China Plans to Strip Mine the Moon for Rare Helium-3 | Hacker News Reader

China Plans to Strip Mine the Moon for Rare Helium-3

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72 pointsmrfusion42 comments

Interesting, but...

China's "plans" really means the chief scientist of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program said Helium-3 could be a potential energy source. There's no real evidence of any formal "plans" in this article.

As far as I know, the only economically viable business model that makes use of Lunar Helium-3 is as fuel for fusion reactors. According to Wikipedia[1] this means second generation fusion reactors. But nobody even has a workable first generation fusion reactor yet.

Original source is the Daily Mail.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

Indeed, although it needs to be pointed out that in theory, it's very possible 1st generation fusion reactors will be economically unviable, since the neutrons they produce will steadily transmute them, that is, turn their atoms into different and generally radioactive elements, decaying and then destroying their ability to function, leaving piles of radioactive junk.

The interest in Helium-3 is due to the fact that it can be anutronically fused (although I've read there's doubts about being able to effectively extract energy from such a reactor). So Helium-3, and strip mining the moon!!! has been thought about for a long time.

Heck, it's part of the background for one of the major anime franchises that started in 1979, Mobile Suit Gundam. In that, through magic physics, they have "refrigerator sized" fusion reactors, but they must be fueled by Helium-3 because the magic physics isn't neutron proof (little is). So the "Jupiter Energy Fleet" plays a role modeled on the Arabs/OPEC of the '70s, pulling the strings behind most of the conflicts of the Universal Century timeline. (Paptimus Scirocco is an Arab as viewed by a group of Japanese animators in 1985, his hair style is much less crazy if you know that.)

I mention this to point out how long it's been generally known we're likely to need a lot of Helium-3 for fusion reactors, i.e. entering popular culture three decades ago.

Can't we produce enough Helium-3 to build and test reactors like this?

If Wikipedia is to be believed, we would need a substantial amount of Helium-3 to make a working reactor. At the moment, the US produces a mere 8kg of Helium-3 per year(and that's 60,000 litres!).

Apparently a litre can sell for as much as $2000, so even if the Chinese brought it back from the moon (I really wonder how, if 8KG take 60,000 litres of space, are they planning to bring back 20 tonnes??) they would still make profit.

It is extremely unlikely they could profit, because if they raise supply price would drop like a rock. I doubt there's much demand for Helium-3 predicated on prices lower by even two orders of magnitude to support a raise in supply, and that's probably being pretty generous in terms of how cheaply it could be supplied. Unless Helium-3 can actually be used to perform real fusion in the real world, in which case the seller would have an opportunity to capture the suddenly immensely greater value of Helium-3, there's no reason to go get until the fusion systems are running in the real world.

From what I understand, there is enough demand even without using it for fusion - in medical scanners and such. But yeah, I am not completely convinced you could make money by mining it from the moon.

Assuming China does want to go get it [1], profit may not be the motive. It might just be a resource grab. Uneconomical in the short run, but with a vague expectation that the resource will skyrocket in value years from now. I doubt China is interested in resale, so much as stockpiling.

[1] I say "assuming...," because this article is basically just speculating.

There's huge demand for liquid Helium... but that's Helium-4. It has its own supply issues coming in the future, but at the moment is relatively plentiful, and even when we run out we probably won't be willing to go to the Moon to get the tons upon tons of Helium we use. See the graph here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Applications showing the breakdown of the 47 million cubic meters of Helium used in the US in 2013. Helium-3 demand is much smaller, since, well, it has to be.

It's not quite on topic, but whynot... here's my analysis of what it would take to create all the helium we use via fusion: http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2922

I imagine something involving balloons. I guess if you have the tech to strip mine the moon, you might have a shot at liquefying it, but that's what? 4 degrees K? Either case seems challenging.

At least you have a nice near-absolute zero heatsink for the lunar night.

Not all that "near": CMB is 2.75K. You'd also have to shield the radiators from the lunar regolith, which is quite a bit warmer, and from the Sun when it's in the sky...

You can bring it back as a liquid. (Classical, not superfluid)

Boil-off would be a problem, however. (If you want to get fancy, you bring back a He4 tank and a refrigerator, keeping the He3 liquid by boiling He4 into space)

Liquid He4 has a density on the order of 125g/L at boiling point at 1atm. Don't know about He3, but even at 50g/L, that's ~20L/kg. Not nearly as bad.

There's no reason to test a reactor like this now. The H2 + He3 reaction is about an order of magnitude harder than H2 + H3, and nobody can do H2 + H3 yet.

To be precise, nobody has done breakeven fusion with any fuel. Achieving sub-breakeven fusion is quite easy with small fusor devices, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor) though that won't tell you much that's useful for scaling larger reactors, besides maybe testing first-surface materials. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma-facing_material)

I'm confused where the electrons go in he3 + he3 -> he4 + 2p fusion. Anyone know?

From reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Fusion_reactions, the 2p are two protons, and not positrons, as valarauca1 is saying.

So, 4 protons and 2 neutrons go in, 4 protons and 2 neutrons come out.

But charge still needs to be conserved -- I presume that the spare electrons just aren't shown in the reaction; if they were bound to the protons, then we'd see 2H rather than 2p.

The Daily Fail at work again. The world just wouldn't be the same without them. It would be better, but not the same.

Wasn't this the basic plot of Iron Sky? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/

Also Moon. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

Completely off-topic, but if you haven't seen Moon, do it.

It's an amazing movie.

i cannot agree more

It is a very good movie, but also a total downer.

it's also extremely slow-paced, so be aware of that.

Also features heavily in Planetes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

This seems a little crazy given that if you can do He3 fusion, you can also do D-D fusion, which makes He3 (half the time directly, otherwise it makes tritium which decays to He3). Fusion startup Helion is aiming to do it that way, saying only 6% of the energy would be released as neutron radiation.

Also of course, plain old fission reactors can produce He3, probably much more cheaply than attempting to harvest it from the moon.

Unless you put the reactor on the moon! :)

This isn't happening anytime soon. China's next mission is Chang'e 5 which plans to launch in 2017. Its a robotic sample return mission and probably a validation/verification mission to make sure and confirm the Helium 3 is in quantities that can turn a profit before even seriously considering a mining mission. Even after that mission, the Chang'e 6 mission will follow after that, building upon the success of the Chang'e 5.

Just like the US "Plans To" go to Mars in 30 years.

Before Helium-3 fusion works, first we need to get D-T fusion working.

Or... any kind of fusion to be practically net-energy positive. As in, not only are we getting more energy out than is needed to fuse, but also being able to capture enough of it to power the reactor continuously. I think we are a long ways off from that.

I'd like to see an expansion of research into Thorium reactors and other more intrinsically safe fission designs.

The US is much more likely to get to Mars in 30 years than China to start commercially using He3 fusion in any amount. (Not saying that I think the US is even remotely likely to put people on Mars in 30 year - beause I don't.)

Frankly I would be excited to see a relief for our energy crisis fuel exploration of "the next frontier." It really is the future of humanity to perfect (or at least improve upon) space travel, even if only for industrial purposes, and having a (sort of) realistic goal that will return profits could very well be the spark we need to get support behind it from budget writers.

> But it also included a substance that the report indicated could be of “even greater user” to our civilization, a substance which could revolutionize energy production.

They put this typo in quotes just to shame the (likely non-native English speaking) author? This kind of shit in pop-sci articles is getting pretty tired.

I'd bet on us needing He3 for all the helium dilution refrigerators keeping our quantum computers cool before betting on it as an energy source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_refrigerator

This made me remember an old game called Dark Colony.

wow…so interstellar wars/conflicts for resources is really not that far off…time to start playing starcraft to train for the future :)

Isn't there some sort of treaty that prevents stuff like this? China probably wouldn't even follow it however.

Is that birthday grade?

Yeah, wondering the same thing...

And how will they bring it DOWN from space? Won't they need to attach heavy weights to it to get it to fall through the atmosphere?!

-- (just kidding...)

Not at all, that's just the first phase of their plan. The second phase is to use it in place to lift exploratory space vessels off the surface of the moon, and beyond the bounds of the solar system.

How do the Moon Nazis feel about it?

Seriously, the article is about as factual as Iron Sky.

Hilarious movie though. The person who played Sarah Palin as US president was hilarious, each country's space ships, the iPod that ran the space ship, the albino-ized black guy... One of my favourite comedies of the year for sure, though I haven't found a trailer that does the movie justice yet.

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