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January 26, 2010 12 mins

Since helium-3 can be used to power the fusion reactors of the future, it may be one of the world's most important fuel sources. It's rare on Earth, but experts believe the moon may have an abundant supply. Tune in and learn more about moon mining.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice, and I don't really like the science
editor at how stuff works dot com. Just Robert Lamb,
science writer for how stuff works dot com. Today we're

(00:24):
talking about helium, about the kind you find in those balloons,
but the kind you find on the moon. Yes, indeed,
So let's keep off our podcast today and give our
listeners some fun moon facts. I've got one. Can I start? Yeah,
go for it. Okay, where did the Moon come from?
Outer space? Well? Yeah, kinda. So there's this theory, right,

(00:45):
Scientists love theories, and this one is their favorite surrounding
the Moon. It's called the ejected ring. Theory goes like this.
A couple of billion years ago, there's this massive space collision.
Two planets, one of which was Earth and one of
which was this, uh this, one of that came barreling
into our neighborhood. They collided, they are, and the resulting
smash up. The remnants of the two planets mixed together.

(01:06):
They formed an orbital ring and that eventually condensed into
the Moon. Well here's another fact that stems right off
of that it's Uh, the Moon and the Earth as
we know today are in a gravitational relationship. The Moon
is trapped in the Earth's gravitational field or it's around us.
But the Moon's gravitational pull tugs on the oceans, which

(01:28):
creates the tides, right, and actually that tug has been
suggested as one source of energy. Um. So basically what
we would do on a on Earth, we'd be we
built these underwater turbines that would take advantage of this
uh natural motion of the tides, and we'd um, we
have these turbines and we generate some electricity from it. Basically. Yeah,

(01:48):
I've seen some designs that actually involve a bio biomimicry
that involved like a basically a giant mechanical sharp tail. Um.
You know, the basic ideas that a nature came up
with this, best will mimic this and use that to
to collect the kinetic energy of the types. Right, It's
pretty neat idea. But a couple of unknowns with this approach, like, um,

(02:11):
you know, are barnacle is going to grow on the turbines? Yeah?
Do we do we need to put even more junk
on the bottom of our oceans? I think not, So
let's talk about helium three instead. Yeah, helium three. Uh,
and this is basically normal helium as was in my
lungs earlier, except there's a one missing neutron and that's
a key difference. Yes, yeah, pretty key. When I asked

(02:32):
for helium three downstairs in the little lobby store, they
had none. They're all sold out because of Judy's fourty
birthday party. Um that, and there's there's virtually none of it.
There's very little of it on the on the Earth,
but there's a lot of it on the Moon, or
at least much more. Yeah, okay, well, why well, helium

(02:52):
three forms when cosmic rays bombard helium four, which is
produced naturally through the fusion through fusion in the sun. Right,
So the Sun's pumping this stuff out. Our gravitational field
and our atmosphere repel the stuff from entering the Earth's atmosphere.
So what little of it there is on Earth has

(03:13):
been here for just ages and ages, ancient stuff. And it's,
like I said, this, very little of it. The Moon, however,
no atmosphere to speak of. It's just up there collecting
this stuff age after age. So you know, we reach
a point where where we have you know, very little here,
but just massive reserves on the Moon. Yeah, so there's

(03:33):
like a mother load up there. Yeah, we're talking one
million tons of it on the Moon. And to put
that in perspective, they say that the amount of energy
stored in that deposit is roughly ten times that stored
in fossil fuels on Earth. Right, So helium three is
awesome for nuclear fusion reactions. I mean, that's what we're
really interested in. And what's more, it's it represents an

(03:56):
improvement on nuclear fusion reactions that we've undertaken in the past.
To remind everybody, nuclear fusion is the process where you
take two elements, you combine them and it produces a
new element and energy and the energy being key, Yeah,
a lot of energy. It's the same reaction like Robert said,
that fuels our sun and it's not fission, which is

(04:16):
the splitting. Always confused those too, but fusion fuse vision
split anyway. So when helium three is heated to high
temperatures and you combine it with a little deterium and
deuterium of course is an isotype of hydrogen right with
it as a neutron next to its one proton. Do
you get this huge, huge, huge reaction and the energy

(04:38):
which is which is pretty much our energy dreams. This
is the stuff of our energy dreams. This is the
stuff that would make oil be gone and helium three
rock on. You get nuclear fusion. I mean, this is
what they're gunning for at the National Ignition Facility. But
they just really haven't been able to generate a nuclear
fusion reaction in a controlled fashion, in a safe fashion,

(04:59):
or on a commercial scale fashion like they would with
the helium three. Yeah. Like, um, theoretically you could. You
could form the same reaction, a similar reaction with tritium,
but one of the by products of that is a
just a whole boatload of radiation. Yeah, so helium three
tends to be cleaner and it doesn't seem to pose
a danger to sunless radiation produced. Well, what don't they

(05:21):
like about it? Though? Well, there is the whole fact
that it's mostly on the moon. Like I said, that's
what what small amounts we have on Earth is sufficient
for tests and a horse and around in a laboratory,
but not so much actually like gearing up for full
on production. Uh. In speaking of production, we can make
helium three, but we produce it as a byproduct of

(05:45):
creating nuclear warheads, so that's not exactly an ideal situation either.
And again it doesn't produce large quantities. And then there's
a fact that we really haven't mastered the Moon and
back journey quite yet from a you know, safety or
efficiency perspective. I mean, people have been known to die
on these trips, and efficiency wise, it's not clear that

(06:06):
will be getting out more than what we put in. Yeah,
I mean that's the thing. You have to be able
to justify going to the Moon and bringing this stuff
back and uh, and it's actually, uh, there's more involved.
It's not just simply landing the vessel, getting out the
shovel and throwing you know, some rocks into the into
the lunar vehicle and returning. And incidentally, that's how we
know that there is exactly the helium three in the

(06:27):
moon is because what's his the astronaut Harrison Schmidt stuffed
his pockets full of lunar rocks and then we got
around to analyzing it and will and behold, there's a
ton of helium three. It kind of makes it sound
like you shoplifted them or something. But yeah, I don't
think you can shoplift from the Moon because it's the
property of all mankind. We'll get to that in a second.

(06:48):
We will get to that in a second. But but yeah,
to to bring to bring it back from the Moon,
first of all, to uh, to mine it, you'd have
to create some pretty high temperature, so we're talking like
six hundred degrees celsius to nine under degree celsius too,
to extract it from the soil and remove some of
the impurities. And then you're gonna have to further refine
the stuff because it doesn't just come ready made, right,

(07:10):
It comes in roughly thirteen parts per billion in the
lunar soil. So there's a there would be a lengthy
mining and refining process that would have to take place
on the Moon. And I mean, what do we have
up there right now? Why does it have to take
place on the Moon. Well, because otherwise we've got to
bring all that unrefined like moon rock. So it's a
matter of space. It's a matter of space. I mean,

(07:31):
if we build up I mean, we couldn't even build
a space uplighted to the Moon. But I mean, yeah,
it's it's it's the only feasible way to go about
it is to to refine it there and bring back
the goods, you know. And of course up there on
the moon right now, what we have a flag, a
few you know, some chunks of lunar vehicles, center, golf
ball or two. Yeah, because Alan Shepard hit a golf

(07:53):
ball off of it. Proudest moments and human history. And
then there's the other question of our fusion reactors really
aren't quite up to the task yet, right Yeah, we're
we're talking you know, theoretical stuff and and you know,
early schematics and designs at this point, and U and
nobody's gonna build, you know, try and build one of

(08:14):
these things that we don't have the fuel to to
run and make it, you know, earn it's keep. So
the i mean, the helium three that does exist up
there is, Oh, it's monumental in terms of money, in
terms of the monetary value st value, high Street value
for helium three, no doubt. And a lot of people
are a lot of people want it? Who wants it? Everybody?

(08:37):
I mean, obviously the United States is interested, NASA is
expressed an interest in it. China has definitely expressed a
very vocal interest. India, Russia, A couple of private corporations
out there, I think are also in on the helium
three race because we're talking about the future of energy
production on the planet and as well as the possibilities
for the further exploration of our our solar system because

(09:02):
you know, you mind it up there on the moon,
and the Moon is also um an ideal launching pad,
an ideal base camp, if you will, for for further
exploration right less of an escape velocity, etcetera. Yeah, NASA
outlined its whole um. It's numerous, numerous. I think it
has like two hundred lunar exploration objectives and this clearly
helium three was one of them, as well as utilizing

(09:23):
other lunar resources. There's a whole tab devoted to it
and it's spreadsheet, and it could get pretty competitive up there.
I mean, this could be we could be talking about
the gold rushes of the nineteenth century only on the
Moon and for helium three, the helium three rushes, the
helium three rushes. Yeah, so they it's not really clear
who owns the moon. So who owns the moon? Well,

(09:46):
nobody really owns the moon per se, because the un says, so, oh, well,
well that clears it up. No, no, but seriously, that's
now there's this Moon treaty that they rode up in
nine that essentially does say the moon is, uh, the
moon and its related resources are the property of quote
unquote the common heritage of mankind. And of course it's

(10:08):
one thing to say that, you know then, or even now,
when nobody's up there right now there, we're not exactly
hitting the moon a lot, or or or have the
wherewithal to mine and refine anything. So but once people
do get up right, yeah, once the technology catches up
with us, I could see this becoming much more repressing issue, right.
And who's going to abide by the treaty? Right, It's

(10:30):
not like some of the nations are that good at
abiding by existing treaties now anyone, anyone? So when are
we talking about Well, it depends depends when you're looking
into the future. And then who's doing the the the imagining.
Because I've read some articles where China was supposed to
be up there right now. Maybe well maybe they are,

(10:52):
they just have reported it yet maybe so in theory, yeah,
China was planning to be up there already. Um, I've
also heard yeah, and I think something and so yeah,
it's it's kind of up in the air. So to
wrap this up, so yeah, until any of this uh

(11:13):
comes to fruition, we uh we have the whole title
thing to fall back on. Yeah, we do. And I
also think werewolves a big possibility because, as we all know,
the full moon changes people who suffer from lecanthropy into wearawolves.
And who's to say that that process doesn't give off
a spare proton, right, no doubt, no doubt. I think

(11:34):
we should look into that. Yeah, if you're not interested
in the Wearable prospect or if you are interested in
the Wearable Prospect or the moon or helium three, head
on over to how stuff works dot com because we
have plenty for you to read. We also have a
pretty cool blog over at blogs dot house stuff works
dot com and that's called side Stuff. So check it out, guys,
and thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands

(12:02):
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page.

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