What Would the World Look Like with an Abundance of Helium-3?

In 2010, Congress realized that the supply of helium-3 was at crisis levels. Since then, the U.S. government has been rationing this light isotope of Helium. Government and industry have sought new U.S. sources, but none have panned out, and even if new terrestrial sources can be found, there is not enough helium-3 on Earth to support the growing needs of multiple industries in the 2030s and beyond.

The need for helium-3 and its abundance on the Moon is the main reason why Interlune exists. We’re running out of critical resources to sustain Earth, and developing the technology to harvest them from the Moon and elsewhere solves many problems and is a significant market opportunity.

With a current market price of about $20 million per kilogram, helium-3 is the most valuable resource one could harvest from space. By the decade's end, Interlune will bring it back from the Moon for commercial, research, and national security applications. 

Keeping today’s primary applications of helium-3 in mind, we wanted to paint a picture of what the world will look like when we have access to all the helium-3 we wanted. In a nutshell:

• Widely available superconducting quantum computers.
• More secure borders and ports and low dependence on foreign energy sources.
• Enough clean fusion energy to power the Earth for 10,000 years.
• Fewer deaths and illnesses due to early detection and treatment of diseases through medical imaging and therapeutic applications.

Sounds pretty good, but how does one little isotope do all that?

Quantum Computing

Superconducting quantum computers must be kept extremely cold to perform efficiently and accurately. Helium-3 is the essential ingredient in dilution refrigerators that cool quantum computers to milliKelvin temperatures (just above absolute zero).

Having abundant helium-3 would mean that as quantum computers become larger and more complex, with more computers deployed worldwide, we won’t hit a supply chain bottleneck that stops the industry's growth. 

Having abundant helium-3 would also mean that researchers could test new quantum architectures and materials at lower costs and with fewer constraints related to cooling and equipment, speeding up innovation. Ultimately, the widespread adoption of quantum computing that helium-3 unlocks could be a catalyst for accelerating research in many scientific fields, such as biology, medicine, and cybersecurity, potentially transforming multiple industries.

National Security

Helium-3 is used in neutron detectors at borders and ports to detect smuggled nuclear weapons or materials, such as plutonium and uranium. These materials emit neutrons, and a detectable reaction that produces gamma rays occurs when neutrons come in contact with a helium-3 atom. 

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies began ramping up the deployment of Radiation Portal Monitors (RPMs) using helium-3. By 2011, over 3,400 helium-3 RPMs had been deployed, significantly drawing down the nation’s helium-3 stockpile and meaning that there was not enough helium-3 available for other non-defense applications. Eventually, there wasn’t even enough helium-3 for all the new RPMs. Alternative technologies were ultimately developed and deployed, but none of them are ideal due to issues with sensitivity, toxicity, or other problems. 

With sufficient helium-3, the U.S. and other countries could ensure more checkpoints were fully operational to detect nefarious materials 24/7 and secure other checkpoints within our borders. 

Having more helium-3 RPMs would also help monitor nuclear facilities and reactors more effectively, ensuring compliance with international agreements. It could also help verify the dismantling of nuclear weapons and ensure that nuclear materials are not diverted for unauthorized use. Helium-3 neutron detectors could monitor compliance with nuclear test ban treaties by detecting neutrons from underground nuclear tests and identifying unauthorized nuclear detonations.

Beyond RPMs for protecting our homeland, other kinds of helium-3 sensors could enable the detection of non-metallic landmines that are very difficult to find otherwise. These kinds of mines are widely used in conflicts today, posing a hazard to current and future generations; more helium-3 would make it easier to de-mine conflict zones now and in the future.

Medical Imaging

What if we could regularly diagnose lung cancer or other lung diseases and treat them long before adverse symptoms arise? 

The application of helium-3 in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and X-ray spectroscopy equipment has already demonstrated vast improvements in identifying diseased tissue in a wide range of conditions, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, and emphysema.

It can reveal subtle changes in lung tissue that would allow clinicians to detect chronic disease at earlier stages before structural and functional damage becomes detectable on traditional imaging methods like X-rays or computed tomography (CT) scans. One study published by the National Institutes of Health on lung imaging found the results “surprising because defects are observed even in asymptomatic patients.”

Here’s how it works:

First, the helium-3 goes through a process called hyperpolarization, which aligns the nuclei in the helium-3, dramatically increasing their emitted signal. 

When a person inhales a small quantity of hyperpolarized helium-3 gas, it distributes throughout the airways and alveoli (tiny air sacs where gas exchange occurs). The hyperpolarized helium-3 atoms respond to the magnetic fields in the MRI scanner, emitting signals that the scanner picks up. These signals generate 3D images of the lungs, showing areas of airflow obstruction, ventilation defects, or other undetectable issues using standard techniques.

Even better, unlike other imaging methods, helium-3 MRI does not expose patients to radiation, which makes it safer for children and people with cancer or other conditions.

Due to the unavailability of He3, hyperpolarized gas MRI using Xenon-129 was approved for patient use by the FDA in December 2022. Xenon-129 imaging is important in diagnosing lung circulatory issues and would be synergistic with, but not a complete replacement for, helium-3 imaging. With an abundance of helium-3 at a cost-competitive price, this technology could be adopted as a regular diagnostic tool. Additionally, this imaging technology could be expanded to other medical applications beyond lung disease.

Clean Fusion Energy

Helium-3 would serve as the ”fuel of the future” by helping to create nuclear energy without the dangerous radioactive byproduct of neutrons now produced by fission reactors. Some have gone as far as to call helium-3 the “holy grail of clean energy.”

In 2000, Interlune co-founder and Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the Moon, estimated that just 25 tons of helium-3 – equivalent to just a single load on the historic Space Shuttle – could power nearly all U.S. energy needs for an entire year. He went on to write his groundbreaking book, “Return to the Moon,” which laid the early foundation for the Interlune business plan. 

Recent breakthroughs indicate that our ability to create fusion energy efficiently is within reach – most notably in 2023 when the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced a fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain. Billions of dollars of private money have been invested in fusion in recent years, bringing this promising technology closer to reality. 

A steady supply of lunar helium-3 to power fusion reactors would provide humanity with a clean and almost limitless energy source to replace fossil fuels and fission reactors for reliable base-load power.  

There are currently four ways to fuel fusion energy production, including helium-3. However, helium-3 has distinct advantages.

• Fusing tritium with deuterium produces a large amount of high-energy neutrons that damage reactors and produce significant nuclear waste. Tritium supply is also extremely limited. Many fusion research programs plan initial demonstrations using tritium due to the low temperature at which fusion is possible with this fuel - 100 million degrees Celsius - but then plan to switch to another fuel source for operational power plants. 
• Hydrogen and boron are abundant on Earth, and their fusion reactions produce few radioactive neutrons and no significant nuclear waste. However, they must be heated to three billion degrees Celsius to fuse, making it the most challenging approach to fusion.
• Helium-3 fused with deuterium produces very few damaging neutrons and orders of magnitude less nuclear waste. Also, it fuses at a relatively modest 600 million degrees Celsius. The main problem with helium-3 is that we don’t have enough of it.
• Finally, in the long term, helium-3 can be fused with itself, thus reducing fusion’s production of neutrons to zero, that is, nuclear power with no nuclear waste.

As NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said in the August 1992 edition of Final Frontier, “...think of the possibility 50 or 100 years from now when we have controlled thermonuclear reactions for generating power here on Earth. Tens of thousands of pounds of helium-3 per year from the Moon could power the entire planet.” That future is closer than you think.

Just the Beginning

In the 1990s, before the diversion of much of the helium-3 stockpile for border security, we had a robust helium-3 research and development program in the United States. In fact, the University of Wisconsin Fusion Technology Institute, jointly with Japanese scientists and engineers, hosted a series of conferences on the topic, covering general helium-3 applications and the specific application of helium-3 fused with deuterium.

The restriction of supplies of helium-3 for general low-temperature physics research has seriously reduced activity in this important area of fundamental science. As with almost all such basic research, benefits to civilization are unpredictable but still certain to occur.

Access to affordable helium-3 will restimulate similar research and development programs in various areas. For example, high-energy protons created from the deuterium-helium-3 reaction can be used to make better brain scans, as well as develop new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, epileptic seizures, cancer, and coronary artery disease.

In addition to creating energy, one could expose the waste from a fission reactor to the proton plasma from the fusion of helium-3 and deuterium, significantly reducing the half-life of nuclear waste materials and creating a much more manageable solution to fission waste than presently available.

Finally, fusion-powered rockets could cut transit times to other planets by 50% to 70% compared to either chemical or electric propulsion, with a significant increase in payload at the same time. Imagine shortening the one-way trip to Mars from 210 days to 100 days or fewer. This would significantly reduce the risk of galactic radiation for human space travelers.

Let’s Go Get It!

To learn more about the technology Interlune is developing to harvest all that wonderful helium-3 from the Moon, check out our chief technology officer’s post here.

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