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Future in fusion?

By John Lasker n Special to The Capital Times

UW team involved in controversial ‘race’to harness moon’s energy

Twenty-one years ago, a small team of fusionresearchers from the University of Wisconsinmade a “rediscovery” so potentially momen-tous it might someday literally shatter the sur-face of the moon.

It was 1985, the holidays were nearing, and the UWfusion research team was brainstorming: They wonderedwhere they could find large quantities of the isotope heli-um-3, which is a proven fuel for nuclear fusion.Just two hundred pounds, they figured, could power a

city of a million inhabitants for one year.Their calculation was based on dozens of incredibly

small-scale fusion reactions they had carried out in a bas-ketball-sized fusion device.

“It was around Christmas. That’s when we made what Ilike to call our ‘rediscovery,’” said Dr. Gerald Kulcinski,part of the UW team since the beginning and now thedirector of the Fusion Technology Institute at UW.

Apollo astronauts, they remembered, had found quanti-ties of helium-3 on the moon, Kulcinski said, so theysought out NASA and inquired about their lunar soil sam-ples.

“Apollo records showed that every sample of lunarmaterial had helium-3 in it,” he said.

Now, nestled among NASA’s 200-point mission goals forlunar base plans it announced earlier this month, there isa proposal to mine the moon for this fuel, even though so

See FUSION, Page A3

MIKE DeVRIES/THE CAPITAL TIMES

Dr. Gerald Kulcinski, a fusion researcher, works in his lab at UW-Madison. The reaction (top photo) was pho-tographed by the UW-Madison Fusion Technology Institute.

COVER STORY The Capital Times The Weekend of Dec. 23-24, 2006 A3

Fusiony Continued from Page A1

far there are no viable powerplants that exist for it or effi-cient ways to bring it back toEarth.

Nevertheless, UW fusion re-searchers believe their plancould get civilization off fossilfuels. That’s if crews could re-turn to the moon to mine forhelium-3, super-heat it out ofthe lunar soil to process thegas, and return it to the Earth.

Also, this grand plan woulddepend on whether large num-bers of commercial fusion re-actors could be built.

Their theory initially didn’tshear off the tops of moonmountains.

But scientists and investorshave taken notice. Nearly all ofUW fusion research is privatelyfunded. And meanwhile, withChina, India, the EuropeanSpace Agency and at least oneRussian corporation all pursu-ing plans for a manned lunarbase in the coming decades,there is increasing talk of arace to control this fuel, oneshuttle load of which could the-oretically power the UnitedStates for a year.

And back on Earth, the UWfusion research inspired some-one to become an unparalleledlobbyist, to seek funds fromprivate investors and Washing-ton — someone who has a per-sonal connection with the lunarsurface.

• • •Man on the moon: Apollo

17 astronaut Harris Hagan“Jack” Schmitt shares the dis-tance record for driving aNASA rover across the lunarsurface — 22 miles through theTaurus-Littrow valley. He’s alsoa former U.S. senator of NewMexico. But long before beingthe last human to touch themoon, he was a geologist. Andfor the better part of the lasttwo decades, the visiting UWprofessor has tried to persuadepowerful people about the po-tential of helium-3.

He told a Senate committeein 2003 a return to the moon tostay would be comparable “tothe movement of our speciesout of Africa.”

The best way to pay for it?Lunar helium-3 and its emerg-ing potential as a fuel for fu-sion, Schmitt testified.

Schmitt also said that hedoesn’t have confidence theU.S. government can completethe job. He’s calling upon pri-vate and corporate investors tomake a commitment.

But the nation now de-termined to gamble on themoon’s helium-3 bounty is notthe United States, but China.

Among all the nations andprivate investors interested inthe potential of the moon’sfuel, it is China that is steadfaston winning what it apparentlyfeels is the helium-3 race —one that could already be farpast its starting point.

Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scien-tist of China’s lunar program,has told the international press,“We will provide the most reli-able report on helium-3 tomankind,” and “Whoever firstconquers the moon will benefitfirst.”

China was supposed tolaunch a lunar satellite thisyear, but that has been re-scheduled for 2007.

“We would like to knowwhat they’re doing, but wedon’t know,” Kulcinski said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. govern-ment is generally not interestedin the idea.

The Department of Energyis not conducting or fundingany helium-3 fusion research,DOE spokesman Jeff Sherwoodsaid.

“There are obvious chal-lenges there,” he said of pro-ducing energy from the fuel. “Itdoesn’t exist on the Earth.”

Instead, the United Statesand dozens of other nations arespending billions on the con-struction of a new internationaltokomak reactor that wouldhelp research fusion’s first-generation fuel combination:deuterium, which can be ex-tracted from seawater, and tri-tium. The massive project,dubbed ITER, is to be built insouthern France.

Kulcinski said he and theteam are not bitter aboutITER’s disregard, or the DOE’sdisinterest. And one bureau-cratic giant, he said, finallymay be beginning to take someaction.

NASA has started prelimi-nary research, or is at leastconsidering it, Kulcinski said.

After recently announcingplans for a lunar base by 2024,NASA also officially stated thata research component of thisfuture moon mission may bethe study of lunar helium-3 for“fusion reactors on Earth” to“reduce Earth’s reliance on fos-sil fuels.”

Some experts nonethelessare speculating the UnitedStates has been secretly re-

searching helium-3 for sometime now and has intentions onits monopolization.

Not long after PresidentBush in 2004 declared that theUnited States was headed backto the moon, Russian academicErik Galimov told the Izvestianewspaper that the White

House is deliberately not offer-ing its true lunar intentions.

The Bush administrationcontends its major rationale fora lunar base is to establish astepping stone for a mission toMars.

Galimov told Izvestia thatthe United States’ moon coloni-zation plan would “enable theU.S. to establish its control ofthe global energy market 20years from now and put therest of the world on its kneesas hydrocarbons run out.”

Speculation on any currentWhite House “hidden agenda”has become an industry in it-self. But perhaps Galimov isbasing his conjecture on whowas recently named to NASA’sAdvisory Council, its pre-emi-nent civilian consultative arm,which was restructured lastyear in the wake of PresidentBush’s calls for a future moonmission.

Leading the council isSchmitt, who was appointed toits chair by Mike Griffin, chiefof NASA. Fellow helium-3 advo-cate Kulcinski is also on thecouncil.

Schmitt declined to com-ment for this article. But Kul-cinski said their lunar helium-3research is separate from theirNASA duties.

“The NAC is purely an advi-sory council to Dr. Griffin,”Kulcinski said. “Our appoint-ments to this advisory commit-tee have nothing to do with ourspecific research interests.”

But Bruce Gagnon, the di-rector of the Global NetworkAgainst Weapons and NuclearPower in Space, said namingSchmitt and Kulcinski to theAdvisory Council gives cre-dence to Galimov’s theory.

Gagnon said lunar helium-3overtures by other countrieshave persuaded Schmitt, Kul-cinski, the White House andNASA to take action.

“These guys have beenworking for years to set thisup, and now they are movingquickly because they fear thatother countries will get to theseresources first,” Gagnon said.

Stephen Aftergood, who di-rects the Washington-basedFederation of American Scien-tists’ Project on Government

Secrecy, says those who wishto return to the moon need arationale. Lunar helium-3 of-fers an economic one, even ifits potential as a terrestrialsuper fuel is far from proven,he says.

Aftergood doesn’t believe arace with China for lunar he-lium-3 has begun. Yet a race tothe moon against China —whether real or superficial —may be in NASA’s best interest,he said.

“There are some who wishthis would be the case — thisrace with China. They believe itwould recapture the dynamic ofthe United States’ and Russia’srace to the moon,” he said.

• • •‘Not practical’: Fifteen

years ago, Kulcinski said thathe and the UW fusion researchteam sought out federal fund-ing for research. They weretwice rejected with the samereasoning.

“Each agency didn’t thinkthe other could do their job,”he said. “The Department ofEnergy told us, ‘We’re nevergoing back to the moon. Wecan’t afford to.’ NASA told us,they didn’t trust us — or any-one else — to make a fusion re-actor.”

There are those who stillhave a bleak outlook for any fu-ture helium-3 success.

“We just don’t have a needfor helium-3. It’s not practical,”said Jim Benson, founder ofSpaceDev, which helped buildSpaceShipOne’s engine and isalso a client for the Missile De-fense Agency.

Benson said mining for he-lium-3 on the moon doesn’tpass the “net energy analysis”test. In other words, he saysthat with current technology itwould take more energy to re-trieve the fuel than the fuelwould provide.

But Kulcinski calls Benson’sclaims “just flat wrong.” Hecites a doctoral thesis by one ofhis graduate students, ScottWhite, that in 1998 calculatedthat helium-3 would returnmore energy — even after min-ing, transportation and theconstruction of fusion plantsare accounted for — than coal,nuclear fission or wind.

MIKE DeVRIES/THE CAPITAL TIMES

Dr. Jerry Kulcinski (right) a fusion researcher, works in a UW-Madison lab with research as-sociate Sam Zenobia and assistant researcher Bob Ashley (background).

SUMBMITTED PHOTO

This illustration provided by the UW-Madison Fusion Tech-nology Institute shows how a lunar mining operation for he-lium-3 might look. Helium-3, a special variant of the element,is abundant on the moon, but almost nonexistent on Earth.