Helium-3 Article in USA Today

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

For so long the focus has been on just making it work
and maintaining a burning plasma.

Duh. If you can't "make it work" and "maintain a plasma", then you
cannot have a functional commercial reactor.

The result of that has been the ITER showpiece, which will almost
certainly burn plasma with a fair amount of power left over.

laughs If ITER's performance were a certainty, it would indeed be a
showpiece. But, as you yourself say above, it's not.

What we really need to do now is shift our outlook from one of
proving it can work to one of looking to how a real, working reactor
is going to run.

Oddly enough... That is *exactly* what ITER is intended to do.

Once they've proven basic operations, runs of weeks of fusion are
planned. As Rickover did with MK 1, those runs will serve to explore
how the machine will behave over time. (And a damn good thing he did,
he discovered a number of surprises both pleasant and unpleasant.)

And acquiring the knowledge through experimentation of figuring out
what the best ways of designing and running commercial fusion power
plants are likely to be.

We'll never do that if we don't build reactors in the first place...

You miss my point. ITER will not be a demonstration
reactor (it will not generate significant power) nor
will it be a strictly research reactor (it's a bit
too big for that). The fact is that right now we can
be fairly confident that burning plasmas can be
achieved and effectively confined with currently used
techniques. The gap between theoretical predictions
and experimental results have narrowed in recent years
to where we can have great certainty that current
models are substantially correct and substantially
predictive to higher temperature environments.

What we lack now is the knowledge of which confinement
systems and which other design elements and
characteristics will be best suited to actual power
plant operation. ITER attempts to fill in this
knowledge, but at such great expense, delay, and
with such little effectiveness that it's hardly worth
the effort. Rather, what we need are smaller systems
that we can use to learn those individual answers and
explore more potentialities so that we can develop a
useful knowledge base sooner and at lower cost than
ITER. I am advocating acquiring more information
before jumping into commercial systems, not less as you
imply.

You do not seem to understand that the ITER design is
essentially a "picking the winner" design without an
adequate competition to find out which design really
is the winner. I advocate filling in that gap and
actually having that "competition". Luckily, this is
the same position as the US fusion research community.

Before ITER is even built, experimental reactors in
the US and elsewhere will already be exploring long
confinement designs and burning plasmas, among other
things. That knowledge will be far more useful in
deciding how and whether to build followon generations
of reactors, eventually culminating in a workable
power generation reactor design based on substantial
real-world experience.

The proper analogue to Rickover's experimental reactors
are experiments like FIRE and IGNITOR, not ITER.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article xhYud.487627$wV.108211@attbi_s54,
glbrad01 wrote:
If what you say is true concerning the ultimate source of these
potential
resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar system's
near moon-like asteroids, and even comets, potentially yield fairly large
amounts each of these same resources?

Not comets -- they don't spend much time near the Sun and hence won't have
major amounts of solar-wind volatiles.

For asteroids, it's unclear. The Moon has a considerable advantage in
having enough gravity to hang onto impact debris, and as a result it has a
thick regolith which is "gardened" enough by impacts that it should all be
more or less saturated with solar-wind gases. Asteroid regolith layers
are likely to be considerably thinner, although we have no good data on
this yet.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |


Thanks. The only argument I might make, unsupported, is similar billions
of years of graduating consistent buildup unchanged by anything
environmental except occasional impacts with other debris in space. The
winds of the solar rains would have constantly pelted these great rocks and
there wouldn't be much to draw the elements out of the asteroids or deflect
them, or do anything to change. Any absorbtion would of course have been
from billions of years of being pelted but it isn't necessarily a question
of how much has been absorbed per asteroid--as long it is some viable
amount, it is how much has been absorbed in the make up of the total of the
asteroids, especially the total of the materially lighter asteroids. I don't
think gravity needs to be all that much of a factor in holding a fair amount
of these energy resources. It just means they may be even richer than many
anticipate they may be.

But all this for later. The further out we go the worse the idea gets of
power direct from the sun. We will want and need other sources, and we will
find other sources. But here nearer to the sun, people like Mike are right
in that nothing will be easier to access, will be more efficient or cheaper,
than getting energy directly from the sun into our Earth bound power grids
via SPS systems in space. Our primary problem though is that, other than
environmentally unfriendly sources of energy, we do have life zone limits on
the amount of energy we can have. Hopefully we will not find the limits the
hard way. We may run into vastly increasing inertia, approaching infinite
inertia, though long before we reach the life zone limits to energy within
the environmental system. Space colonization will have no such limits upon
expansion and growth of energetic structure and mobility.

There will reach a time when there is no more expansion and growth of
energetic structure possible upon the Earth if we are to keep the life zone
of Earth viable. A wealth of ever increasing benefits will continue to
accrue to the people of Earth regardless of this via exchange with expanding
and growing space colonization rather than Earth monopolar generation. The
matter and energy resources of the moon will be primarily used by space
colonization and this--this opening--will increasingly benefit the people,
and the life zone, of this world.

Brad

I would think that, if on the coming few years lunar robot explorers confirm
the presence in quantity and location of Helium 3 on the Moon and/or
elsewhere, and if what might be termed the "alternative" Space programme
being built by SME based entrepreneurs yields better access to Space - we
might well see funds for fusion R&D rapidly increase, especially as, as Paul
says, a lot of progress has been made.
Recent controlled fusion labs, are I understand, now within an order of
magnitude of the breakeven point, while ITER, if built, is expected to
produce a surplus of power over consumption for the first time.
As Paul says, that is a long way from economic engineering - but an
"existence proof" , given better Space access achieved in other contexts,
might suffice to tip the scales?

We could see a confluence of capabilities - to coin a horrible phrase.
Michael Martin-Smith

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
You miss my point. ITER will not be a demonstration
reactor (it will not generate significant power) nor
will it be a strictly research reactor (it's a bit
too big for that). The fact is that right now we can
be fairly confident that burning plasmas can be
achieved and effectively confined with currently used
techniques.

The fact is that ITER has features built into it that allow for
potential partial conversion into a power reactor, thus allowing
exploration of that regime. The fact is that we haven't confined
plasmas for long duration, and we'll never learn how unless we do it.

Yet you advocate not doing it.

I am advocating acquiring more information
before jumping into commercial systems, not less as you
imply.

When you denigrate a reactor that is designed to accomplish what you
want accompished, and more, then there is no conclusion to be reached
but that you advocate pure research with the assumption that such
reasearch will allow a short jump to a commercial feasible reactor.

Somehow you skip, or handwave over, the step where we actually build
large scale prototypes (like ITER).

You do not seem to understand that the ITER design is
essentially a "picking the winner" design without an
adequate competition to find out which design really
is the winner.

Which is laughable nonsense. ITER isn't designed to 'pick a winner',
but to extend the knowledge base of an already reasonably known
problem space into currently unknown areas.

I advocate filling in that gap and actually having that "competition".
Luckily, this is the same position as the US fusion research community.

In this reality, more than just the US fusion research community are
exploring designs other than ITER. In the same manner, even though
SS1 'won' the competition, others are still going forward.

Before ITER is even built, experimental reactors in
the US and elsewhere will already be exploring long
confinement designs and burning plasmas, among other
things.

And more power to them. But it's ignorance, blindness and NIH to
simply handwave away ITER as not being part of that process.

That knowledge will be far more useful in deciding how and whether
to build followon generations of reactors,

That's an assumption, not a fact. Don't confuse the two.

eventually culminating in a workable power generation reactor design
based on substantial real-world experience.

And yet... ITER is designed to explore the same thing. Yet you
advocate not building it based on the assumption that it's somehow
inferior.

Your bias is based on something other than facts.

The proper analogue to Rickover's experimental reactors
are experiments like FIRE and IGNITOR, not ITER.

Nope. Rickover's famous dictum was MK1=MK2. He wasn't after pure
research, but applied research.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Henry Spencer wrote:
The Moon has a considerable advantage in having enough gravity to
hang onto impact debris, and as a result it has a thick regolith
which is "gardened" enough by impacts that it should all be more or
less saturated with solar-wind gases.

Wouldn't impacts knock the solar-wind gases loose? Helium is rather
slippery stuff.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

glbrad01 wrote:
"Mark R. Whittington" wrote in message
ups.com...

Mark R. Whittington wrote:
Sorry. That should read:



http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

A clarification. There's a reference to nine tons of oxygen, water,
and
so on and six tons of hydrogen for every ton of helium 3 that be be
extracted from lunar soil. That should have been nine thousand tons
and
six thousand tons respectively. I regret the error.


If what you say is true concerning the ultimate source of these
potential
resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar
system's
near moon-like asteroids, and even comets, potentially yield fairly
large
amounts each of these same resources? Per its physics, its
conditions, how
the moon attained (attains), and retains, these resources should also
apply
to these other smaller, somewhat similar potential sponges. Unlike
the Earth
and the other planets, our moon, and a heck of lot of the solar
system's
asteroids, as well as possibly most comets, essentially should have
texture(?) make up more comparable to [better absorbent and better
massively
retentive in original form all that which is absorbed] sponges. ????

Probably not comets- see Henry's points. Others yes, but the main
criteria is surface area, and the moon has a surface area bigger than
any asteroid, and a million times bigger than most Near Earth
Asteroids. And, for exporting Helium 3, the moons gravity is not a
disadvantage (It is for exporting heavy cargoes such as metals and
oxygen, but not for kilos of He 3 added.)

On most small asteroids, you'd have all the He 3 mined in a week, and
then what? A month's journey to the next one.

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

You miss my point. ITER will not be a demonstration
reactor (it will not generate significant power) nor
will it be a strictly research reactor (it's a bit
too big for that). The fact is that right now we can
be fairly confident that burning plasmas can be
achieved and effectively confined with currently used
techniques.

The fact is that ITER has features built into it that allow for
potential partial conversion into a power reactor, thus allowing
exploration of that regime. The fact is that we haven't confined
plasmas for long duration, and we'll never learn how unless we do it.

Yet you advocate not doing it.

I do not hold such a position, my comments do not support
such a position, and I would very much appreciate if you
did not grossly mischaracterize my position so.

I am advocating precisely a *MORE* thorough exploration
of that regime before committing to designs as massively
expensive as ITER.


I am advocating acquiring more information
before jumping into commercial systems, not less as you
imply.

When you denigrate a reactor that is designed to accomplish what you
want accompished, and more, then there is no conclusion to be reached
but that you advocate pure research with the assumption that such
reasearch will allow a short jump to a commercial feasible reactor.

Somehow you skip, or handwave over, the step where we actually build
large scale prototypes (like ITER).

I do not merely want fusion reactors to become a reality
I want it done right, and I want it done in a way that
facilitates commercial fusion power plants. ITER is not
such a step. ITER does not explore the operating
conditions in the same range as operating fusion
reactors are likely to. ITER's one saving grace is that
it will operate self-sustained fusion reactions (aka
"burning" plasmas), but this is not sufficient to justify
its cost, especially considering alternate designs that
can do so better, cheaper, and quicker.


You do not seem to understand that the ITER design is
essentially a "picking the winner" design without an
adequate competition to find out which design really
is the winner.

Which is laughable nonsense. ITER isn't designed to 'pick a winner',
but to extend the knowledge base of an already reasonably known
problem space into currently unknown areas.

This is a mischaracterization of ITER. ITER will not
explore conditions similar to those likely in commercial
reactors. It will exlore areas in which we currently have
no experience, but that can be said of many reactor
designs.


I advocate filling in that gap and actually having that "competition".
Luckily, this is the same position as the US fusion research community.

In this reality, more than just the US fusion research community are
exploring designs other than ITER. In the same manner, even though
SS1 'won' the competition, others are still going forward.

ITER intends to spend the lion's share of fusion funding
on a design that is already out of date and will aid
fusion research far less than alternate expenditures of
the same funds could. This does not make for healthy
competition.


Before ITER is even built, experimental reactors in
the US and elsewhere will already be exploring long
confinement designs and burning plasmas, among other
things.

And more power to them. But it's ignorance, blindness and NIH to
simply handwave away ITER as not being part of that process.

No, it's rational and sound decision making. It makes no
sense to spend too much money on a design which is already
out of date.


That knowledge will be far more useful in deciding how and whether
to build followon generations of reactors,

That's an assumption, not a fact. Don't confuse the two.


eventually culminating in a workable power generation reactor design
based on substantial real-world experience.

And yet... ITER is designed to explore the same thing. Yet you
advocate not building it based on the assumption that it's somehow
inferior.

Your bias is based on something other than facts.

My "bias" is based on reality. Right now, today, there
are substantially complete designs of fusion power plants
(Aries) which have a high propability, given our current
understanding of fusion physics, of working. These
designs are quite dissimilar to ITER and their operating
regimes are far outside of where ITER will explore.
Other designs, such as FIRE, are better suited to
exploring those regimes and giving us the kind of solid
data which will likely be most useful in making fusion
power a reality. And they can do so at less cost and
with less delay than ITER. How then does spending more
money and more time on ITER make a lick of sense?

Yet other projects, such as LDX, will explore other
reactor designs and fill in our knowledge base as to
which confinement systems have the best properties
for commercial power plant operation. ITER, being a
single design, simply cannot give us any information
on confinement options other than a standard tokamak.


The proper analogue to Rickover's experimental reactors
are experiments like FIRE and IGNITOR, not ITER.

Nope. Rickover's famous dictum was MK1=MK2. He wasn't after pure
research, but applied research.

I was wrong, Rickover is the wrong comparison point. By
the time Rickover started designing reactors the state of
fission reactor research was already very mature. This is
not the case for ITER and fusion reactor research. In the
late 1940s self-sustaining fission reactors were already
old hat, indeed breeder reactors had been working
productively for many years. The steps toward making a
workable fission power reactor were fairly straightfoward:
design a reactor optimized for producing heat rather than
breeding Plutonium, design systems to extract power from
that heat. Even if done wrong (eg Soviet reactor designs)
it was still almost impossible to produce something that
flat out did not work. Today we have no self-sustaining,
non-destructive fusion reactors nor experience in building
or operating such, for any purpose, let alone for power
production. ITER puts all, or at least most of, the chips
on one design. And does so years before we have the
knowledge to do that sort of thing with confidence. ITER's
design is akin to someone in 1939 designing a fission power
plant to be built 10 years down the road, at a cost similar
to that of the entire Manhattan project (ITER will cost
at least $5 billion and take at least 10 years to build,
let alone bring online). And, as I said, it is already out
of date, it's unlikely that it will get less out of date as
time goes by.

Mark my words, ITER is a mistake and a boondoggle.

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
I do not merely want fusion reactors to become a reality
I want it done right, and I want it done in a way that
facilitates commercial fusion power plants. ITER is not
such a step. ITER does not explore the operating
conditions in the same range as operating fusion
reactors are likely to.

If you already know the operating conditions of an operating
commercial fusion reactor, then a future of wealth and power awaits
you.

ITER's one saving grace is that
it will operate self-sustained fusion reactions (aka
"burning" plasmas), but this is not sufficient to justify
its cost, especially considering alternate designs that
can do so better, cheaper, and quicker.

A reasonable point. If you mulishly insist on believing the only
purpose of ITER is to operate self sustained fusion reactions.


The proper analogue to Rickover's experimental reactors
are experiments like FIRE and IGNITOR, not ITER.

Nope. Rickover's famous dictum was MK1=MK2. He wasn't after pure
research, but applied research.

I was wrong, Rickover is the wrong comparison point. By
the time Rickover started designing reactors the state of
fission reactor research was already very mature.

Nope. Not one single reactor approaching the size or power output of
the MK1 preceeded it.

This is not the case for ITER and fusion reactor research. In the
late 1940s self-sustaining fission reactors were already
old hat, indeed breeder reactors had been working
productively for many years.

Nope. Nobody had built a serious (self sustaining fission) plant
designed for the extraction of power.

The steps toward making a workable fission power reactor were
fairly straightfoward: design a reactor optimized for producing heat
rather than breeding Plutonium, design systems to extract power from
that heat.

ROTFLMAO. And making a working supercomputer is merely a
straightfoward matter of hooking up enough transistors.

Even if done wrong (eg Soviet reactor designs)

ROTFLMAO. If you define 'wrong' as 'unsafe for the crew' as opposed
to the more normal 'fails to work'.

ITER puts all, or at least most of, the chips on one design. And does so
years before we have the knowledge to do that sort of thing with confidence.

ROTFLMAO. Yet elsewhere you insist we have mature designs with a high
confidence of working.

Mark my words, ITER is a mistake and a boondoggle.

A position you have reached by some of the most back twisting 'logic'
I have ever seen. You claim to want research, so long as it isn't
ITER. You claim to want to explore the appropriate regimes, so long
as it isn't ITER doing the exploring. You claim to know the operating
parameters of a feasible commercial plant.... Even though nobody has
even built a prototype of one..

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

...It makes no
sense to spend too much money on a design which is already
out of date.

It makes little sense to spend money on a series of latest, greatest
designs, while not spending enough on an existing design to actually get
something useful out of it.

ITER should not be considered out of date. It is designed to do something
no previously built fusion reactor has yet done: sustained power
production.

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
oups.com...
glbrad01 wrote:
"Mark R. Whittington" wrote in message
ups.com...

Mark R. Whittington wrote:
Sorry. That should read:



http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion...y-source_x.htm

A clarification. There's a reference to nine tons of oxygen, water,
and
so on and six tons of hydrogen for every ton of helium 3 that be be
extracted from lunar soil. That should have been nine thousand tons
and
six thousand tons respectively. I regret the error.


If what you say is true concerning the ultimate source of these
potential
resources, then shouldn't other bodies such as many of the solar
system's
near moon-like asteroids, and even comets, potentially yield fairly
large
amounts each of these same resources? Per its physics, its
conditions, how
the moon attained (attains), and retains, these resources should also
apply
to these other smaller, somewhat similar potential sponges. Unlike
the Earth
and the other planets, our moon, and a heck of lot of the solar
system's
asteroids, as well as possibly most comets, essentially should have
texture(?) make up more comparable to [better absorbent and better
massively
retentive in original form all that which is absorbed] sponges. ????

Probably not comets- see Henry's points. Others yes, but the main
criteria is surface area, and the moon has a surface area bigger than
any asteroid, and a million times bigger than most Near Earth
Asteroids. And, for exporting Helium 3, the moons gravity is not a
disadvantage (It is for exporting heavy cargoes such as metals and
oxygen, but not for kilos of He 3 added.)

On most small asteroids, you'd have all the He 3 mined in a week, and
then what? A month's journey to the next one.


I was referring to the complete list of originally listed elements, not
just the Helium-3. Mining them would be just part of mining the complete
package of everything the asteroid has to offer. All of its material
resource. All of it! We will want it all. "And then what?" Most definitely
on to the next one. There will be a whole industry devoted to seeking out,
hunting down, these loose lesser bodies for mining their materials. There
will be no worthless materials from them. Every ton of otherwise worthless
mass already in the space environment is a ton of low cost shielding
material for just about any kind of facility we will construct in space. And
we will be constructing a lot of large, and ever larger, facilities for
every kind of use in space.

These rarer, lighter elements, will be bonus riches (to be taken in
passing) but it seems to me that not one asteroid will be found to be
without them in viable quantity for leeching out. They will be too valuable
not to mine any amount there to be mined whatsoever. As to broad frontage,
"surface area," a cubic meter is a cubic meter and what's more, the total
facing area to the sun of all of the asteroids in the inner system (out to
the asteroid belt and maybe beyond) is vastly, vastly greater than the
Moon's. The total Helium-3, along with the other elements in the list,
resource to be mined should be at least equal to and probably far greater in
amount than what we will draw from the Moon. Which of course in no way
belittles that potential resource (those potential resources) with regard to
getting it (them) from the Moon. The Moon is at hand, the asteroids are for
later.

The Earth will get enlarging asteroid watches, enlarging numbers of
asteroid hunters, and ever increasing numbers of danger eliminations, for
free--as we progress in expanding our occupation of space itself--as yet
another bonus. Probably the biggest bonus of all from space to those who
will be remaining on Earth.

In any case, even being an O'Neiller, I finally share the realization that
basing ("basing" rather than "colonizing") the Moon has to come first before
anything else in space, so to base--in the beginning--all else pursued in
space (including Lagrange point orbital colonization). People who will leave
for the Moon thinking to colonize it will eventually remove themselves to
space colonies, rotating miners and others to the bases on the Moon, for
reasons I won't go into in this thread.

Brad