has maintained the only helium-3 fusion reactor in the world on an annual budget that's barely into six figures.
Kulcinski's He3-based fusion reactor, located in the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, is very small. When running, it contains a spherical plasma roughly 10 centimeters in diameter that can produce sustained fusion with 200 million reactions per second. To produce a milliwatt of power, unfortunately, the reactor consumes a kilowatt. Close's response is, therefore, valid enough: "When practical fusion occurs with a demonstrated net power output, I--and the world's fusion community--can take note."
Still, that critique applies equally to ITER and the tokamak-based reactor effort, which also haven't yet achieved breakeven (the point at which a fusion reactor produces as much energy as it consumes). What's significant about the reactor in Wisconsin is that, as Kulcinski says, "We are doing both deuterium-He3 and He3-He3 reactions. We run deuterium-He3 fusion reactions daily, so we are very familiar with that reaction. We are also doing He3-He3 because if we can control that, it will have immense potential."
The test of a new lining that can take the heat of fusion could be crucial for a planned reactor in France.
Engineers are developing a more flexible outfit--just the thing for a mission to the moon.
Commercial IEC Fusion possible in < 10 yrs?
I've been researching the work of Dr. Bussard over the last couple weeks. It is apears he has solved many of the remaining physics issues with IEC Fusion. However, being an EE by training and experience, the physics are currently beyond me. I would be very interested in someone else's take on the research. This is a summary of his work over the last 15 years: http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC%20Paper.pdf
Guest (Gblaze43)
Re: Commercial IEC Fusion possible in < 10 yrs?
Make sure you go here to get more info on Bussards work.
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/
"Since tritium is highly radioactive, that makes containment a big problem as structures weaken and need to be replaced."
Who changed the specs of the universe? Last I checked, Tritium's half-life was ~12 years, and gave off a beta particle as it decayed. Did beta particles suddenly become more dangerous?
Tritium is radioactive enough to be significantly toxic. A micro-vial of 20cc filled to just atmospheric pressure with tritium would be in the multi-curie range. If inhaled, it has a long enough biological half life to produce real biological damage, like serious cancers or birth defects in offspring.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps the stuff tightly license and regulated. The NRC will inspect a prospective commercial licensee's place, and every molecule of tritium or tritiated compounds that will be used has to be accounted for. No use or storage in residential zones is ever permitted. The state of Illinois sued a power company for release of tritium last year.
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2006/03/20/3/index.html
It's a really sad comment on our funding priorities that we're spending so little on fusion research that important work like this is having to get by on private donations. Research on near-term technologies that private industry would be perfectly happy to pay for is being funded by federal money while long-term technologies that can only get done by federal money isn't getting done at all.
DoE is spending about $300 million/year on fusion, with most of it going to tokamaks. Bob Bussard, who used to work in that field, used to say that the Soviets gave us the tokamak idea in the hope that it would prevent us from ever achieving practical fusion power.
Bussard is a pioneer in Inertial Electrostatic Containment fusion. Focus Fusion is another interesting idea, and so is Colliding-Beam fusion. While we can't be sure that any of these will work, they are all a lot more promising than the tokamak. If they do work, we will have 100 MW power plants that will fit in your living room. It is a disgrace that DoE has supplied no funding for any of these. The Colliding Beam work is fortunate to have the support of Paul Allen, but the other two are essentially stymied for lack of $3 or $4 million.
I am sorry to report that Bob Bussard died yesterday, which will presumably slow IEC fusion even more.
Any Fusion research that doesn't make heavy use of Maxwell's equations combined with Hydrodynamics requiring huge computing facilities gets little respect in much of academia; Little Government money will follow. IEC fusion is dismissed by those folks by way of bremsstrahlung being called too great, yet it's parameters are never studied in an IEC device. There may be ways out of the Bremsstrahlung problem.
One possible solution to revive IEC fusion research is to pin those naysayers down on what the energy balance threshold is, then offer a DARPA style contest with a fat $$ award going to that team that exceeds it. Perhaps something like 1 watt-hour output of protons / He3 for a kilowatt-hour input of electrical energy would warrant an the first award.
Any Fusion research that doesn't make heavy use of Maxwell's equations combined with Hydrodynamics requiring huge computing facilities gets little respect in much of academia; Little Government money will follow. IEC fusion is dismissed by those folks by way of bremsstrahlung being called too great, yet it's parameters are never studied in an IEC device. There may be ways out of the Bremsstrahlung problem.
One possible solution to revive IEC fusion research is to pin those naysayers down on what the energy balance threshold is, then offer a DARPA style contest with a fat $$ award going to that team that exceeds it. Perhaps something like 1 watt-hour output of protons / He3 for a kilowatt-hour input of electrical energy would warrant an the first award.
DON'T LOSE time and money around the fusion energy illusion and the lunar-helium-3 dream!!!
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I think that fusion energy researches are a GIANT WASTE of TIME and MONEY (several Billion$$$ so far) since the (cold/hot/semi-hot) fusion is ONLY a scientific curiosity that NEVER will have any commercial applications, NOT EVEN if a fusion machine will (finally!) reach a stable, "self-sustained" reaction, because we DON'T NEED any fusion reactor AT ALL as explained in this article:
http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/003moonhelium.html
At the (enbarrassing) scenario of the (failed) fusion research, now, somebody (scientists, newspapers, space forums, etc.) have added the "Lunar Helium-3" factor/dream/illusion (something like the lunar poles' water...) despite it's ONLY a THEORY so far, since there is NO EVIDENCE that our moon hides a so giant He3 treasure!
There are only some scientits who "believe" that... 1. the He3 from the Sun STILL is on the moon surface, after BILLIONS years... 2. millions meteorites crashed on the moon have just "disseminated" the He3 on the surface rather than (as appears more logical) SLINGED this very light element in Space... 3. then, we can (really) find ONE million tons of He3 on the moon!
Then, they "believe" that, mining tons of Lunar-He3 and bring them to earth, will be "so easy and cheap" that He3-He3 energy could WIN on prices against oil, methane, coal, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, biofuels and geothermal energy!!!
well, just to inform them... EACH moon mission will cost (at least) $9 billion (including the shared R&D and fixed costs) to bring back to earth LESS THAN 100 kg. of moon rocks at a price of $90,000,000.oo per kg.!!!
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Re: DON'T LOSE time and money around the fusion energy illusion and the lunar-helium-3 dream!!!
'There are only some scientits who "believe" that...the He3 from the Sun STILL is on the moon surface, after BILLIONS years... millions meteorites crashed on the moon have just ...(as appears more logical) SLINGED this very light element in Space...'
And yet the US possesses the lunar soil samples brought back by the Apollo missions as hard evidence that He3 does still reside on the moon and those samples are precisely how this moon-mining scenario began.
do you have a NASA source of that?
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do you have a NASA source of that? (with the exact amount of He3)
of course, the lunar regolith could have some "traces" of He3 and other gases... but we are talking of ONE MILLION tons for indutrial extraction!
.
Re: do you have a NASA source of that?
Yes. Harrison Schmitt, formerly crew member on Apollo 17 and the only geologist among the Apollo astronauts, currently chairman of the NASA steering committee. Schmitt's estimate of the He3 available on the moon is about half a million tons.
Re: Re: do you have a NASA source of that?
Assuming the He3 is up there and readily available, might it not be more practical from an engineering and economics standpoint to build the fusion reactor on the moon and devise a method of transmission of the power to the earth? Perhaps it would prove practical with regard to powering a lunar industrial complex. A few decades seems an appropriate time frame for solving the lunar and space difficulties. Perhaps it will be enough time to develop the fusion technology given low gravity and essentially no environmental hazard concerns. That is, structural considerations will be much easier to deal with at 1/6th the gravity, and when the facility becomes too activated to continue safe operation, we can simply abandon in place. Anyone with any solid knowledge of the challenges associated with a moon-based power facility care to comment? What do the hardcore physicists say about the He3-He3 reaction? My limited knowledge makes me skeptical. Is there a source of D readily tappable at the moon or would we need to collect it and bring it in (from farther out in space or up from earth)?
excellent article about the Helium-3 from an Oxford elementary particle physicist >>>
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a Google.Groups.Space user has found this excellent article about the Helium-3:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30679
.
Re: excellent article about the Helium-3 from an Oxford elementary particle physicist >>>
This is the same article by the same Oxford physcist, Frank Close, that the Tech Review piece here explicitly mentions and then shows to be based on invalid assumptions, since Close assumes that only Maxwellian, tokamak-based fusion is possible -- rather than inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC), which the folks described in the TR article here are doing.
Other paths to fusion - not mentioned here - include Bussard's 'Polywell' (a variation of IEC) and collisional fusion, developed at UC Irvine.
However, I'm curious. Given that you bring up Frank Close's argument as if the TR piece here didn't describe it in some detail, did you even read and understand the TR article here before you started arguing with it?
Re: Re: excellent article about the Helium-3 from an Oxford elementary particle physicist >>>
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nascent said: "...is the same article by the same Oxford physcist, Frank Close, that the Tech Review piece here..."
you're right
nascent said: "...did you even read and understand the TR article here before you started arguing with it..."
of course, I've read the article when it was published (august 23) but without open all links and I've not re-read it again the day of my last comment (august 30) so I forgot some parts (I read several articles every day)
about "understand"... consider that english is not my mother language, so it's difficult to understand everything I read...
about the "inertial electrostatic confinement"... there is any WORKING machine yet???
.
Re: Re: Re: excellent article about the Helium-3 from an Oxford elementary particle physicist >>>
Yes, as the TR article describes. The machine in Madison, Wisconsin, does both He3-deuterium fusion and He3-He3 reactions.
Look, I can understand scepticism about something like the ITER fusion project, which is impractically large - the size of an aircraft carrier - in order to address a number of nearly impossible problems. That's why the possibility of alternative, non-Maxwellian paths to fusion -- far cheaper, smaller, tabletop technologies -- is worth at least considering. IEC is a technology with a long provenance, going back to Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television --
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/15723
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_electrostatic_confinement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fusor
There are also other alternative approaches besides IEC --
http://www.ap.columbia.edu/SMproceedings/7.EmergingConcepts/7.Physics.pdf
Has anyone considered the possible effects of large scale mining on the moon? I'm thinking if He3 is eventually used to produce energy, it will be mined to oblivion - and might there be some effect on the density of the moon / gravitational changes...
Re: Possible effects of mining
Intresting.. Read up on the Hopi Indian prophecy.
Another Hopi prophecy warns that nothing should be brought back from the Moon -- obviously anticipating the Apollo 11 mission that returned with samples of lunar basalt. It this was done, the Hopi warned, the balance of natural and universal laws and forces would be disturbed, resulting in earthquakes, severe changes in weather patterns, and social unrest.
Hopi prophecy states that World War III will be started by the people who first received the Light -- China, Palestine, India and Africa. When the war comes, the United States will be destroyed by "gourds of ashes" which will fall to the ground, boiling the rivers and burning the earth, where no grass will grow for many years, and causing a disease that no medicine can cure.
Go fusion.. go...
That's about .0000005 pounds per square foot, spread out nice and even across the entire lunar surface. I'm an AE, not a physicist, but this stuff better be dynamite to be worth processing that much moon gunk, let alone getting it back to Earth. We're talking on-moon processing sites that either have to be mobile or have fleets of miner vehicles. Wait... AE in me is getting excited... let's do it!
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lowilliams
17 Comments
Fusion
Little helium 3 is available on earth. The pesimists say fusion is 50 years in the future. How far in the future will it be before mining the moon is a practical proposition?
We need fusion YESTERDAY! We should be working hard to exploit boron 11 plus proton fusion. It is more nearly radiation free than a mix of deuterium and what ever else. There is gobs of boron and protons available right here on earth.
Reply
Siphon
152 Comments
Re: Fusion
Seeing how fusion is decades away, it makes more sense to look at e.g. cleaner coal and carbon capture and sequestration technologies. That would free up more time to work out fusion (or something else) for the long run.
Reply
dwalters
1 Comment
Re: Re: Fusion
Well, you are, of course, ignoring the 800 lbs gorilla in the room, are you? FISSION. Given that costs are WAY cheaper than the mis-named "Clean Coal" (A marketing ploy), we should be building hundreds of nuclear power plants, now.
David Walters
Reply
lschuber
13 Comments
Re: Re: Re: Fusion
Agreed!
Fusion may never prove generally practical on earth. The materials engineering problems seem insurmountable from an economic perspective. Niche applications seem likely, but we are still probably more than fifty years from it. In the mean time, fission is proven and cost effective. Only political and psychological barriers remain. We have about a century of fossil fuels that we will consume, and during that time, we will improve fission and move to more reliance on it. The most probable source of our energy 150 years from now is likely not yet imagined. And if Aubrey proves prescient, perhaps we will be alive to see it. ;-) (For what little it is worth, I expect to live 50 to 60 more years, which will be long enough to see many new fission power plants go online in the U.S. but perhaps insufficient to see a commercial fusion power source of any size.)
Reply
Siphon
152 Comments
Re: Re: Fusion
That's why I said "cleaner coal", not "clean coal" Which isn't a marketing ploy, a DCFC fed with coal is very clean, and allows easy sequestration.
Nuclear cheap? Well we have all witnessed that lately, with up to 80% subsidies thrown around you should know where it's at.
And you can't build enough of them to matter anyway.
Reply
siiix
1 Comment
Re: Fusion
i do not see why "YESTERDAY"?!? oil is still dirt cheap, till the barrel is under $200-$250 its still workable - and that not gonna happen probably till 2030, besides enough money invested humanity could have (a) working moon mining facility and completed reactors in less then 10 years - but easy... its all a question of cash this days.. its not the 1960's anymore, and it clear that for this purpose there is nothing to expensive ! the nasa's yearly budget is 16bill, the world spending on oil in 2007 in 300bill, now honestly you think by investing lets say a trillion we could not be mining and producing energy in less then 10 years ?!
Reply