Is Helium-3 The Answer To Our Energy Problems?

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.

See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a fantastic piece of science fiction cinema and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and catch it while it’s still in theatres.

But after seeing it I discovered that not only is the energy source they talked about in the movie real, but it’s clean, supposedly economically viable and extremely plentiful on the moon’s surface.

This video gives a good overview of the ins and outs of Helium-3…

Not only that, a recent article by AFP points out that the superpowers are gearing up to revisit the moon…

President Barack Obama has appointed a commission to review the program’s cost and goals, but the launch last month of two preparatory lunar modules suggests it is likely to proceed in some form.

Several other countries, including China and Russia, have announced their ambitions to send missions to the moon, which is 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) from Earth — about a four-day trip by space shuttle.

“I think you will see at least Antarctic-like scientific outposts and maybe even larger facilities on the moon, with people spending long durations of time there,” Logsdon told AFP.

Still, there are skeptics and the tech is not without its faults…

But the holy grail of such clean energy research, fusing helium 3 atoms together to produce ordinary helium 4 and energetic protons, is no easy task. “Nature being as it is,” Kulcinski says, “it made that reaction very difficult.” The Wisconsin campus has a small-scale reactor that consumes helium 3, but Kulcinski notes it is a long way from breaking even on the energetic balance sheet—that is, the reactor consumes far more energy than it produces.

So there’s still a lot of work left to be done, but, as I said, it’s very intriguing stuff and it opens up a lot of questions.

Here are a couple:

1. Will nations begin competing for rights to the moon’s natural resources if Helium-3 delivers?
2. If so, what would that look like? Can nations actually share this resource or will they fight over it?

Discuss…

(Photo: Reuters via Daylife)