Is recovery of the lunar Helium-3 resource really possible?
Yes, all key operations have been done before – no new technology is required. The hardware has been demonstrated since the Apollo era over 50 years ago in terms of spaceflight requirements, and robotic excavation and processing are well understood from energy industry experience in hostile environments offshore and in the arctic. The reserves of Helium-3 on the moon and associated economics for Full Field Development (FFD) are well understood, as are the mechanisms and preliminary designs for excavation and processing. In addition, Black Moon Energy Corporation (BMEC) has identified the most critical variables and operations on which to gather data with up to two robotic Delineation Missions (DM) to the moon in order to significantly de-risk the FFD endeavor.
What makes you think BMEC will succeed in five years to execute its planned robotic Delineation Missions (DM) to the moon, especially in light of so many recent failures in commercial spaceflight endeavors?
To be sure, there is risk in every spaceflight endeavor. To mitigate the risk, we have partnered with the aerospace industry’s “best-in-class” for each segment of the DM operations, including launch, lunar landing, surface rover operations, and scientific package. Further, our timing in getting these missions done in the next five years will allow further maturation of the commercial industry as happened, for example, when SpaceX first started with a number of F9 launch failures ten years ago, to the more recent virtually flawless flight record.
How much more time and investment will be required for the fusion reactors to be ready?
The fusion industry consensus is that fusion reactors will be in a position to put profitable electricity on the grid by the mid-2030s. However, some predict earlier results. Commonwealth Fusion Systems estimates that it will have a commercially viable machine by 2030, while Helion is targeting 2029. The estimates for additional funding required to commercialize the various fusion reactor configurations vary wildly from several hundred million dollars to four billion over the next 5 to 10 years (somewhat dependent on whether a company will license its technology or act as OEM).
What if the fusion reactors are not ready to utilize Helium-3 when production begins?
If the first production of Helium-3 could be ready to be delivered to Earth in 2033, but a delay occurs in sales (perhaps no fusion reactors ready to use Helium-3), then a slight decrease in the present value economic return may occur if field development capital has been spent before any delay is realized. However, Helium-3 is a stable isotope and may be stored indefinitely in pressurized gas tanks, much like oxygen or nitrogen. Moreover, there are significant ancillary revenue market opportunities for Helium-3 in cryogenic applications (MRI, HTS cooling, quantum computing), medical diagnostics (early lung cancer detection), nuclear security screening, explosives detection (e.g., land mines), and tritium breeding, to name a few.
Should BMEC delay its Delineation Missions and FFD of Helium-3 until fusion reactors are operational?
Can a fusion reactor begin using a Deuterium-Tritium fuel cycle, and then switch to Deuterium-Helium-3 later?
No, not easily. The use of Tritium causes the reactor to become dangerously radioactive, creating waste and operational downtime issues, and such a reactor must be designed to breed additional Tritium fuel as a side product (sapping its useable energy and necessitating a very complex, and as yet, un-tested design). To utilize Helium-3, a much simpler reactor design can be implemented with much lower operating costs.
Why are so many private funders investing in fusion reactor companies if payout is 10 to 15 years out?
They believe fusion is going to happen and predict a tremendous economic upside. Reactor companies see great upside to unregulated off-grid “behind the meter” applications, in addition to replacing the on-grid power plants. BMEC’s advantage in becoming the preferred fuel supplier is that it has de-risked its opportunity because it does not care which fusion reactor configurations become commercially successful. BMEC is essentially placing a diversified bet on all of them to be successful.
Will the lunar environment be changed by BMEC’s excavation of Helium-3?
Not at all. Excavation is limited to 3 meters deep. The end result of the excavation efforts will appear like a farmer’s field after being plowed. The surface of the moon will not look different from Earth, and our operations will not change the gravitational impact on Earth’s Ocean tides.
Could Helium-3 be made on Earth and thereby avoid the lunar costs?
In theory, yes, but in reality, no. It would be more costly to scale up manufacturing Helium-3 on Earth rather than sourcing it from the moon. In addition, making it on Earth would cause significant radioactive, operational, and waste issues. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that decays to stable Helium-3 with a 12.3 year half-life, and is a radioactive waste product of a limited number of heavy water nuclear fission reactors. Currently, this decay process provides less than 5 kg of Helium-3 per year against a projected demand for fusion of thousands of kilograms per year. For example, a 1 GW powerplant is estimated to require 75 kg of Helium-3 per year, after taking into account operational inefficiencies. Even if enough Tritium could be manufactured, the long-term storage required to wait for the radioactive Tritium to decay to Helium-3 imposes serious operational expense and regulatory issues. In contrast, the moon has sufficient Helium-3 to meet the entire anticipated global demand for fusion, quantum computing, and other applications for thousands of years.
Some have proposed manufacturing Helium-3 on Earth by fusing Deuterium with itself – the so-called D-D fusion fuel cycle – because Deuterium is available in sea water. While this reaction is theoretically possible in the laboratory, the D-D fusion process is very hard to do and does not scale economically or operationally. Given the relatively low Helium-3 exhaust rate from the D-D fuel cycle, even when operating at optimum fusion conditions, manufacturing sufficient Helium-3 for a D-He3 fuel cycle reactor will require 3-5 dedicated D-D breeder reactors of equal size to feed sufficient Helium-3 fuel to a D-He3 powerplant. This will require a huge incremental upfront capital expenditure and increased operational costs due to the D-D fuel cycle, and result in a plasma generating both medium and high energy neutrons that damage the equipment and create a dangerous radiation work environment. In addition, there would be added costs and operational difficulties in handling large amounts of exhaust gases, including radioactive Tritium, added costs due to end-of-life decommissioning, and an adverse radioactive environmental impact to consider.
Lunar sourced Helium-3 requires no new technical breakthroughs – there are currently commercial landing systems on the moon, and many companies are building rovers, return vehicles, and related hardware. Lunar sourced Helium-3 has no radioactive footprint and is economical – adding as little as 2¢/kw-hr to the LCOE in the first year of production, to less than 1¢/kw-hr over a 20-year powerplant lifetime as economies of scale are realized. In contrast, breeding Helium-3 on Earth requires solving several new, daunting technological problems, is a financial and operational non-starter, and will cost over 30-times as much.
As some experts have noted about the idea of manufacturing Helium-3 on Earth: At best, the “marketing is misleading – they tout the benefits and ease of aneutronic D-He3 fusion, but still need the harder neutronic D-D fusion to obtain their fuel.” See J. Parisi and J. Ball, The Future of Fusion Energy, 2019, at p.301. Getting Helium-3 from the moon is cheaper, simpler, and cleaner.
What is the fundamental problem that the fusion reactor companies are trying to solve?
Why isn’t the U.S. government developing Helium-3 if it’s so obvious it is the fusion fuel of choice?
The transition to cleaner energy sources is important to the U.S., and indeed to all of us. While the U.S. government is not intended to be a commercial entity, it has been active in providing grants to fund fusion reactor research through DOE’s ARPA-E division and NASA is funding research on Helium-3 extraction mechanisms through its Space Technology Research Fellowship program. In addition, DOE’s Isotope division recently stated that it is interested in building a strategic stockpile of Helium-3, and that it is their position that major markets for Helium-3 will be for fusion and quantum computers. NASA recently stated: “Helium-3, if used as fuel in a nuclear fusion reactor, could become a significant lunar export for power generation around the world.” In addition, the U.S. government has been offering support through various grants and loans, and by instituting a private-public milestone program. While these programs have, in theory, substantial funds to dispense, they often come with other obligations, such as loss of intellectual property, and thus BMEC will examine these programs carefully and weigh them against private funding alternatives.
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