Thread: World's First Trillionaire Will Be an Asteroid Miner

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Apparently the temperatures required to achieve helium-3 fusion reactions are much higher than in traditional fusion reactions. Why should we not just use fusion ?

Helium 3 fusion is a boondoggle. Brought up by mad environmentalists. In theory He3 fusion would be aneutronic which would mean no secondary induced radiation. That would be the only advantage. Normal Deuterium Tritium fusion does produce radioactive elements from thermal neutrons as you all will know. But it is many orders of magnitude lower than on fission reactors. Take the radioactive hull material and store it for maybe 60-80 years and radioactivity would be down to safe levels. The material can be used again. Let's achieve Deuterium Tritium fusion before we even think of He3

Also He3 may be abundant but in concentrations that you need to process thousands of tons of regolith to produce a few pounds of it. A major task even with all the technology we can use on earth. Much harder on the moon.