good grief..... lunar helium-3 again

Andrew · Senior Member

good grief..... lunar helium-3 again

John · Senior Member

Certainly the social trends that emerged in the mid-60s didn't help much. Another factor is that progress in the area that I discussed are dependent on government policy in the way that devolopments in the pase weren't. Goddard was have to develop the liquid fuelled rocket with private money. Most energy generation systems prior to nuclear were developed with private funds as well. It really hard to imagine controlled fusion or a second-generation space shuttle being developed with private money. As a result the political process plays a major role in determining what happens. And, the current political leadership isn't very forward thinking (and I mean this in a very bipatisan way).

Its going to take as longer to get the CEV and launcher flying than it took from Kennedy's Moon landing speach until Apollo 11.

Andrew · Senior Member

I don't have a list of things I want to see before I die, but if I had one, is the face the politicians are going to make when a journalist is asking them how could a small, private company archive a manned Mars surface mission at the fraction of the cost that billion-dollar governmental programs couldn't.

I am optimistic a bit. Children will be less afraid of nuclear power as opposed to their parents, if for nothing else but for rebellion. Of course Greenpeace can scream from the top of their lungs, their vocal cords can only take so much.

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

Will this nonsence ever stop ???

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/01/wmoon01.xml
Russia sees moon plot in Nasa plans

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow

Last Updated: 1:53am BST 02/05/2007

Mankind's second race for the moon took on a distinctly Cold War feel yesterday when the Russian space agency accused its old rival Nasa of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration.

The claim comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the United States is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming.

A new era of international co-operation in space supposedly dawned after the United States, Russia and other powers declared their intention to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

But while Nasa has lobbied for support from Britain and the European Space Agency, Russia claims its offers have been rebuffed.

Yesterday Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, said: "We are ready to co-operate but for some reason the United States has announced that it will carry out the programme itself. Strange as it is, the United States is short of experts to implement the programme."

Nasa announced in December that it was planning to build an international base camp on one of the Moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024. Russia's space rocket manufacturer Energia revealed an even more ambitious programme last August, saying it would build a permanent Moon base by 2015.

While the Americans have either been coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar programme is the industrial extraction of helium-3.

Dismissed by critics as a 21st-century equivalent of the medieval alchemist's fruitless quest to turn lead into gold, some scientists say helium-3 could be the answer to the world's energy woes.

A non-radioactive isotope of helium, helium-3 is a proven and potent fuel for nuclear fusion - so potent that just six metric tons would supply Britain with enough energy for a year.

As helium-3 is non-polluting and is so effective in such tiny quantities, many countries are taking it very seriously. Germany, India and China, which will launch a lunar probe to research extraction techniques in September, are all studying ways to mine the isotope.

"Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit," said Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China's lunar programme.

Energia says it will start "industrial scale delivery" of helium-3, transported by cargo space ships via the International Space Station, no later than 2020. Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant directly controlled by the Kremlin, is said to be strongly supportive of the project.

The United States has appeared much more cautious, not least because scientists are yet to discover the secrets of large scale nuclear fusion. Commercial fusion reactors look unlikely to come on line before the second half of this century.

But many officials in Moscow's space programme believe Washington's lunar agenda is driven by a desire to monopolise helium-3 mining. They allege that President Bush has moved helium-3 experts into key positions on Nasa's advisory council.

The plot, says Erik Galimov, an academic with the Russian Academy of Sciences, would "enable the US to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out."

-- Edited by 10kBq Jaro at 02:55, 2007-05-03

Andrew · Senior Member

I think its just marketing.

GoogleNaut · Guru

I think that some of these inflammatory remarks are only intended to be, well, inflammatory. A somewhat overt reflection of current foreign policy leanings. I don't think He3 is the be all, end all fuel of the future. So I don't see the US as 'conquering' the moon just by going there. If they [China and Russia] were so worried about this, don't you think they would be spending a lot more on fusion reactor research?

Besides, since no one is yet close to perfecting any kind of fusion reactor, isn't cornering the market on He3 somewhat of a 'non sequitur?'

I do think that the moon makes a pretty ideal place to practice some skills that will eventually be needed for Mars. And there may yet be some useful materials needed on the moon.

Cornering the market on an as yet unproven energy supply is not the way to do it--investing in technologies that supply additional energy is needed. If new technologies are needed, then the country that develops them first and fields them to market will be competitively ahead of things. Ensuring reasonable prices for licensing of those technologies and partnering with other nations to share those technologies will ultimately benefit all. And that will help to ease international tensions regarding energy supply.

John · Senior Member

Let me play devil's advocate here. While its true that we aren't close to a fusion reactor isn't that more by choice that anything else? It seems to me that governments are basically afraid of success...at least with first generation fusion reactors. Given the progress with that was accomplished through the early 1990s the reaction of our government was let's cut the funding. Since then we have spent over a full decade negotiating the terms of the ITER as if we could afford the small cost doing the project ourselves. If we had followed that course a prototype reactor could already be operational.

Andrew · Senior Member

Perhaps the governments are tired of wasting another couple of billions on a project that they already wasted billions on and have not produced anything really successful? Might be.

Also, consider that nuclear power isn't popular, especially with the growing influence of the environmentalist movement (those damn hippies!

). I think that the politicians are afraid of investing in the program, because they are afraid that if they do, they will lose a group of their voters.

Especially now with the global warming swindle, the wagon for overzealous and unrational envarionmentalism right now.
Nuclear power is hardly pollutant (when normally operating, only waste is the radioactive parts which only have to be buried) and doesn't effect global warming, but the public doesn't know that, so it doesn't matter. Until this thing is strong, politicians (that try to ride this wave) are afraid to support any program that is contrarery to this movement, and this movement opposes nuclear power (despite the fact that in effect, they have increased the number of much more pollutant coal and oil power plants, but lets not get the facts in the way). There is little choice, but to wait till this thing blows over.

Beyond that, the best option is to try to do research behind closed doors.

GoogleNaut · Guru

I would just add, that we (the world) have been conducting research into controlled thermonuclear fusion for almost 60 years, and controlled fusion is still '20 years away.' Well, it's been 30 years since I first heard it said that it was only about '20 years away.'

Fusion is darn hard, atleast controlled inside a reactor. "Uncontrolled" fusion--the kind in H-bombs--was relatively easy once the concept of the Teller-Ulam radiation implosion mechanism was worked out. And it has been often suggested that this may be the only means of controlled fusion power generation that we have open to us--by detonating thermonuclear devices underground and then harnessing the heat to generate power. It's doable--but I think there are a lot of risks associated with this method of power generation. Doable in theory does not necessarily equate to 'desirable,' or 'economical' either.

There has been some interesting progress from Dr. Bussard's p-b11 setup, but I am still very skeptical. If it was really that easy to achieve--don't you think we could have done it by now.

And furthermore, if a research group succeeded, why on Earth do you think they would want to keep that quiet? Or even could keep it quiet. A controlled fusion reaction, especially if it was in an economically operating setting, would be a technological coupe that would give the developing country instant bragging rights the world over. And rightly so--we desperately need the energy that such a system could provide. But I haven't heard or seen one yet--and I haven't heard any rumors that an operating fusion reactor was working anywhere. It's kind of like the "discovery of intelligent alien life:" it's almost impossible to cover up, and eventually the word would get out. One way or another...

Not a peep has been heard yet...

So honestly, I think that it's a lot of bunk that countries are not trying--they are. And they have been for 60 years. And there have been notable successes--just make a visit to Eniwetok Atoll--I guess you can't, 'cause it isn't there anymore! Fusion can be done--just look at any star in the sky--but controlled fusion is really tough. Magnetic confinement is not an easy thing to master--just ask any plasma physicist with a PhD.

Andrew · Senior Member

Dr.Bussard, last I heard, is trying to tie up his work done under the Navy contract and writing the paper on Polywell and trying to build a prototype reactor that would tell whether Polywell can archive breakeven.

I'm optimistic. I am not saying that fusion is easy, otherwise we would have it now. But perhaps our approach was wrong? We know how to create fusion, we only need to figure out how to make it economical.

Just take a look here: www.fusor.net

People are making fusors (the design that Polywell is based off) in their garages and basements for fun.

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

GoogleNaut wrote:
And there have been notable successes--just make a visit to Eniwetok Atoll--I guess you can't, 'cause it isn't there anymore!

Actually, Eniwetok Atoll is very much there, and is still one of the largest atolls on earth.
The only thing missing is Elugelab Island, which was a very tiny part of Eniwetok Atoll (at the north-east tip) -- really just a sand-spit, with no vegetation growing on it.
Now there is a fairly deep underwater crater in its place, excavated by the "Ivy Mike" thermonuclear test on Nov. 1, 1952.
Eniwetok Atoll is gaining popularity as a SCUBA diving venue, due to its relatively pristine reefs.....

-- Edited by 10kBq Jaro at 22:59, 2007-05-04

GoogleNaut · Guru

Thanks Jaro, I knew that! I just, well, kind of forgot!

The Polywell is interesting and has been used in different forms like the Starfusor which--interestingly enough--is actually used commercially as a source of neutrons --real fusion neutrons-- for commercial laboratory energetic neutron sources. This type of fusor can actually be considered a real, honest to goodness commercial fusion reactor--however its power output is typically no more than a few hundred microwatts and is typically about as gigantic as a thimbal. But it works--and it works well enough that they have been using them in one form or another as neutrons sources for the petroleum exploration industry since the early 1960's. Unfortunately you can't scale these things up efficiently to supply industrial amounts of power.

I am cautiously optimistic about Dr. Bussards machines--the physics sound interesting. And I have the utmost respect for his research--he is a guy who knows what he's talking about. And based on that premise alone--if I had a couple of hundred million just to blow on such things--I would fund his research. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot that a casier who works full time at Safeway can contribute. Sigh--I guess he'll have to find funding from another source.

Still, his research is very interesting. And nothing else--funding his research will probably definatively answer the question of whether it is practical to go that way, or fusion is a dead as a power source. I hope not, but science is littered with the wreckage of thousands of beautiful theories that were brutally murderd by cold facts--Dr. Richard Feynman once said so...

John · Senior Member

I think you guys went way off on a tangent there. I didn't say that anyone had a working fusion reactor. What I'm saying is that the main reason we don't have working prototype (which of course would have major challenges to becoming economical) is that in the face of success Congress promply cut funding rather than sharply increasing it. Since that time we have emphasized the international aspect which as led to far more haggling than progress.

A project like ITER is well within the capability of the U.S. by itself. Also, I don't think that it was evironmental concerns that resulted in that outcome either. My thought is that behaps the fossil fuel folks actually though that it might just have a chance of working! Or, there is on other possibility that might be more State Department related.

As far a Buzzard thing it seems to me that the government should go ahead and provide the $200 million funding if his plan could withstand a fair audit. $200 million is like a small satellite launch. This is really nothing to U.S. budget.

GoogleNaut · Guru

I agree that it was strange that Congress killed the US part of ITER. However, I am not entirely sure that magnetic confinement fusion is the way to go. It has been done at both large and small scales--the plasma instabilities are really tough to get a handle on. ITER was founded on the philosophy that bigger must be better--which may or may not be true. However, the one thing that has grown much bigger is the budget for this type of research. Last I heard and read this thing was going to cost in the neighborhood of $10+ billion.

My point was as far as magnetic confinement fusion research in general is that over the past 60 years something like $100 billion has been spent world wide on this idea--and we are still no closer today than when the initial projects started in the early 1950's. I am in favor of basic research--they may still succeed (and I hope they do) but we need power sources now. And I see only one form of nuclear power currently able to fulfill this role, and that is nuclear fission.

As far as helium 3 is concerned, going to the moon right now to mine it is 'putting the cart before the horse." There is currently no market for helium 3 because there are no consumers for helium 3, i.e., there are no working commercial fusion reactors available to burn it. I also find it absurd that people state that the moon is the only source of helium-3--which is nonsense. We can make the stuff here on Earth via the neutron-lithium reaction, which makes tritium. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years. Store it in casks and siphon off the helium-3 as the tritium decays. However, this is politically incorrect however because tritium has been used to boost nuclear weapons yields--and nobody wants that.

I am all for going back to the moon--I think there are some really good reasons to go there. However, I don't see helium-3 as one of them. Barring any huge breakthroughs in technology or a major success of a magnetic confinement fusion experiment somewhere in the world, helium-3 as a fusion fuel is currently bunk.

-- Edited by GoogleNaut at 13:41, 2007-05-05

John · Senior Member

Two points. First, that $100 billion has been spent worldwide? I don't know about the world but at the time of the cut backs the Congressional crtics were saying the US government had spend $4 billion since 1951. I cna recall that the fusion budget in the 1980s (the good years) was running about $300-400 millions per year. Obviously the Russian (as the USSR) had a strong program and there was work in Europe and Japan. Also, some privately funded programs. But, $100 billion.....perhaps in everying even remotely related and escalated to current dollars maybe.

No progress since the 1950s? The Princeton Tokamak was running at the edge of breakeven when its funding was cut. There was nothing close to that performace in the 1950s. I don't know of much improvement since then as everying is awaiting the ITER. $10 billion for that over a 10 year period seems reasonable to me given the great technological obstacles involved. I think that magnetic confinement does require scale to work. De-escalating to early 1940 dollars that is only half of the cost of the Manhatten Project.

This has nothing to do with He3. First generation magnetic confinement is D+T. Step one is just getting one these devices working. I understand there a challenge just as great to make it economical. I don't see fusion research as impacting fission in anyway until we are a to further along. I can't at this point plan on fusion at a date certain. So in the mean time we should be building fission plants.

-- Edited by John at 14:32, 2007-05-05

GoogleNaut · Guru

The $100 billion figure was pulled out of thin air--I don't really have anything to justify that one. I just figured that with half dozen big programs, being funded at multiple hundred million dollars per year level, and many more small ones, integrated over time back 60 years, the amount is definately in the tens of billions of dollars. I figured an ultimate cap of about $100 billion. It's a WAG I'll admit.

I didn't say there was no progress since the 1950's. Not at all, infact plasma physics has expanded by leaps and bounds since that time, because of those efforts. But what we've learned in that time is that magnetic confinement fusion is a lot harder to do than was ever imagined so long ago--and the trend is toward ever bigger machines. However, the larger the coils of a magnet are, the weaker the field that is generated. So you can't simultaneously scale up a fusion reactor design and still have the same capacity for containment--eventually your B-field will weaken. Eventually you will achieve material limits, which says if you force anymore current to flow in a superconducting wire it will either mechanically break because of the magnetic induced tension of the coil--catastrophically I might add--or the the B-field will become so strong it forces apart the Cooper pairs in the conductor--again catastrophic failure due to 'quenching,' i.e., the magnetic coil assembly will blow up!

So even though I cannot do all the intricate math needed to understand the details of the plasma physics, I know that there are limits intrinsic to the systems being design. You can't much bigger than ITER and still have a magnetic confinement system.

Andrew · Senior Member

As far a Buzzard thing it seems to me that the government should go ahead and provide the $200 million funding if his plan could withstand a fair audit. $200 million is like a small satellite launch. This is really nothing to U.S. budget.

Actually, it would cost far less to see whether his idea works or not. He offers 150 million for D-D type fusion reactor, he offers a p-B11 type fusion reactor for 200 million.

Right now, he wants to conduct a few experiments for the price of 2 million by modifying grids and various other things to see whether his design can archive breakeven.

I also recall that the first commercial reactors would work with D-T and essentially function with the thermal cycle of water-steam-turbine-generator, utilizing Polywell as a heat source easily mountable in a standard coal or oil power plant.

John · Senior Member

For those prices I would think that the DOE would do it just to make sure that they didn't miss a golden opportunity. It does seem to me to be a longshot. That we could get to aneutronic fusion for only $200 million. That's like the price of a single first line fighter and its share of the support system.

On the magnetic confinement fusion based on D-T reactions. You get 80% of the energy in the form of neutrons. You absorb them in a lithium jacket. Then the lithium goes through a heat exchanger to make steam. But you also have to remove the tritium that is being generated in the lithium. The thing that make this work is that it is a tritium breeder. You have the reaction
Li6 + n --> He4 + T also you have Li7 + n --> Li6 + 2n. The latter is endothermic but it happens with high energy fusion neutrons. This mean you can make more tritium than you burn and so we can keep this process going.

-- Edited by John at 06:07, 2007-05-07

GoogleNaut · Guru

Absolutely right. And besides, D-T fusion is easier to achieve that D-He3 because the Coulomb repulsion is less (2+ charges vs 3+charges,) the temperature of the plasma will be less--and the confinement time will be more.

Andrew · Senior Member

What I want to know, is how the breeder reactor will give power, especially more power then it costs to contain the plasma?
My concern is that the thermal cycle will not provide enough energy to both contain the plasma and give power. That's why I like the aneutronic source, where it is possible to gain much more power out of the reactions.

My thinking is that Dr.Bussard's work will only be basis for a more advanced and more powerful reactor type that will archive breakeven.

John · Senior Member

The energy per particle is in the 10s of Kev while the energy per fusion is in the about 17 Mev. About 3.5 Mev is given off in charged particle, i.e. He4 while most is in the form of neutrons. The is plenty of energy to harness to run the reactor and produce plenty of power for the grid in principle. There is a lot of engineering to go to make that actually happen. It seems the fusion community has a lot more confidence in this approach.

The Bussard work is a lot more controversial. While far more credible than "cold fusion" it has a lot less data behind it more traditional magnetic confinement fusion. I would support his modest request for support just to check his claims given the great payoff if it works and because he has a significant personal reputation.

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

John wrote:
The Bussard work is a lot more controversial. While far more credible than "cold fusion" .......

Depends what kind of "cold fusion."

The kind using muonic deuterium atoms received far less publicity than the paladium electrode nonsence, but in fact it works (although break-even is just as difficult to reach as with Tokamaks, perhaps at much lower cost.... A quicker path to showing the impracticality of controlled fusion power...)

Andrew · Senior Member

I recall that creating a muon costs more energy then what fusion gives. Is this true?

EDIT: Also, is there any other kind of negatively-charged particle that could replace a muon? Since muons are negative and protons are positive, we would get matter-annihilation if the negative particle is too heavy, what is the limit of the negative particle's mass?

-- Edited by Andrew at 20:59, 2007-05-09

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

Andrew wrote:
I recall that creating a muon costs more energy then what fusion gives. Is this true?

Yes its true.
But the muon particle is re-used many times, before it disintegrates.
I forget the exact figure, but I believe that break-even is when about 160 fusion reactions are achieved with each muon.
Also, I think some of the latter experiments were pretty close to that figure -- without nearly as big a budget as MCF or ICF....

John · Senior Member

This is another interesting idea. I doubt that it will be as practical as magnetic confinement fusion. One application is to use stored anti-protons as a source of muons to trigger inertial confinement fusion. This might would for space applications even it is in general an net energy sink. This idea is to avoid the very heavy magnets on the spacecraft. The would be a much more leveraged way of using antimatter than just using it to heat working fluid.

10kBq Jaro · Senior Member

John wrote:
This is another interesting idea. I doubt that it will be as practical as magnetic confinement fusion. One application is to use stored anti-protons as a source of muons to trigger inertial confinement fusion. This might would for space applications even it is in general an net energy sink. This idea is to avoid the very heavy magnets on the spacecraft. The would be a much more leveraged way of using antimatter than just using it to heat working fluid.

I'm not sure, but I think ICF happens too fast to make efficient use of muons.

However, there is a variation of ICF using fission-fusion pellets, where the fission process is greatly accelerated by inducing a shower of neutrons, by anti-proton bombardment of the fissile material (each anti-proton can induce up to about 16 neutrons).

This process has the potential to significantly reduce the required compression & heating by external sources, such as laser or particle beams.

The key is accelerating the fission process: the faster it can be made to go, the smaller the required fissile mass, because the duration of the highly compressed (critical) state can be shorter....

GoogleNaut · Guru

How about Andrews Aerospace's idea of the MiniMag Orion concept? They consider using a Z-pinch mechanism to electromagnetically implode a tiny, 30-40g spherical shell of Cerium-245 using a Be tamper driven by an Aluminum pusher. The Z-pinch implosion system apparently has been tested at Sandia National Laboratory.

I can't think of any way to achieve a smaller nuclear explosion--this thing supposedly may be able to achieve a 10% fission burn and release about 25GJ in a burst--very small for a nuclear explosion, pretty darn big for something like an implosion mechanism. Put a tritium-Li6 capsule in the middle and you have the makings of a pretty powerful direct nuclear propulsion system.

http://www.andrews-space.com/content-main.php?subsection=MTA2

Here is the first page of a PDF available at the AIAA (for purchase):

http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMJPC06_1178/PV2006_5223.pdf

I can't seem to find the original paper on the web anymore--I wonder if the Non-Proliferation people pulled it?

Andrew · Senior Member

Would the Z-pinch need more power to trigger the reaction then what the reaction gives?

GoogleNaut · Guru

No way--the drive power for the Z-pinch would be on the order of a few megawatts continuous to recharge a capacitor bank onboard the ship. Auxiliary Power and startup power would be provided by a small onboard nuclear fission system--but once the system was up and running at power--I would imagine that most of the onboard electrical power might be generated by a small set of induction coils tapping some of the dynamic energy of the motion of the magnetic fields in the magentic nozzle system. Instead of large shock absorbers used in the original nuclear-pulse Orion, this smaller version will use magnetic fields to transfer momentum to the ship.

The small nuclear explosions, each equivalent to only a few tons of TNT (several GigaJoules,) will push the magnetic field across the generator coils which can be 'tuned' to rebound the field and the plasma--you get plenty of electrical power to run all of your shipboard systems, and you get a nice 'squishy' ride as well...

It is a really technologicly 'sexy' idea which I find rather appealing--I can imagine vessels powered with something like this cruising to asteroids and bringing back all kinds of useful things, like carbon, gallium, PGM's, and gold even. Although the real 'gold' will be volatiles brought back from comet nucleii--this will be the 'stuff' of a space based industrial revolution.

Andrew · Senior Member

I presume the favoured reaction will be D-He3?