For everyone who’s ever dreamed about the clean and efficient production of electricity, I have both GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS.

First the Good News. Scientists have discovered a method of electricity production using a totally renewable fuel that has virtually no waste by products and will eventually see the end of nuclear, coal and hydro electric power plants.

The Bad News is that this totally renewable fuel source is only found on the moon.

This elusive fuel is called Hellium-3 and once we figure out a way to go up there and get it, we’ll be saying goodbye to the dirty and environmentally damaging ways we produce power at the moment.

We’ve known about the existence of Helium-3 for quite some time. However it wasn’t until 1985 that we first discovered there was substantial amounts of the stuff in the moon soil that Neil Armstrong and “Mr. Second Place” Buzz Aldrin and the other guy brought back with them.

Actually it’s not exactly true to say there is no Hellium-3 on Earth. There is some but not enough of it for use in energy production. In fact a few short months ago, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Fusion Technology Institute were able to successfully initiate and maintain a fusion reaction using Helluim-3. But to allow us to start powering our homes and industry with this seemingly magical stuff, we need a lot more of it.

The samples that came back from the moon show us that its surface contains Hellium-3 at around 13 parts per billion. Now that while that doesn’t sound very much, probably close to the amount of urine in your average swimming pool, it means that we’d only have to process about two square kilometres to get approximately 200 kilos. That would be enough to power a city of one million people for a year and would also have a projected value of $200M Australia Dollars.

So why is it that this stuff is all over the moon like kid’s wee in a council pool, while down here on Earth we have none? I’m glad you asked.

Hellium-3 is created by the massive fusion reactions that power the Sun. As Helium radiates out from the Sun as a product of these reactions, it’s bombarded by cosmic rays. These rays knock out a neutron or two and turn the Helium into Hellium-3. The stray neutrons also run into other Helium atoms, knocking out their neutrons, creating even more Hellium-3.

These newly formed atoms travel throughout the Solar System until they run into something like an asteroid or a planet or even our moon. The reason they don’t tend to end up on Earth is because they are repelled by our atmosphere and magnetic field. Since the moon has no atmosphere, it’s able to collect a lot more and since it is the closest piece of rock to earth, it makes it the easiest to get to.

So say we do head up to the moon, extract this gas from the soil and bring it back down to Earth, what do we do with it then? That’s where a Fusion Reactor comes in.

While we already have fusion reactors using fuels such as deuterium and tritium, we have not been able to use them to make commercial amounts of electricity yet. The main reason is because your average fusion reaction generates heat equivalent to the surface of the Sun. The only way to stop the reaction from vaporising everything in the immediate vicinity is to use a magnetic containment field. Current technology forces us to keep these fields small. They also produce a large amount of radiation.

The great benefit in using Hellium-3 is that when it’s fused with deuterium, the reaction produces far less heat and radiation, which means it, can be easily contained and even located in populated areas quite safely. The other advantage is that a Hellium-3 deuterium reaction produces a high energy proton, which can be directly converted into electricity with an efficiency of 70%. Coal and even Nuclear Power plants generate their power by creating vast amounts of heat which is used to create steam which in turn spins massive turbines which create the electricity. This is a far less efficient way to generate power.

So for the tiny estimated sum of twenty billion dollars Australian, we could be sending up a new generation of space ships and starting a mining colony on the moon. Even if the only purpose of this moon base were the production of Hellium-3, it would still be a very profitable goal. However inhabiting the moon will only be our first step towards sending humans to the outer limits of our galaxy.