The Slow Death of the Internal Combustion Engine

[redpoint5]

What is the refining process?

If all of a sudden we're mining massive quantities of H-3, that would increase supply, which should pull the price down. How much electricity can we get from an ounce of H-3? It would have to compete with current 6 cents per kWh rates. Moon power doesn't sound cheap to me.

Did anyone watch Moon yet?

[Taylor95]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

What is the refining process?

If all of a sudden we're mining massive quantities of H-3, that would increase supply, which should pull the price down. How much electricity can we get from an ounce of H-3? It would have to compete with current 6 cents per kWh rates. Moon power doesn't sound cheap to me.

Did anyone watch Moon yet?

The extraction process sounds simple--you heat lunar dust to 600 C to extract it. One shuttle load (25 metric tons) could power the United States for a year. I'm not sure what that would do to our current electricity rates.

https://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

I still need to check out that movie

[sendler]

Originally Posted by Taylor95

I believe it is everywhere. It is a nonradioactive substance that can be used to generate nuclear energy.

https://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Pre..._lunar_surface

That is the problem. It's dispersed everywhere. I thought you talking about harvesting gold or something from asteroids. It is probably about as easy to get it there as it would be to filter it from sea water. Which is to say impossible. Scifi concepts that won't happen. And then there is the whole fusion reactor concept. An immense pulse of power that takes so much energy to contain, and is so short in duration that it isn't useful for anything.

[Taylor95]

Originally Posted by sendler

That is the problem. It's dispersed everywhere. I thought you talking about harvesting gold or something from asteroids. It is probably about as easy to get it there as it would be to filter it from sea water. Which is to say impossible. Scifi concepts that won't happen. And then there is the whole fusion reactor concept. An immense pulse of power that takes so much energy to contain, and is so short in duration that it isn't useful for anything.

It is everywhere in high amounts. 1 million tons of lunar dust could make 70 tons of helium-3. A 7 percent yield sounds amazing to me.

Fusion reactors are actively being developed. Fusion has already been achieved. I don't think it is fiction any more.

To add to all this, many governments (like the US, China, and Russia) have made statements regarding an intent to establish a permanent facility in the moon to harvest helium-3.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by Taylor95

It is everywhere in high amounts. 1 million tons of lunar dust could make 70 tons of helium-3. A 7 percent yield sounds amazing to me.

Fusion reactors are actively being developed. Fusion has already been achieved. I don't think it is fiction any more.

To add to all this, many governments (like the US, China, and Russia) have made statements regarding an intent to establish a permanent facility in the moon to harvest helium-3.

That's .07% Forget it. Fusion electricity is also a pipe dream.

[JSH]

I find it interesting that the developed world seems like it would rather look for the next pie-in-the-size technology instead of implement what we have today.

We just met our new executive yesterday (1 level down from the CEO) He spent the last 10 years running operations in India. The latest assembly plant in India runs on 70% solar energy. The solar arrays broke even in a few years and today they are saving massive amounts of money compared to grid power AND don't have to deal with daily power outages.

I think renewable energy will follow the same path as telephone technology. Invented in the developed world but embraced in the developing world. They skipped over landlines and jumped straight to cellular. Plenty of places in the developing world have better mobile networks than the USA because they skipped the early steps and went straight to LTE. The same will happen with electricity. Places were the grid doesn't exist or it is unreliable will jump straight to locally generated renewable energy.

[redpoint5]

Solar probably does make sense in places that are sunny, with expensive and unreliable electricity.

Portland is overcast, has among the cheapest electricity, and it's very reliable.

Regarding cell phones; US land area is huge and population density is relatively low. It's relatively easy to cover a place like South Korea with a robust cellular network.

[oil pan 4]

If I buy used panels, rack them my self, wire them up use a cheaper inverter I might be able to break even with 7 cent a kwh power in as soon as 3 years.
Most people aren't like me. They will hire some one to do it using new panels, charge labor, ect and the break even will be almost never.

[redpoint5]

The payback is likely never when you consider opportunity cost. Invest $15,000 in an index fund, and it will average a 7% return over time. That's $1050 per year, or more than I spend on electricity in a year. With heavy subsidy, or installing solar yourself, you can get a decent payback, but probably not when you have to pay the full cost out of pocket and pay someone to install it. Certainly not if the cost is financed.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by JSH

I find it interesting that the developed world seems like it would rather look for the next pie-in-the-size technology instead of implement what we have today.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antiquitech