China Intends to Mine Helium3 on the Moon

[STeeLy]

Originally Posted by Itse

I didn't even remember it was mentioned in Moon, I associated it the space Nazis from Iron Sky. And I originally read about this from a guy who works on Iron Sky 2.

I was totally thinking this is some guerilla ad for that movie. I mean it sounds like it could be a plot in the sequel

Also, if there's resources on the moon, there could be fighting on the Moon. I'm sure scifi writers and film makers are hopping aboard the Helium 3 train as quick as they can

The Nazis have the Gottedammerung, no one would dare fight them on the moon!

[CaptainCrunch]

Its funny because the first time I heard about H3 was in Tom Clancy's "Sum of all fears" when he spent about 50 pages writing about the detonation of a terrorist made nuclear device, and the only thing that stopped a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia was that the Tritium that they used in the bomb wasn't filtered properly to remove H3, and the H3 caused the bomb to fizzle.

[BloodFetish]

Originally Posted by ernie

Somehow I'd have to believe that rather than mine the moon China would simply breed tritium from neutron activation of Li-6. Tritium then decays to He-3 (~12 year half life) which is how the current world stock was created (inventory is decreasing because no tritium is being made).

Sure tritium is used in nuclear weapons (hence the drop in production) but somehow I don't think that matters too much to China. Hell the US is going to restart tritium production in the near future and so the He-3 inventory will begin to increase again.

And honestly, if fusion technology actually gets developed to a level where it is useful there are easier fuel stocks that wouldn't require moon mining. You'd simply use the high energy neutron radiation produced in fusion to breed the tritium (decay to He-3) to provide the fuel for the plant. The Tokamak will do something similar. But as it always is the Tokamak is 20 years in the future....though at least they;ve actually poured the foundation pads now.

[Locke]

Not so fast China....