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Jun 12, 2009 12:01 AM | 5
What if we found a clean, abundant resource that could provide the lion's share of the world's energy needs? How far would we be willing to go to get it?
That's the question posed—in both a moral and a logistic sense—by the new sci-fi film MOON, directed by Duncan Jones (the son of musician David Bowie), which opens in New York City and Los Angeles this week.
The movie's protagonist—and essentially the only character who ever appears on camera—is Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), a man nearing the end of a three-year contract staffing a moon base devoted to mining helium 3 for use back home. In this not-too-distant future, nuclear fusion of helium 3, a light isotope of the familiar element, supplies 70 percent of the world's energy, and bases such as Sarang, on the far side of the moon, keep the reactors fueled. (In reality, productive fusion of any kind for energy generation has proved elusive, with the international ITER project recently experiencing setbacks.)
His only companion at the Lunar Industries base is a HAL-esque machine, an intelligent but distinctly non-humanoid robot called Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Bell's lonely predicament aside, the prospect of a relatively nearby source of clean fuel would be awfully appealing, were it real.
As it turns out, the film depicts a vision quite close to what some researchers describe as a powerful—if extremely difficult—solution to our energy woes.
Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineer and director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been researching the possibility of mining the moon's helium 3 for decades. He is, along with Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, one of the concept's most prominent advocates. (Schmitt wrote an article for Popular Mechanics in 2004 that describes a harvesting operation much like the one Bell manages at Sarang.)
The lunar surface, Kulcinski says, should indeed be loaded with the isotope, which is in the solar wind, the stream of charged particles from the sun. It is scarce on Earth because the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field largely deflect the brunt of the solar wind, but the moon is far less protected. "The only thing that's close to the sun that has neither an atmosphere nor a magnetic field is the moon," Kulcinski says. And samples from the Apollo program show elevated levels of helium 3 compared to the puny amounts available on Earth. Kulcinski estimates that there are a million metric tons of helium 3 embedded in the outermost layer of the moon's crust. 
What is more, it could prove very valuable as a nuclear fuel—just 40 metric tons would power the U.S. for an entire year if the fusion process could be perfected, Kulcinski says. Perhaps more important, the isotope itself is not radioactive, and the products of its fusion would be much cleaner than the nuclear waste generated by today's fission plants.
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.
The disparity is enough to lead some skeptics to swear off the proposal entirely. In a 2007 article for Physics World, theoretical physicist Frank Close of the University of Oxford dismissed the "clean" fusion of helium 3 with helium 3 as slow and requiring prohibitively high temperatures. On top of that, he said, estimates of the moon's reserves of the isotope are purely hypothetical. "The lunar helium 3 story," Close wrote, "is, to my mind, moonshine."
Photo of lunar rover (top) and of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) driving a rover (bottom) at a mining base for helium 3 in the film MOON: Sony Pictures Classics
Tags:
clean energy,
movie,
science fiction,
nuclear fusion,
duncan jones,
helium 3
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5 Comments
Add CommentAw.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Polywell Fusion Reactor - if it works - will not need He3
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's more likely that mining titanium,and other ore's,would be more profitable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat if there is an isotope called judonium on the asteriod belt. It absorbs non organic energy and restores matter to it's prime? eg a 146 yr old prospector finds it, tranforming him to a healthy 25 year old perminantly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrasil o Gigante da Am�rica do Sul � o principal pioneiro e campe�o entre as na��es na primeira d�cada do ano 2000 no Game do super projeto H�lium-3.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisO futuro da energia e dos combust�veis terrestres j� possuem representantes com nomes de peso e os Principais Avatars ou equipes de minera��o Online no Game do super projeto H�lium-3 Discovery CHANNEL e NASA.
No Brasil o Paulista Hellonmoon e o Ga�cho SoaresCecere ou o Carioca Fernando Mobill, vem dando muito trabalho para as equipes rivais entre os 221 Pa�ses participantes no Game do projeto, e assim demonstrando de forma din�mica a t�o conhecida garra Brasileira.
Publicada por Juliano Trisch da Silva em 09:21
ter�a-feira, 5 de Janeiro de 2010
Melhores do Brasil no H�lium-3 .
Helium-3 Discovery CHANNEL.
Helium-3 Discovery CHANNEL � um dos principais jogos Onlines de estrat�gia que est� sendo disputado no mundo e tamb�m acessado por milhares de participantes todos os dias.
O jogo foi lan�ado ao publico em meados do ano de 2009, � composto por um ranking geral de 1 � 250 nomes de pessoas, equipes ou empresas de minera��o online, como tamb�m um ranking entre os 221 pa�ses participantes. Nesse o Brasil � o lider no ano de 2009 e consequentemente primeiro campe�o entre as na��es na primeira d�cada do ano 2000.
At� o primeiro dia do ano de 2010 Helium-3 Discovery CHANNEL j� contava com um total de 125.000 competidores em 221 Pa�ses soberanos em todo o mundo.
H3 O Enredo
No ano de 2035, ocorre o previsto "crash da energia". As reservas de combust�veis f�sseis atingem n�veis cr�ticos e as fontes renov�veis de energia n�o atendem � demanda.
O planeta Terra est� � beira de um colapso. S� a explora��o de uma nova fonte de energia poder� mudar este cen�rio.
Valendo U$ 4 milh�es o quilo, o g�s h�lio-3 n�o produz subprodutos nocivos e nada menos que 100 toneladas poderiam fornecer energia para o planeta inteiro durante um ano. Tudo que � preciso fazer � ir busc�-lo.
O h�lio-3 foi descoberto durante as miss�es do Projeto Apollo no anos de 1970. � gerado como subproduto das pr�prias rea��es nucleares do Sol e soprado pela gal�xia por ventos solares. Por falta de prote��o no campo magn�tico da Terra, o solo lunar absorveu o h�lio-3 por milh�es de anos.
O Programa Internacional de Explora��o Lunar (PIEL) foi criado com um �nico objetivo: explorar um milh�o de toneladas de h�lio-3 que se encontram sob a superf�cie lunar.
A infra-estrutura necess�ria para viabilizar a minera��o em grande escala na Lua contou com um n�vel sem precedentes de coopera��o entre ag�ncias espaciais rivais.
Com o futuro imediato do planeta em jogo, ressentimentos e interesses mesquinhos foram postos de lado - por enquanto, pelo menos.
Unidos sob a bandeira da PIEL, a Lua est� dividida em quatro setores internacionais: americano, russo, chin�s e indiano.
Cada setor � respons�vel pela emiss�o de licen�as que designam as zonas que uma determinada empresa pode explorar.
O h�lio-3 ser� extra�do por enormes Ve�culos Xenom�rficos de Reconhecimento de Terreno e Coleta (X-TRACT, na sigla em ingl�s). Para operar no ambiente mais hostil conhecido para o homem, s� os mais corajosos engenheiros da Terra conseguem se tornar pilotos dos X-TRACT.
Voc� esta � altura deste desafio?
A US $ 4 milh�es por quilo, o h�lio-3 � o mais valioso recurso natural do Universo. A concorr�ncia entre as mineradoras rivais � feroz: disputa entre zonas, roubo, sabotagem e ataques de mineiros mercen�rios s�o riscos enfrentados diariamente.
A Proclama��o Heston 2033 concede a todos os mineiros autorizados o direito de portar armas em defesa de sua causa. Seus ve�culos X-TRACT est�o equipados com dois canh�es GR80. Defender sua causa n�o � apenas seu direito constitucional, mas uma necessidade, se quiser extrair mais h�lio-3 do que seus rivais.
Todos sabem quem foi o primeiro homem na Lua, mas ningu�m se lembra do segundo.
N�o seja o segundo.
Lembre-se, um quilo de h�lio-3 vale U$ 4 milh�es.
Um milh�o de toneladas de h�lio-3 descansam sob a superf�cie lunar. Fa�a as contas. Ganhe uma fortuna e salve a Terra.
Os doze principais e melhores nomes dos grandes jogadores, pessoas, Avatars, equipes de competidores ou empresas de minera��o Online na primeira d�cada do ano 2000, e com maior N�vel no jogo em todo o mundo s�o os de: 1= TimeJumper, 2=Wariperu, 3=Piru09, 4=Hellonmoon, 5=Hermannhesse, 6=Melancholy, 7=FernandoGomes, 8=Joeromero, 9=Meckimesser, 10=SoaresCecere, 11=Mobill, AlfonsoJGG.
No Brasil o primeiro campe�o entre na��es na primeira d�cada do ano 2000 e segundo Pa�s com maior n�mero de participantes com cerca de 13.307, perdendo em contingente apenas para os Estados Unidos da Am�rica com m�dia de 14.000 competidores e crescendo dia ap�s dia os tr�s principais pioneiros e expoentes de maior N�vel na competi��o e no ranking do Gigante da Am�rica do Sul s�o Hellonmoon, SoaresCecere, Mobill.