It is true,
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/publist?which=uwfdm
See the “Progress reports” papers. The problem is, we arent exactly running the reactors in our labs just yet ( part of the problem is the lack of He3 )

Of course, theres always Space Solar Power from lunar materials would be achievable with current technologies, no research miracles needed.

You just dont see NASA investing into it _AT ALL_, neither can you find a single mention of it by DOE.
BTW, Japanese and Europeans have some pilot projects to make microwave-transmitted power a commercial reality, with solar powersats on roadmaps. US, AFAIK has exactly zero.

Kulcinski and FTI have presented a graduate course entitled “Resources From Space” in 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2001, taught by a variety of instructors including Harrison Schmitt. Each of these have extensive notes and pdf files online, and probably are the best sources for data on the Internet on the topic of using lunar resources for energy. These two guys are the leading proponents of helium-3 use; if anybody is going to make a good case for this, it’s them.

The key factor is the dilute nature of the helium-3 in the lunar regolith, and all the other stuff that’s mixed in there with it. Schmitt estimates on page 19 of lecture 10 in the 2001 course that the He3 abundance is “up to 30 ppb” or 30 parts-per-Billion-with-a-B in the top 10 feet of lunar soil. Also embedded in the lunar soil is 30-180 parts-per-Million-with-an-M of hydrogen and 30 parts-per-Million-with-an-M of normal helium or He2.

So, say you want a ton of helium-3 from the Moon. You’ve only got to do two things.

Step one, heat up 1,000,000,000 / 30 = 33,333,333 tons of lunar soil. That’s a lot of dirt and a lot of heat. All of the hydrogen and helium gas in the soil is baked off and captured. You get 2001 tons of hydrogen and helium – 1000 tons of hydrogen gas, 1000 tons of helium gas, and one ton of helium-3 gas.

Step two, you’ve got to separate the ton of helium-3 you want to ship back to Earth from the 2000 tons of normal helium and hydrogen you don’t. Getting the hydrogen out is relatively easy; just combine it with lunar oxygen to make water. Try to avoid a titanic explosion in the process. Separating that one-in-a-thousand helium atom you want from the helium that’s left, though, is hard. It’s the same problem faced with the Manhattan Project people trying to separate the U-235 uranium atoms that could make a bomb from the U-238 uranium atoms that couldn’t. You’d have to recreate wartime Oak Ridge isotope separation plants on the moon – and those aren’t going to be built from lunar material, I assure you.

As a point of interest, coal strip mines in the West get out 25 tons of coal for ever manhour of labor used. By this criteria digging up 33 million tons of moondirt per year would take 1.32 million manhours of labor. At 2000 manhours per year, that’s a required crew of 660 miners for one ton of He3 per year.

You say we need 30 tons of He3 per year – that’s the equivalent of 20,000 miners moving as much moondust around as the entire U.S. coal mining industry mines in coal in a year. I know, I know – the situation isn’t comparable, NASA would create a super-automated unmanned bulldozer fleet, etc. etc. Running on what? Costing what? Getting to the moon how? None of these are impossible factors, only impractical ones.

Then, there’s the question if a fusion reactor could ever be built that would use helium-3. Sure, it sounds good. But we haven’t even built a deuterium fusion reactor yet, and the physics of that is a LOT easier than getting a helium-3 reactor to work. In the 1950s fission reactors were going to be cheap and simple, too. Remember “electricity too cheap to meter”?

I dunno, Sylvia. It sure sounds good to say, here comes this shuttle with a one ton can of helium-3 on board back from space that’s landing on the runway to solve all of our problems (for two weeks – you need 30 tons per year, remember?), wave the flag and strike up the band. But when you look at what it takes in infrastructure to get that helium in the can on the moon, and what kind of infrastructure you’re going to pour it into once the can is offloaded and the band’s gone home, well, it’s just not quite so attractive to investors. Especially as long as they know they can easily scrape coal off of surface mines in the West and easily poke holes in the ground in the Arabian penensula for the next 500 years and KNOW coal and oil is going to be there.

And it will. We’ve got plenty of coal and oil to last for centuries, and plenty of conservatives who say global warming and greenhouse gases are liberal myths. Potentially dangerous combination.

AP, I know you’re going to read this – referee me here, keep me honest….

There Is No Energy Crisis. There is a supply crisis brought on by political organizations that are keeping prices artificially high. The organization is called OPEC and it is ultimately the source of most of the terrorist financing that threatens America. Getting rid of OPEC would be a lot easier than achieving “energy independence” from lunar resources. But that’s a political issue, not a scientific one.

It did look too good to be true — but Reuters reported it, and I knew posting it here would be a fast way of finding out what the catch is.

“There Is No Energy Crisis”

I presume theres no ecologic crisis either, then, right ?

My opinion is that there is very much an ecological crisis. I see it myself when I look at the muck formerly known as the Tennessee River a few miles from my house, I see it in the routine droughts every summer now in the South, I see it every time I go up to the Smoky Mountains and see all of the dead trees there, I see it in the stuff I read all over the Internet. Stuff is happening that is not “normal” or desirable. Why would a lack of an energy crisis imply lack of an ecological crisis?

Space advocacy groups have been pointing out Helium-3 for a long time. Searches related to lunar mining produce many references to He3. The British Interplanetary Society in 1977 suggested their Project Daedalus interstellar probe use pulsed fusion, with He3 from Jupiter — they considered the Moon, so the concept is at least that old. You might find a copy of “The High Frontier” in a nearby used bookstore, which has brief description of Daedalus.

Getting rid of OPEC would be a lot easier than achieving “energy independence” from lunar resources

I am curious just how would you go about getting rid of OPEC? So far the US occupied just one of its members (Iraq). Are you suggesting the US should attack the other 10? Blood for oil? Are you sure it’s a good idea?

it is ultimately the source of most of the terrorist financing

You’ve got evidence that Indonesia or Alger governments are financing terrorism? Care to share your source? Could it be the same source W used when he talked about WMD in Iraq?

As reported in the Sunday Telegraph, scientists at Nasa, the American space agency, have found that the Earth’s crust is a vast natural reservoir of hydrogen which has become trapped in ancient rocks.

My point here is that an American leader faced with two options, one setting up a expensive lunar energy/solar power satellite infrastructure and the other starting a cheap war knocking off the most richly oil-blessed countries in the world, is going to tend to concoct WMD stories in his State of the Union Address and do the latter.

I personally don’t propose to get rid of OPEC by force at all, and I personally am proud the American policy of force against OPEC has been remarkably restrained to a degree that few other countries would have emulated – least of all the old Soviets. The fact that America hasn’t overthrown OPEC by force and has instead sucked up and paid higher oil prices that have deeply hurt the American economy is in fact our major claim to the title of The Good Guys. I have personally come down against the current Gulf War II invasion of OPEC member Iraq on these pages several times and that position stands as my personal opinion.

Do I like OPEC or the Saudis or the Baathists of Iraq or any of those guys? No, I do not. Not one iota. I would not shed one tear at the passing of their governments, which are not democracies and do not care one iota for me and mine. I think they are a bunch of corrupt crooks many of whom are propped up by corrupt Americans.

However, THE FACT REMAINS they are the soverign owners of their country’s resources, and when the poker cards were dealt out to OPEC countries, they got their share of aces just like we English speakers did. If they want to play hardball and try to control prices through international collusion with the cards they were dealt, so be it. America can and does play a similar game of hardball with her aces.

War is a different matter – it is not a game. We get pissed when somebody “invades” our country and kills our citizens to the best of their ability on dark days like 9/11; other countries have the same right to get pissed when somebody invades theirs. Nine times out of ten, the side with the most and biggest guns wins.

As for evidence of OPEC government funding of terrorism in places like Algeria, all I can say is you should read what Steven Emerson, a former CNN reporter, has to say.

It doesnt imply it directly, but your proposed getting rid of OPEC and renewed cheap supply fossil fuels would do exactly what to ecology ?
So in turn, yes there is an energy crisis because IMO we cant afford to obtain sufficient energy with current methods if we are to preserve the ecology.

Hi Ricky!!

Well, we wouldn’t expect to supply Earth’s entire energy needs from day one on such a project; it’s going to start small and ramp up. Any major new energy source is going to be a multi-trillion dollar project anyway, so I don’t think putting and keeping 20,000 miners on the moon, or their equivalent in automation, is likely to be a real showstopper here. And separating the He-3 from the He-4 is much easier than separating U-235 from U-238 – the mass ratio is much higher. The simplest way is probably to cool them down and use the differing superfluid properties of the two liquid heliums – no need for huge gas centrifuge complexes.

To me the real problem with the He-3 idea is the non-existence of the reactors, as you point out. Kulcinski has a particular approach to fusion, however, which is quite different from that being advocated elsewhere; I don’t understand it myself, but it’s possible it could work as claimed. Worth spending a few hundred million on at this point, I think, but probably not worth betting a major space program on until the fusion reactor feasibility is better confirmed.

I agree that if something political were to happen that made oil $1 per barrel that it might very well lead to an ecological disaster even faster than the one we are in now. There’s so many angles on how we have the potential to mess up the environment, and probably are – emission of carbon dioxide and methane greenhouse gases, emission of combustion particulates, generation of an additional waste heat load that is the ultimate end result of all energy use – (except for earth based solar cells that use light that was already in circulation in our biosphere).

To me, the ultimate key is to stop the worldwide expnading birthrate and make significant cuts in the Earth’s population of humans. Until this underlying cause of the trouble is fixed, there is no hope whatsoever of having a desirable future on Earth 1000 years from now. All you are influencing by changing greenhouse emissions or particulate emmissions or waste heat reduction without dropping the population is the timing of the ultimate inevitable outcome. Ever increasing people mean more bad stuff produced that will eventually overwhelm the ecological balance. The details are merely numbers.

The key is to reach a stable and sustainable level of people and pollution that can be tolorated by the ecosystem. Some people say that zero population growth and population reduction leads to some sort of stagnation. I totally disagree. As soon as we developed the Industrial Revolution we substituted the bulk power of machines for the bulk power of humans. Intellectual progress is based on the individual. There is no reason to keep making more and more humans; they starve at worst, and are busy in makework middleman jobs like financial services and Wal-Mart greeters that contribute nothing at best.

Um…has that hit the hornet’s nest hard enough, or should I take a few more whacks?

If you’re prepared to spend multi-trillions, this is certainly doable. It helps to verify the reactor works first. I’m always for funding on basic physics toys like the shiny ball gizmo Kulcinski is building. If it glows, it’s automatically worth double the research funding in my book.

all this brings us back to our original topic. You speak of the ecosystems of earth like its a zero-sum game, closed system so to speak.
The catch is, it doesnt have to be. Nuclear waste products do not have to stay on earth. Energy is abundant in immediate vicinity of this green dot. Too much damage to crust while looking for precious minerals ? Well, again, there are other big rocks with no ecosystems to dismantle.
Too much energy imported ? Building a sufficient sunshade is not out of the realm of possibility.
etc. etc.
In short, its about damn time we expand our economic and ecologic frontiers beyond the rock we are sitting on.
But, as long as certain agencies keep on speaking about science & exploration only, i wouldnt expect anyone to get significantly excited.
Could we have a space agency whose charter is described in O’Neill’s “High Frontier” instead ?

This week’s “American Beat” editorial in Newsweek is on just this exact topic. If nothing else, it represents an “average American” input on the issue at hand…

My point here is that an American leader faced with two options, one setting up a expensive lunar energy/solar power satellite infrastructure and the other starting a cheap war knocking

I can’t agree. It’s more like expensive and unlikely to succeed lunar energy program and expensive and bloody war.

The fact that America hasn’t overthrown OPEC by force [snip] is in fact our major claim to the title of The Good Guys.

I don’t kill random people and take their valets either. I must be a Good Guy too :-)

I think they are a bunch of corrupt crooks many of whom are propped up by corrupt Americans.

Don’t doubt for a second.

However, THE FACT REMAINS they are the soverign owners of their country’s resources

That’s right. Not invading is not a favor.

As for evidence of OPEC government funding of terrorism in places like Algeria

Sorry, the PDF file you linked http://www.senate.gov/~govt-aff/_files/073103emerson.pdf does not mention Algerian government. I deliberately mentioned Alger and Indonesia only. Saudies and say Venezuelans don’t have the same agenda, although both countries are OPEC members.

I’m saddened that someone out-hustled me in setting up a crackhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to the White House

– actually, it’s called the National Space Society, which happens to be located at 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E.,
Suite 201,
Washington, DC 20003. NSS recommended pretty much what Bush proposed, as I reported on here back in October :-)

“Some people say that zero population growth and population reduction leads to some sort of stagnation…”

By “some people” I suppose you mean me (although I have plenty of company) since I have been saying this for many years, say it plainly at my website, and still believe it very strongly. But the point is moot, because zero population growth would be impossible to achieve by any means other than a tyrannical, oppressive government that would not be tolerated forever — in the first place, because there is a built-in biological drive toward reproduction (not just sex, but an impelling psychological desire for progeny that influences the majority of people, though of course not all individuals) and in the second place, because when the government tells people what they can’t do, that becomes what they most want to do! Do you really believe that the population of the world would tolerate government interference with their reproductive rights? Not even Americans would, and in many cultures large families are so highly valued that attempts to limit them would mean bloody violence. There would be cries of genocide in addition to the rebellion of individuals. Zero population growth is not going happen unless Earth adopts a policy of systematically killing off “surplus” children. We could achieve “significant cuts in the Earth’s population of humans” that way, but in no other (apart from a disastrous war, which would be sure to occur eventually if such an oppressive government were imposed).

Like it or not, we are subject to the reality of our human nature and to the laws of biological evolution, and those laws mean that it’s imperative for our species to expand into a new ecological niche. I do not mean colonies on other planets–though those will come in time–but the niche of space itself and the resources it contains. There will indeed be “no hope whatsoever of having a desirable future on Earth 1000 years from now” unless this happens.

The widely-promoted myth of “sustainable” levels of population and resource use I consider extremely dangerous, because for the short term, it discourages the use of technology to improve the lives of the less fortunate; and for the long term, it holds out the false hope that we can live on Earth forever without expanding our civilization beyond it. We can’t. The only choice we have (apart from extinction) is to make use of extraterrestrial resources before Earth’s ecology is destroyed so that Earth can be preserved, or to wait until it’s too late to preserve it and — if we’re then able to migrate elsewhere — leave it behind as a ruin. I see no reasons in favor of the latter course.

Well, I’m glad to see that the president is indeed thinking about using extraterrestrial resources. That’s encouraging, even if we get to read about it only from opponents. I hope Congress reads it.

If the hope of getting resources from the moon sets off a new space race, so much the better — it has long been acknowledged that the only reason we got to the moon in the first place was because of the space race. I don’t believe lunar resources should belong to the US or any other nation in the sense of territorial rights, but on the other hand, whoever finances mining surely has the right to the products of those mines. If China wants to pay for some mines, fine!

As for the treaty, it was signed before there was any knowledge about potential resources; a new situation makes it obsolete. We need a new treaty. But let’s not have one that interferes with the development of new technologies. The fact that we don’t have the capability of using helium right now doesn’t mean we’ll never have it. We’re not going to be able to mine anything on the moon anyway until a long time after we set up a base there. What people can’t seem to grasp is that whatever we do in space needs a long head start, and if we don’t make the start without full knowledge of where it will lead, we will never accomplish anything.

As for the editorial’s use of the emotion-arousing words “strip-mine”, “defile” and “rape,” it is contemptible. The moon and asteroids are lifeless. They do not have ecologies. Mining would be an entirely natural and acceptable use of them, unless he’d prefer increased future mining on Earth where it does damage the ecology.

I was about to reply that The High Frontier isn’t out of print, but when I went to get the Amazon URL I found that to my dismay, it has indeed gone out of print again (there was a new edition in 2000). There are many used copies available there, though, so I’m putting the URL in anyway. This is one book that every space advocate should own.

I’m not very knowledgeable about the technical details of past proposals, so I didn’t remember references to He3 that I have seen. What I wondered was why it wasn’t being talked about currently in connection with the energy crisis, and that has been answered! It looks as if O’Neill’s proposal for solar power satellites, which I have long supported, is the most practical one after all.

Using mining of fuel for a power technology which does not (yet) work to justify a project does not seem particularly effective.

paranoid delusion all other alternative energy advocates suffer from.  Solar, Fusion, and too some extend Nuclear (although Nuclear does have some redeeming qualities) all pitch their wears as the solution to the U.S. dependance on foreign petroleum.  This is ludicrous, all for the same reason.  All of these alternative energy solutions, all of them, provide on thing, electricity.  The U.S. dependance on foreign petroleum is not created by our use of electricity, but by our use of fuels derived from petroleum used in automobiles. Less than 1% (if properly graphed, the figure would probably be 1/10 of 1%) of imported Oil is used to power the electrical grid.  These, even if they worked perfectly, would not remove the United States from it’s dependance on foreign Oil.

Space advocates (like myself) have argued for He-3 for many years already. He-3 combined with solar arrays on the moon could supply the entire Earth’s energy needs for over a thousand years. But the FTI hasn’t succeeded in producing an He-3 reactor, so the argument is more difficult to use. Startup costs to get the lunar He-3 back from a private company are well over a billion dollars, so only the oil industry could afford to do it anyway!

Sufficient and suffciently cheap electricity make supplying fuel for automobiles trivial. Electrolysis of water creates hydrogen, combine with carbon and more energy gets hyrdocarbons aka fuels derived from petroleum. Of course, ideally you use the hydrogen directly. Actually, I object more to the morons who think hydrogen is a clean energy source. Hydrogen is only as clean as the electricity used to produce it. Simply put truly clean energy requires both hydrogen fuel infrastructure and clean electricity production, one without the other won’t work.

In the 70’s energy crisis, the key solution was,
far and away, conservation.

The 55 MPH speed limit saves about 20%.

Who wants to go 55, when 70 (here in Michigan)
is the norm? Well, on my 42 mile (each way)
commute takes 36 minutes at 70, vs., 42 minutes
at 55. That’s a difference of 6 minutes.
When you consider that it is difficult to
get there in under an hour – due mainly to
traffic issues (it’s nearly all highway),
the 6 minutes doesn’t amount to a hill of
beans.

Yet, my car gets about 33 miles per gallon
at 70, and about 39 miles per gallon at 60.
That’s 18%. That’s a big deal.

Now then, 39 MPG is a big deal at present.
I can’t afford to replace the car, at least
with an American car (despite working for
an American car company) because there isn’t
a single American car on the market that gets
39 MPG. Even the model I own doesn’t get
39 MPG anymore – and the new car is smaller!
Feh.

I could get a Toyota Prius. I could get
a deisel VW Jetta (45 MPG), at that’s it.

If you exclude immigration than most developed nations have or will have in the very near future negative growth. Those countries are not ruled by tyrannical, oppressive governments so to assume that zero population growth is impossible is not something i would say. I believe that the UN predicts a maximum population of 9 billion and i think that that may even be to much

Population isn’t the biggest contributor to the energy problem any more; it’s our expectation of continued increases in wealth and access to the world’s resources. See our discussion a little while back on fixing global warming. Per capita GDP is expected to rise a factor of 3 to 5 this century; energy use is expected to grow almost as fast. That’s the growth (in use of resources) we need to worry about.

This is not surprising. The article says the hydrogen is from deep water reaching very hot rock. The presence of water deep underground (anywhere below the “water table”) has long been known. The news here is that someone did actually measure some hydrogen.

Indeed, the abiotic theory of the origin of oil assumes that deep sources of carbon exist, resulting in methane (natural gas) leaking upward through the crust. The methane gets digested by bacteria and altered into oil. Perhaps free hydrogen combines with carbon down where water is being separated (I wonder what happens if water is in contact with carbon-rich magma…)

The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth.

"Startup costs to get the lunar He-3 back from a private company are well over a billion dollars, so only the oil industry could afford to do it anyway!"

I think it would be more than a billion just to build a *reliable* lunar lander/return craft. And mining and purification on the lunar surface? We don’t even know how to estimate that at this point because we haven’t figured out the best ways to do it. The whole thing is far far far far from happening for so many reasons. Just the sheer amount of engineering that hasn’t been done is staggering.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue it of course, but we need to be realistic about the cost before we jump right in.

WTF. The only reason to use He3 over, say, the oceans of deuterium we have here, is that it is cleaner as it doesn’t emit neutrons. Anyone willing to burn a fission reactor (us) isn’t going to want to spend an extra few billion just to clean his (already cleaner than fission) fusion reactor..

Population growth has been slowing for quite some time. This should have already suggested to you that there are ways other than government orders.

Education plays a significant part in reducing population growth. By 2050 it is expected that 75 developed countries will have stopped growing.

We can “afford to obtain sufficient energy with current methods”. Nuclear power. Clean and powerful. And it even gathers radioactives from the environment and isolates them.

Nuclear wastes? Most of the high radioactivity “waste” in the USA is nuclear fuel which has been used once. That’s due to a policy, not technology. Other countries use such “waste” fuel as fuel.

Unfortunately, about the only way President Bush is going to get us into space for anything significant is the same way that John F. Kennedy got us to the moon.

That is to get assassinated, and have the project become one more ‘memorial to the memory of the fallen hero’.

Even with that mindset in place, though, one wonders if Apollo would actually have flown when it did if the USSR hadn’t been pushing hard to do the run first. As it turned out, by the time the Russians abandoned their effort, we were already within reach.

Our window of opportunity’s gone, and it won’t come back. Whoever *does* manage to develop anything on Luna won’t be under the NASA umbrella, or any successor organization.

Well, there is something that is puzzling me in this sheme of ‘new’ energy/fuel concept.

I agree with your statement: hydrogen fuel should be made by a clean electricity-process as well.

For instance, fusion, which uses the melting of hydrogen-atoms. Hydrogen is created by electrolising water. Thus it needs electricity. Electricity created by….fusion? Which need…

<snip loop>

So, how exactly are we going to get rid of the old ways of making electricity?

I’m from Finland, EU, and from my point of view, althought US has a huge and efficient army (costing equal wellfare which we Finns do have and enjoy), it is a pure daydream US could ever invade entire middle-east without using WMD… which would, ofcourse, turn entire world against US, allowing anyone a right to develop nuclear weapons and other WMD for protection.

Iraq with soldiers lacking bullets and working guns, sure easy task to defeat. Anyone knows that. But for an example Iran, today a small superpower in it’s own region… alot harder if not impossible for US to takeover.

This is harsh, but perhaps just opinion…
"War is a different matter – it is not a game. We get pissed when somebody "invades" our country and kills our citizens to the best of their ability on dark days like 9/11; other countries have the same right to get pissed when somebody invades theirs. Nine times out of ten, the side with the most and biggest guns wins."

-US has a lot to blame itself for the events of 9/11. US trained and supported terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden, US used entire last century to protect its interests, which also was called as National Interest -policy. Simply put as: US must be a leader in everything, if someone has something that stands away, it must be taken away, even by using force. (Arabs are still very annoid, they are not forgetting people – in time this policy killed hundreds of thousands of them –> compared to 3200 americans – Im sure the pain of lost is same on both sides, don’t you agree?) Most and biggest guns wins? Most nations well capable to develop these "bigger guns" within months or years, including Finland, have agreed not to do so. This includes long range missiles also, which US is so keen to use. Having an ultimate army is more a choise than impossibility. EU could build one, infact it has already started, but if you ask me (refers more to the original topic); I would spend all that money preserved for military, to research like going to the moon, developing the fusion power and stuff like that. But unfortunately, military might has more (political)value, it always has.

Maybe, if we used all that money on moon project, it really would happen. We could have base and energy industry there. It is always the first steps which are hard ones to take, technology starts to develop soon after to make things easier.

Well technically the solution here is to just make more power then you use up, and probably have a small reserve fuel cell generator with some hydrogen if the reactor stops and you need to restart it.
It’s the same for petroleum in a way as well anyway, how do you transport the petroleum, well you burn petroleum etc.

Quickshot

Did you see that? He said “MONOPOLY”. Monopoly is bad. Always. Didn’t anyone see that word? It is horrible. Wake up, guys!

You know, it’s really hilarious that in all of this discussion of lunar helium, there has been practically no mention of oceans of deuterium for fusion reactors until your comment. A functioning fusion deuterium reactor based on limitless ocean deuterium would undermine the economics of both lunar He3 AND solar power satellites beaming microwave energy to earth. Compared to the problems of high level fission fuel rod nuclear waste, the low-level nuclear waste produced by irradiation of reactor structure by deuterium fusion neutrons is practically negligible in comparison and would almost certainly be deemed the better alternative by votors and investors when compared to a massive energy-oriented space investment.

deuterium-deuterium requires much higher densities/temperatures; deuterium-tritium is what people are really looking at for practical reactors. Obviously the tritium is naturally radioactive – you have to generate that somehow, which in most schemes involves coating the reactor in lithium. But it seems to be a ways off. The Kulcinski reactor (we’ve been talking about here) doesn’t require neutrons to generate tritium; nor does it have the extreme requirements of deuterium-deuterium. Hence the interest.

A solution to the great expense of crushing rock during hydrogen mining: Scientists have discovered that oceans, a liquid which separates Australia from the world, contains a great deal of hydrogen. Researchers are investigating ways to extract the hydrogen from this liquid oceanic material.

Dumping more mass onto our planet means dumping more energy, especially when we are going to create a heck of a lot of thermal energy out of it. Fusion power is a great thing, but whether we generate it from Deuterium or He3 it doesn’t matter…we still get lots of pollution, even if “thermal pollution” isn’t considered as dangerous or destructive as pollution from radioactive wastes or greenhouse gasses. We’d still be adding “foreign” energy to our earth. When we run out of fossil fuel energy, we’ll need nuclear energy. Definitely. No argument. But developing solar technology will always remain the cleanest and cheapest path to follow, even if it takes the longest.

We should still check out space, though. Ant colonies don’t grow without leaving the ant hill.