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WE DON’T EVEN KNOW IF HE-3 IS ON THE MOON AND LACK THE TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE POWER FROM FUSION USING IT-Close ‘07



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WE DON’T EVEN KNOW IF HE-3 IS ON THE MOON AND LACK THE TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE POWER FROM FUSION USING IT-Close ‘07

[Frank; theoretical physicist, Oxford University; Fears Over Factoids; Physics World; 03 Aug 2007; http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30679; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Let me now turn to the helium-3 factoid. At most fusion experiments, such as the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK, a fuel of deuterium and tritium nuclei is converted in a tokomak into helium-4 and a neutron, thereby releasing energy in the process. No helium-3 is involved, so where does the myth come from? Enter "helium-3 fusion" into Google and you will find numerous websites pointing out that the neutron produced in deuterium–tritium fusion makes the walls of the tokomak radioactive, but that fusion could be "clean" if only we reacted deuterium with helium-3 to produce helium-4 and a proton.

Given that the amount of helium-3 available on Earth is trifling, it has been proposed that we should go to the Moon to mine the isotope, which is produced in the Sun and might be blown onto the lunar surface via the solar wind. Apart from not even knowing for certain if there is any helium-3 on the Moon, there are two main problems with this idea – one obvious and one intriguingly subtle. The first problem is that, in a tokomak, deuterium reacts up to 100 times more slowly with helium-3 than it does with tritium. This is because fusion has to overcome the electrical repulsion between the protons in the fuel, which is much higher for deuterium– helium-3 reactions (the nuclei have one and two protons, respectively) than it is for deuterium– tritium reactions (one proton each).


SOLVENCY: TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T WORK


EVEN NEW TECHNOLOGIES FROM HE-3 ENTHUSIASTS HAVE FAILED TO DEMONSTRATE THEY CAN WORK-Technology Review ‘07

[Mining the Moon; Technology Review; 23 Aug 2007; http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Close's objection, however, assumes that deuterium-helium-3 fusion and pure helium-3 fusion would take place in tokamak-based reactors. There might be alternatives: for example, Gerald Kulcinski, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has maintained the only helium-3 fusion reactor in the world on an annual budget that's barely into six figures.

Kulcinski's He3-based fusion reactor, located in the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, is very small. When running, it contains a spherical plasma roughly 10 centimeters in diameter that can produce sustained fusion with 200 million reactions per second. To produce a milliwatt of power, unfortunately, the reactor consumes a kilowatt. Close's response is, therefore, valid enough: "When practical fusion occurs with a demonstrated net power output, I--and the world's fusion community--can take note."

Still, that critique applies equally to ITER and the tokamak-based reactor effort, which also haven't yet achieved breakeven (the point at which a fusion reactor produces as much energy as it consumes). What's significant about the reactor in Wisconsin is that, as Kulcinski says, "We are doing both deuterium-He3 and He3-He3 reactions. We run deuterium-He3 fusion reactions daily, so we are very familiar with that reaction. We are also doing He3-He3 because if we can control that, it will have immense potential."
NEITHER NASA NOR THE DOE BELIEVE THAT HE-3 MINING/FUSION CAN WORK-Technology Review ‘07

[Mining the Moon; Technology Review; 23 Aug 2007; http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Still, Kulcinski's reactor proves only the theoretical feasibility and advantages of He3-He3 fusion, with commercial viability lying decades in the future. "Currently," he says, "the Department of Energy will tell us, 'We'll make fusion work. But you're never going to go back to the moon, and that's the only way you'll get massive amounts of helium-3. So forget it.' Meanwhile, the NASA folks tell us, 'We can get the helium-3. But you'll never get fusion to work.' So DOE doesn't think NASA can do its job, NASA doesn't think that DOE can do its job, and we're in between trying to get the two to work together." Right now, Kulcinski's funding comes from two wealthy individuals who are, he says, only interested in the research and without expectation of financial profit.

Overall, then, helium-3 is not the low-hanging fruit among potential fuels to create practical fusion power, and it's one that we will have to reach the moon to pluck. That said, if pure He3-based fusion power is realizable, it would have immense advantages.


HE-3 DOES NOT MEET THE TEST OF PRODUCING MORE ENERGY THAN IT COSTS-Lasker ‘06

[John; Race to the Moon for Nuclear Fuel; Wired; 15 Dec 2006; http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2006/12/72276; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


However, there are those who doubt helium-3 could become the next super fuel.

Jim Benson, founder of space contractor SpaceDev, which helped build SpaceShipOne's engine and is a subcontractor of the Missile Defense Agency, said mining the moon for helium-3 doesn't pass the "net energy analysis" test. It would require more energy to retrieve helium-3 and bring it back than it would yield.

Just, sending mining equipment to the moon, and then returning processed helium-3 back to earth, would cost billions in rocket fuel, said Benson.

"We just don't have a need for helium-3," he said. "It's not practical."


WE ARE NOT READY TO USE HE-3 AS A SOURCE OF ENERGY YET-Schriber ‘08

[Michael; How moon rocks could power the future; MSNBC; 13 Aug 2008;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26179944/; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]

Kulcinski and his collaborators have managed to sustain nuclear fusion in their small prototype system. The company Emc2 Fusion is also working on a similar design.

However, all of these IEC demonstrations, at least for now, require much more input energy than they can deliver. Most researchers agree that helium-3 is unlikely to be the first fuel used in fusion reactors.

"One should never say never — it may come to pass that helium-3 could become an important source of energy in the coming century," Spudis said. "That time has not come yet. And I suspect that it is still some time off."
THERE IS NO TECHNOLOGY TO GET HE-3 FROM THE MOON-Williams ‘10

[Lynda; Physics Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College;Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization; Peace Review, A Journal of Social Justice; Spring 2010]


Although evidence of water has been discovered on both bodies, it exists in a form that is trapped in minerals, which would require huge amounts of energy to access. Water can be converted into fuel either as hydrogen or oxygen, which would eliminate the need to transport vast amounts of fuel from Earth. However, according to Britain's leading spaceflight expert, Professor Colin Pillinger, "You would need to heat up a lot of lunar soil to 200C to get yourself a glass of water." The promise of helium as an energy source on the moon to is mostly hype. Helium-3 could be used in the production of nuclear fusion energy, a process we have yet to prove viable or efficient on Earth. Mining helium

would require digging dozens of meters into the lunar surface and processing hundreds of thousands of tons of soil to produce 1 ton of helium-3. (25 tons of helium-3 is required to power the US for 1 year.) Fusion also requires the very rare element tritium, which does not exist naturally on the Moon, Mars or on Earth in abundances needed to facilitate nuclear fusion energy production. There are no current means for generating the energy on the Moon to extract the helium-3 to produce the promised endless source of energy from helium-3 on the Moon. Similar energy problems exist for using solar power on the Moon, which has the additional problem of being sunlit two weeks a month and dark for the other two weeks.

SOLVENCY: FUSION CANNOT WORK


THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT WE ARE CLOSER TO THE NECESSARY FUSION TECHNOLOGY-Technology Review ‘07

[Mining the Moon; Technology Review; 23 Aug 2007; http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Could He3 from the moon truly be a feasible solution to our power needs on Earth? Practical nuclear fusion is nowadays projected to be five decades off--the same prediction that was made at the 1958 Atoms for Peace conference in Brussels. If fusion power's arrival date has remained constantly 50 years away since 1958, why would helium-3 suddenly make fusion power more feasible?

Advocates of He3-based fusion point to the fact that current efforts to develop fusion-based power generation, like the ITER megaproject, use the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle, which is problematical. (See "International Fusion Research.") Deuterium and tritium are both hydrogen isotopes, and when they're fused in a superheated plasma, two nuclei come together to create a helium nucleus--consisting of two protons and two neutrons--and a high-energy neutron. A deuterium-tritium fusion reaction releases 80 percent of its energy in a stream of high-energy neutrons, which are highly destructive for anything they hit, including a reactor's containment vessel. Since tritium is highly radioactive, that makes containment a big problem as structures weaken and need to be replaced. Thus, whatever materials are used in a deuterium-tritium fusion power plant will have to endure serious punishment. And if that's achievable, when that fusion reactor is eventually decommissioned, there will still be a lot of radioactive waste.


HE-3 FUSION IS NOT EVEN A TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE OPTION-Technology Review ‘07

[Mining the Moon; Technology Review; 23 Aug 2007; http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Helium-3 advocates claim that it, conversely, would be nonradioactive, obviating all those problems. But a serious critic has charged that in reality, He3-based fusion isn't even a feasible option. In the August issue of Physics World, theoretical physicist Frank Close, at Oxford in the UK, has published an article called "Fears Over Factoids" in which, among other things, he summarizes some claims of the "helium aficionados," then dismisses those claims as essentially fantasy.

Close points out that in a tokamak--a machine that generates a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to confine the superheated plasmas necessary for fusion--deuterium reacts up to 100 times more slowly with helium-3 than it does with tritium. In a plasma contained in a tokamak, Close stresses, all the nuclei in the fuel get mixed together, so what's most probable is that two deuterium nuclei will rapidly fuse and produce a tritium nucleus and proton. That tritium, in turn, will likely fuse with deuterium and finally yield one helium-4 atom and a neutron. In short, Close says, if helium-3 is mined from the moon and brought to Earth, in a standard tokamak the final result will still be deuterium-tritium fusion.



A WORKABLE FUSION REACTOR IS STILL DECADES AWAY AND HE-3 MAY NOT EVER MAKE ECONOMIC SENSE-Oberg ‘06

[James; Moonscam: Russians try to sell the moon for foreign cash; The Space Review; 06 Feb 2006; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/551/1; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


An Associated Press story prudently pointed out that “Sevastianov’s statement appeared to be part of Energia’s publicity campaign aimed at attracting government funding for the development of a next-generation spacecraft.” The story continued with commendable caution: “Not everyone is sold on the promise of helium-3: A workable fusion reactor is still decades away, and researchers say that the technology for using helium-3 is more difficult than the technology for other potential fusion fuels that would be more abundant on Earth. Even if the technique for helium-3-based fusion were perfected, mining the material on the moon and bringing it to Earth may not make economic sense, skeptics say.”
FUSION WILL STILL GENERATE A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE-Williams ‘07

[Mark; staff writer; Mining the Moon; Technology Review; 23 Aug 2007;http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/?a=f; retrieved 27 Jun 2011]

Advocates of He3-based fusion point to the fact that current efforts to develop fusion-based power generation, like the ITER megaproject, use the deuterium-tritium fuel cycle, which is problematical. (See "International Fusion Research.") Deuterium and tritium are both hydrogen isotopes, and when they're fused in a superheated plasma, two nuclei come together to create a helium nucleus--consisting of two protons and two neutrons--and a high-energy neutron. A deuterium-tritium fusion reaction releases 80 percent of its energy in a stream of high-energy neutrons, which are highly destructive for anything they hit, including a reactor's containment vessel. Since tritium is highly radioactive, that makes containment a big problem as structures weaken and need to be replaced. Thus, whatever materials are used in a deuterium-tritium fusion power plant will have to endure serious punishment. And if that's achievable, when that fusion reactor is eventually decommissioned, there will still be a lot of radioactive waste.
HE-3 FUSION IS UNWIELDY AND IMPRACTICAL ON A LARGE SCALE-Elton Jacquot ‘07

[Jeremy; staff writer; The Race to Mine the Moon’s Helium; Treehugger; 24 Aug 2007; http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/the_race_to_mine.php; retrieved 28 Jun 2011]


Critics of this approach counter that He3-based fusion is highly unwieldy and impractical on a large scale. Frank Close, a theoretical physicist at Oxford University and helium-3 skeptic, recently published an article lashing out against the "fantastical" claims made by "helium aficionados."

One of the only (modestly) successful applications of the He3-based technology so far has been a small plant built by Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Running on a six-figure annual budget, it only contains a spherical plasma about 10 cm in diameter that can produce sustained fusion with 200 million reactions per second — and requires 1 kilowatt of power to make 1 milliwatt.



THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT FUSION WILL WORK OR ATTRACT INVESTMENT-Reich ‘04

[Eugenie; staff writer; Can We Mine the Moon?; New Scientist; 31 Jan 2004]


For a power source, the mine could use hydrogen that comes out with the helium, reacting it with oxygen also available in minerals on the moon. Ideally, unmanned ships would carry the helium-3 back to Earth.

Schmitt is looking for investors, but this is certainly no guaranteed get-rich-quick scheme: investors can expect a wait of 10 to 25 years before any helium-laden ships start to come home. And even if they do start unloading helium-3 on Earth, who says there will be a huge market for it? The fusion technologies under development have yet to produce an economical fusion power station, and it might be rash to assume that the fusion dream will become reality.


FUSION POWER IS A PIPE DREAM THAT FRAUDS AND CHARLATANS HAVE BEEN PROMOTING FOR DECADES-Schulz ‘09

[Max, senior fellow@ Manhattan Institute; The Fusion Illusion; The New Atlantis; Summer 2009; http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-fusion-illusion; retrieved 22 Jul 2011]


This vision has spurred a movement of would-be discoverers lighting out for the fame and glory that would accompany the breakthrough of controlled fusion. A recent book chronicles this wild, oft-contentious scientific pursuit. Charles Seife, a former Science magazine writer and the author of the heralded 2000 bestseller, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, has written a lively account of the history of fusion research—“a tragic and comic pursuit that has left scores of scientists battered and disgraced.”

Sun in a Bottle is an engrossing, accessible work that tells a fascinating story about the quest for fusion. It is a story that covers the heights of man’s knowledge of physics as well as the depths of his vainglory—a tale of great scientific achievement as well as the maneuverings of charlatans, frauds, cranks, and modern-day alchemists. And it is a story of false hopes; the promise of fusion has forever been just a decade or two away. Yet today the faith in fusion is, in some quarters, as strong as ever.


FUSION ENERGY REMAINS OUT OF REACH, DESPITE ASSURANCES THAT IT IS JUST A DECADE AWAY-Schulz ‘09

[Max, senior fellow@ Manhattan Institute; The Fusion Illusion; The New Atlantis; Summer 2009; http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-fusion-illusion; retrieved 22 Jul 2011]


The future of fusion now seems to lie with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an enormous long-term multilateral effort to build a tokamak reactor in Cadarache, France. The ITER idea has been around since Mikhail Gorbachev proposed it at a summit in 1985. These efforts went nowhere until the United States took an active lead during the administration of George W. Bush, and construction on the massive reactor is slated to begin soon.

Will it work? It will still take decades to find out. Though generally optimistic about ITER, Seife is still skeptical that it will ever achieve ignition and sustained burn. But that sort of skepticism is the exception among fusion enthusiasts, despite the numerous setbacks over the years. “The fusion community clings to the hope that fusion energy is just thirty years away—and that it will solve all our energy problems,” Seife notes. “The promise of a fusion reactor a few decades away has been a cliché for a half century.”

And it will continue to be so. After all, says Seife, “there’s something uniquely powerful about the promise of fusion energy. It harks back to the ancient quest to build a perpetual motion machine, but this time the source of unlimited energy doesn’t violate the laws of physics.”

SOLVENCY: ITER FUSION CANNOT WORK
NOT EVEN THE ITER WILL BE ABLE TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM THE REACTION; LUNAR HE-3 CANNOT PRODUCE POWER-Close ‘07

[Frank; theoretical physicist, Oxford University; Fears Over Factoids; Physics World; 03 Aug 2007; http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30679; retrieved 20 Jun 2011]


Clearly, deuterium–helium-3 is a poor fusion process, but the irony is much greater as I shall now reveal. A tokomak is not like a particle accelerator where counter-rotating beams of deuterium and helium-3 collide and fuse. Instead, all of the nuclei in the fuel mingle together, which means that two deuterium nuclei can rapidly fuse to give a tritium nucleus and proton. The tritium can now fuse with the deuterium – again much faster than the deuterium can with helium-3 – to yield helium-4 and a neutron.

So by bringing helium-3 from the Moon, all we will end up doing is create a deuterium– tritium fusion machine, which is the very thing the helium aficionados wanted to avoid! Undeterred, some of these people even suggest that two helium-3 nuclei could be made to fuse with each other to produce deuterium, an alpha particle and energy. Unfortunately, this reaction occurs even more slowly than deuterium–tritium fusion and the fuel would have to be heated to impractically high temperatures that would be beyond the reach of a tokomak. And as not even the upcoming International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be able to generate electricity from the latter reaction, the lunar-helium-3 story – like the LHC as an Armageddon machine – is, to my mind, moonshine.


DESPITE POTENTIAL ADVANTAGES, WE ARE AT LEAST 40 YEARS AWAY FROM THIS TECHNOLGOY, -Kaku ‘08

[Michio; Physics of the impossible: a scientific exploration into the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel; 2008; pages 46-47]


Unlike the current generation of fission nuclear power plants, a fusion reactor will not create large amounts of nuclear waste. (Each traditional fission plant produces 30 tons of extremely high-level nuclear waste per year. By contrast, the nuclear waste created by a fusion machine would be mainly the radioactive steel left over when the reactor is finally decommissioned.)

Fusion will not completely solve the Earth's energy crisis anytime in the near future; Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. French Nobel laureate in physics, hits said, "We say that we will put tin- sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is. We don't know how to make the box." But if all goes well, researchers are hopeful that within forty years the ITEB may pave the way for commercialization of fusion energy, energy that can provide electricity for our homes. One day fusion reactors may alleviate our energy problem, safely releasing the power of the sun on the Earth.

But even magnetic confinement fusion reactors would not provide enough energy to energize a Death Star weapon. For that we would need an entirely new design.
OPINIONS ARE DIVIDED ON WHETHER ITER IS EVEN VIABLE-EurActiv ‘05

[Mixed reactions to ITER; EurActive; 11 July 2005; http://www.euractiv.com/en/science/mixed-reactions-iter/article-141693; retrieved 13 August 2011]


The quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to meet global energy needs was given a boost when a 30-nation consortium chose France to host the world's first nuclear fusion reactor. Opinions remain divided over whether nuclear fusion is safe and economically viable as a sustainable source of energy production.
SOLVENCY: NEW TECHNOLOGY/FUEL CANNOT AVERT ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
SIMPLY SWITCHING TO A NEW FORM OF ENERGY WILL NOT AVERT THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS FACING THE PLANET-Heinberg ‘09

[Richard; Faculty member of New College of California; Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World; 2009; Kindle Edition]


That is why the solution to the problem of oil depletion cannot consist merely of the development of an alternative energy source. Much of our usage of energy goes to facilitate the extraction, transformation, and use of other resources — metals, soils, water, and so on. Without an accompanying demand-side response, merely increasing the supply of energy to our species will mean the continued depletion of other resources, more competition for those dwindling resources, and an eventual crash. It is our reluctance as a species to undertake demand-side solutions to the ecological dilemma — and not merely our inability to find a suitable substitute for oil — that is leading us toward collapse. Yes, we need to make the transition away from fossil fuels, but we must do so in the context of a concerted effort to reduce the size of our population, the scale of our economic processes, and our impacts upon the biosphere. Otherwise we are merely briefly forestalling the inevitable.
THERE IS NO CANDIDATE TO REPLACE OUR DEADLY RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUELS-Heinberg ‘09

[Richard; Faculty member of New College of California; Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World; 2009; Kindle Edition]


Whether or not hydrogen plays a significant role in our energy future, we will almost certainly continue to rely overwhelmingly on primary sources of energy with which we are already familiar — including the sun, wind, nuclear power, and coal. But as supplies of oil and natural gas are depleted, the mix of fuels and sources on which we depend will inevitably shift. In Chapter 4 of The Party’s Over, after discussing the various alternatives to oil, I concluded that no single candidate, or likely mix, would be capable of supplying industrial societies with the quantity and quality of energy necessary to sustain economic growth into the middle decades of the current century, and that the consequences will likely be serious, if not catastrophic.
AFFIRMATIVE TECHNOLOGY IS NEITHER CLEAN NOR SAFE-EurActiv ‘05

[Mixed reactions to ITER; EurActive; 11 July 2005; http://www.euractiv.com/en/science/mixed-reactions-iter/article-141693; retrieved 13 August 2011]


Opponents argue that the project is purely experimental and that it will take at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is even built. Environmentalists are suggesting that despite being a more environmentally sound energy source than nuclear fission, fusion fuel is neither clean nor safe. Some scientists are estimating that the project could take three times longer than expected and environmental campaign group Greenpeace have stated that if the project yields any results at all, it will not be until the second half of this century. If the project is to proceed, the nation states comprising the consortium must also overcome differences on a number of issues, such as the extent of financing.
SOLVENCY: CANNOT PERMIT EXPLOITATION OF THE MOON

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