How to mine Helium 3
Mining Helium-3 On the Moon
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welcome to explain in the future calm
this time I'm going to talk about mining
the moon for helium-3 as a fuel for
clean nuclear power almost inevitably
this topic is a complex one and requires
some understanding of the involved you
can have physics
future space exploration and the global
politics of securing future energy
supplies starting with the physics
current nuclear power stations based on
a process called nuclear fission this
released his energy by splitting a
uranium nucleus into fragments thereby
also producing radioactivity and nuclear
waste however the potential exists to
replace nuclear fission reactors with
those based on the nuclear fusion
process that fuels the Sun this could
involve fusing together the nuclei of
tritium and deuterium to release energy
and helium in a clean nuclear reaction
however a so-called fast Neutron is also
released and which poses energy loss and
containment problems that currently
prevent nuclear fusion power generation
some scientists however believe that
future clean nuclear reactors could be
based on a neutronic fusion in which
deuterium and helium-3 are fused
together in a reaction that releases
energy and only results in normal helium
and a proton however one of the major
problems here is obtaining a supply of
helium-3 on earth helium-3 is a very
very rare gas indeed with only a few
kilograms a year created as the
byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons
helium-3 is however permitted by the Sun
and whilst our atmosphere prevents any
of this arriving on the earth the Lunas
soil has been absorbing helium-3 for
billions of years there was therefore
believed to be over 1 million tons of
helium-3 on the surface of the Moon this
could potentially be extracted by
heating the lunar dust to around 600
degrees before bringing it back to the
earth to fuel a new generation of
nuclear reactors a full Space Shuttle
cargo bay were about 25 tons of helium-3
could power the United States for a year
this means that helium-3 has an economic
value of at least 3 billion dollars a
tonne and which makes extracting it from
the moon economically viable interest in
going to the moon to mine helium-3 is
also significant in 2006 Russian space
Corporation and Achaia reported plans to
establish a permanent moon base at 2015
and to be mining helium-3 on an
industrial scale by 2020 the United
States is also returning to the moon
with NASA having the intention of a base
on one of the moon's poles by 2024 and
where helium-3 is known to be
concentrated China is also planning to
put a man on the moon by 2017 with their
mission to measure the thickness of the
lunar soil and the amount of helium-3
present the most staggering thing here
is not the Newton of physics or the
space exploration but a lack of
reporting of helium-3 as a potential
future energy source indeed the fact
that several nations have already
committed billions of dollars to lunar
helium-3 projects should surely be very
big news indeed regardless of whether
their plans actually come to fruition
nobody is trying to hide the potential
of mining helium-3 on the moon however
in the face of global warming and
dwindling fossil fuel supplies it is
surely a subject that demands greater
public attention to get yourself more
informed you can read that helium sweep
our facts file while explaining the
future calm but now that's it for
another video and remember the future is
in your hands
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