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| Moon gas may solve Earth's energy crisis | |
| 2004-11-26 | |
| A potential gas source found on the moon's surface could hold the key to meeting future energy demands as the earth's fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades, scientists say. Mineral samples from the moon contain abundant quantities of helium 3, a variant of the gas used in lasers and refrigerators. "When compared to the earth the moon has a tremendous amount of helium 3," Lawrence Taylor, a director of the US Planetary Geosciences Institute, said. "When helium 3 combines with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) the fusion reaction proceeds at a very high temperature and it can produce awesome amounts of energy. "Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year." Helium 3 is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds and would have to be extracted from moon soil and rocks. To extract helium 3 gas the rocks have to be heated above 800 degrees Celsius. Dr Taylor says 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium. Only 10 kilograms of helium are available on earth. Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam has told the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon that the barren planet held about 1 million tonnes of helium 3. "The moon contains 10 times more energy in the form of helium 3 than all the fossil fuels on the earth," Mr Kalam said. However, Dr Taylor says that the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy is still in its infancy and could take years to develop. "The problem is that there is not yet an efficient type of reactor to process helium 3," he said. "It is currently being done mostly as a laboratory experiment. Right now at the rate which it (research) is proceeding it will take another 30 years."
"It really could be used as a future fuel and is safe. It is not all science fiction. "There are visionaries out there and now the question arises where the funds come from. If people get on board to do it there is no doubt it could be done." Dr Taylor echoed Dr Lawrence's views, adding that there are no funds available for funding non-petroleum energy projects in the United States.He warns of the exhaustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas on earth. "By 2050 the whole world will have a major problem. We need to be thinking ahead," Mr Taylor said. "Right now we are not thinking ahead enough. Some of us are. But then the people who make the decisions and put money on the projects are not. They think only about the next elections. "If we set our hearts on the moon and have the money to do it, then we do it pretty fast. "However, it could be done well within 10 years if the sources of finance are generated to get this (reactor) going." | |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #19 Does Allan approve of this project? |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-11-26 7:25:05 PM |
| #18 Or hold them captive and force-feed them baked beans, and harvest the resulting methane. I think Michel Moore can produce more methane as one hundred scientists. |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-11-26 4:35:18 PM |
| #17 I thought Coca Cola owned the advertising rights to earth side? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-11-26 4:34:13 PM |
| #16 Strip mining the moon is OK by me as long as they dig in a huge Star of David pattern that can be seen by certain moon worshippers in the middle east. |
| Posted by: ed 2004-11-26 3:22:02 PM |
| #15 "Lets just say, for the sake of discussion, that this He3 thing is real and really works" Its a bunch of crud hyped up about by environmentalist type scientists. Heres a little factoid, fusion reactions using deuterium and tritium are easier to produce than a He-3 reaction, however the difference is the neutrinos as well as the other harmful radioactive byproducts that are produced in a deuterium/tritum reaction are mainly absorbed by an He-3 variant. Hence the whole hypothesis says that this is merely a CLEANER way of doing a fusion reaction. Yet what they don't seem to get is why would earth's scientists who are working on these projects not try to do the easier reaction first to make sure it works? |
| Posted by: Valentine 2004-11-26 2:33:55 PM |
| #14 "We'd produce more energy if we'd just put these clowns to work winding up springs." Or hold them captive and force-feed them baked beans, and harvest the resulting methane. As an engineer, all I can do when reading whimsical crap like this is just laugh. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-11-26 1:40:35 PM |
| #13 I'm already laughing. We'd produce more energy if we'd just put these clowns to work winding up springs. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-11-26 1:26:08 PM |
| #12 Great resources here. From which; One tonne He3 requires 22km^2 of terrain to be processed to a depth of 3m. This is roughly 4690m * 4690m * 3m (about 2.75 miles on a square and a yard deep), which whilst big is not really huge compared to the operations that go one everyday in the farming of corn (US or Canada). It would effectively be strip mining (the replacement rate of He3 is essentially irrelevant), but there's quite a lot of regolith on the moon. Now all we need is a Deuterium-He3 reactor, a reliable method of shifting the good stuff home and some good ole tractor boyz and we're laughing! |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2004-11-26 1:20:36 PM |
| #11 They are talking about using helium 3 in a fusion reactor. The researchers working on fusion reactors have been âpredictingâ commercial fusion power plants in only twenty years since the â70âs. The scientists making the âpredictionsâ are the oneâs who stand to benefit from more research money. Someday I expect fusion to be a viable method of generating power. (Of course sunlight is already fusion generated.) Unless there is some unforeseen development such as âcoldâ fusion or a nanotech breakthrough, I expect fusion to remain a âpromisingâ power source for the next fifty years. Keeps promising, never delivers. I do support limited fusion research. The knowledge gained is valuable even if it doesnât lead to commercial power generation. (I donât support the moonbat project of mining helium 3 on the moon.) |
| Posted by: Anonymous5032 2004-11-26 1:14:30 PM |
| #10 They are talking about using helium 3 in a fusion reactor. The researchers working on fusion reactors have been âpredictingâ commercial fusion power plants in only twenty years since the â70âs. The scientists making the âpredictionsâ are the oneâs who stand to benefit from more research money. Someday I expect fusion to be a viable method of generating power. (Of course sunlight is already fusion generated.) Unless there is some unforeseen development such as âcoldâ fusion or a nanotech breakthrough, I expect fusion to remain a âpromisingâ power source for the next fifty years. Keeps promising, never delivers. I do support limited fusion research. The knowledge gained is valuable even if it doesnât lead to commercial power generation. (I donât support the moonbat project of mining helium 3 on the moon.) |
| Posted by: Anonymous5032 2004-11-26 12:59:09 PM |
| #9 No blood for helium!! Make the Moon a nuclear-free zone!! |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2004-11-26 12:25:15 PM |
| #8 Aside from the cost of processing 5 billion tonnes of rock each year on the moon, the quoted enery figures are based on extracting the energy using nuclear fusion. So far, the only way we have to do this with high efficiency is in a bomb. This is just a bunch of moon bats talking to hear themselves. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-11-26 11:48:00 AM |
| #7 Lets just say, for the sake of discussion, that this He3 thing is real and really works. Any bets on how long it would take the luddites to start screaming about "Destroying the Pristine Lunar Environment"? Or that it is a plot by BushCheneyHalliburtonetc. to, ohh, heck, you think of something. Note, present concerns about contaminating extraearth sites to throw off scientific discoveries dosen't count. I'm talking about the purely irrational concerns over the Lunar Enviroment. |
| Posted by: N Guard 2004-11-26 11:24:51 AM |
| #6 "Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year." To extract helium 3 gas the rocks have to be heated above 800 degrees Celsius. Dr Taylor says 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium. The 25 metric tons of helium 3 would require the processing of 5 billion metric tons of rock. I wonder if any of these bright folks bothered to calculate the energy cost of heating 5 billion metric tons of rock to 800° C, not to mention transporting the needed equipment to the moon and the mining of the rock. I have serious doubt this scheme could ever be a net positive energy producer. |
| Posted by: Biff Wellington 2004-11-26 11:21:16 AM |
| #5 We can fly turkey guts to the moon to power the helium 3 extractors. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-11-26 10:48:26 AM |
| #4 Only 10 kilograms of helium are available on earth why, oh why, do we persist in expending this scarce resource in balloons and making us talk like Donald Duck??? Why? Oh...Helium 3.... Nevermind |
| Posted by: Emily Litella 2004-11-26 9:54:04 AM |
| #3 The last 3 decades, anyway. :) |
| Posted by: eLarson 2004-11-26 9:18:12 AM |
| #2 as the earthâs fossil fuels dry up in the coming decades I've heard this how many times now? |
| Posted by: Raj 2004-11-26 9:16:26 AM |
| #1 Helium 3 may not work so all of this is hypothetical. I think it's worth sending up a sample return mission to bring back some of the stuff though. |
| Posted by: RJ Schwarz 2004-11-26 9:06:40 AM |