Moon's surface brimming with untapped power

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Moon's surface brimming with untapped power - Geologist believes

plentiful element holds energy value 



By MARK CARREAU 

Dec. 8, 2002, 9:41 AM

 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1692518



Astronauts journeyed to the moon as a display of Cold War technical

prowess, but the far-reaching legacy of their explorations may be the

discovery of an invisible nuclear power source locked in the gray lunar

soil. 



The material is helium-3, a rare form of nature's second most plentiful

chemical element and a potential radiation-free source of nuclear

fusion-generated electricity. 



Experts estimate that the most accessible layers of the lunar soil are

laced with one million tons of helium-3. Though fusion power generation

technologies are far from mastered, 40 tons of the material

theoretically would supply the current annual electricity needs of the

entire nation. Based on current spot crude oil prices, each ton of lunar

helium-3 is worth about $5 billion. 



Scientists examining the first lunar rocks the Apollo missions brought

to Earth began reporting the presence of helium-3 in the early 1970s,

but only over the course of time has its potential begun to be realized. 



"Most of the long-term sustaining value of exploration turns out to be

serendipitous," said Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a Harvard-trained

geologist who became the only professional scientist among 12 Apollo

astronauts to make the 240,000-mile lunar journey. "The same has to be

applied to the Apollo exploration of the moon. We did not know at its

conclusion the value of helium-3." 



Thirty years ago this week, Schmitt joined Gene Cernan and the late Ron

Evans aboard Apollo 17 as they lifted off on the last of six missions to

carry American explorers to the moon. Evans remained aboard the Apollo

command module capsule that circled the moon while Cernan, the mission

commander, and Schmitt, his co-pilot, descended to the surface. 



Now 67, Schmitt lives in Albuquerque, N.M., home base for his business

affairs, including efforts to foster commercial fusion power generation

with helium-3. 



In 1976, Schmitt was elected to a single term as a Republican U.S.

senator from New Mexico. Last year, he sought appointment as NASA's

administrator by President Bush, a post the White House instead filled

with Sean O'Keefe. 



Schmitt's simmering fascination with helium-3 started to crystallize

almost a decade ago, when he signed on as an adjunct professor of

engineering at the University of Wisconsin. 



He also established an association with the school's Fusion Technology

Institute. The institute was instrumental in sizing up the moon's

helium-3 potential in the post-Apollo era. 



"It could be the Persian Gulf of the 21st century," said Gerald

Kulcinski, a professor of nuclear engineering who serves as the

institute's director. 



The sun's tremendous radiance is fueled by a sustained internal nuclear

fusion reaction, as is the vast explosive power of the hydrogen bomb.

Fusion relies on the merging of nature's lightest elements to release

energy, including radioactive byproducts. 



Traditional utility companies limit their nuclear power production to

fission processes, in which heavy atomic particles are split to release

energy, including radioactivity. 



Most fusion research has been focused on the merging of deuterium and

tritium, two forms of hydrogen. Tritium, however, is radioactive and the

reaction produces the release of atomic particles that rapidly destroy

the protective materials housing the fusion process. 



Physicists had long known that scarce helium-3 was a non-radioactive

alternative to deuterium-tritium fuels. 



Generated by the sun's nuclear furnace, helium-3 is scattered by the

solar wind. But the magnetic fields or thick atmospheres that surround

the inner planets -- Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars -- shield them from

becoming natural respositories. 



Over the 4.5 billion-year life of the solar system, the moon has become

a catcher's mitt for helium-3 because it lacks shielding.  



The significance of Apollo's discovery went largely unnoticed until

1986. It was then that researchers from the Fusion Technology Institute,

frustrated by the commercial prospects for power generation using

deuterium and tritium, consulted lunar geologists, Kulcinski recalled. 



Without lunar helium-3, there is just enough of the material generated

as a byproduct of nuclear weapons production for low-level fusion 

xperiments. 



But the research has not matured sufficiently to demonstrate that

helium-3 fusion can be sustained in ways to produce more energy than the

reaction consumes, Kulcinski said. Nonetheless, Schmitt is undeterred. 



"Because of the energy value of helium-3, the potential is there to

ultimately finance a return to the moon with investors. Then the

taxpayer gets a break," he said. "Now, the question is, can you get

investors to step up? That is where I come in." 



Eventually, Schmitt believes, the nation must weigh the costs and

benefits of continued reliance on fossil fuels for power generation

versus investments in nuclear fission plants or solar power systems. 



"I have gradually come to the conclusion that the mining of lunar soils

and the extraction of helium-3, as well as several important byproducts

for use in space, is probably a winner from an investment point of view,

and also, I think, from a political point of view," he said. 



The process of extracting helium-3 involves the temporary raising and

heating of the lunar soil, a procedure that generates significant

amounts of water, another much-valued commodity on the final frontier. 

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org

.....................................................

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