Thorium Helium-3 Fuel Cycle as the basis of a Cis-Lunar Energy Economy
- Paper number
IAC-07-C3.3.01
- Author
Mr. Lawrence Lemke, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
It appears highly likely that the next few decades of Earth’s history will see efforts to re-engineer the large scale production of energy in ways that diminish the global climate effects of release of Carbon Dioxide. Although approaches such as greater efficiency in the consumption of energy and sequestration of Carbon Dioxide will be part of the solution, eventually humankind must move away from chemical fossil energy and toward what has been termed cosmic energy. Cosmic energy may be defined as energy associated with creation, annihilation, and transmutation of the matter from which the cosmos is constructed and includes nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Solar energy is a special case of cosmic energy, as it ultimately derives from the Sun’s thermonuclear processes. The isotopes of both Thorium-232 and Helium-3 are abundant on Earth’s moon. We examine a possible fuel cycle in which protons from a controlled Helium-3 fusion reaction supply neutrons via a spallation target to sustain fission in a sub-critical assembly of Thorium. A power system of this type could be viewed as a variant of the so-called Accelerator Driven System, currently included in the roadmap of India’s national Nuclear Energy Program. Such a cycle has the characteristic that it could operate indefinitely using only cosmic energy sources found on the moon. We consider the advantages such an energy economy could provide both to the enterprise of spaceflight and to the problem of reducing emission of Carbon Dioxide on Earth.
- Abstract document