Nuclear_Money_for

Nuclear Money for Space Instead

David A. Dietzler, 2007

About 1000 nuclear powerplants at 1 GWe each would be needed to supply about 1TWe of electricity. 1TW = 30 quads and we used about 100 quads in all forms of energy in 2004.

At $2 billion per nuke these 1000 plants would cost $2 trillion.

At $30,000/ pound to the Moon we could get 33,333 english tons to the Moon for this price of $2 trillion.

At $3,000/lb. to the Moon using ion drive, Falcon 9s, lunar polar ice fueled landers or if you really want to get wild, single staged LH2 + nuclear thermal rocket motored cargo rockets straight out of "Destination Moon," which we unfortunately can't have give the political climate, we could get 333,333 tons to the Moon.

O'Neil and his associates estimated the mining base and mass driver with a crew of about 50 to amass 3,000 to 20,000 tons.

For a fraction of the money we would spend on nuclear powerplants for this nation we could get enough infrastructure on the Moon to build solar power satellites.

To get 3,000 tons to the Moon at $30k/lb. we would need as much cash as we'd need to build about 90 nuclear powerplants, or $180 billion, if nuclear plants cost $2 billion in the USA. That's what they're building them for overseas! At $3k/lb. $18 billion or the cost of nine nuclear powerplants. If you think we can do the job with replicating automation and need only 300 tons to the Moon, then we need only $18 billion at $30k/lb. And at $3k/lb. only $1.8 billion-less than the price of one nuclear power plant!!!

I'm willing to sacrifice one to nine new nuclear power plants to land 300 tons on the Moon and try to do this-what about the BIG SHOTS!

Leave to NASA and the cost will be absurd. This is a job for free enterprise. What will it cost to develop the Falcon 9, the ion drives, the polar ice miners and landers, and all the equipment, another $18 billion?

I say the job can be done and we can expand on the Moon, build mass drivers and build SPSs instead of investing in breeder reactors, plutonium, uranium from sea water, etc.

NO global warming with SPS, no nuclear weapons proliferation, no radioactive waste, no meltdowns, etc.

I am optimistic the job in space could be done, but I am pessimistic about anybody but and Elon Musk or Burt Rutan trying to do it. The utility companies will probably stick with tried and true tech. and import reactors from China or South Africa (ESKOM, the South African utility company makes pebble bed reactors). Hopefully, they will be defeated by space industrialists with bigger, better ideas.

Year
World real GDP growth rate

1999
3.00%

2000
4.80%

2001
2.70%

2002
No data

2003
3.80%

2004
4.90%

2005 est.
4.30%

AVERAGE 1999-2005
3.90%

The present annual world GDP is about 40-50 Trillion Dollars. In 50 years it will be much, much larger and there will be more money due to economic growth to spend on space industrialization projects.

Rough Procedure for Moon Mineral/Metal Extraction

Mine regolith, roast out volatiles; requires a mining tractor, mass ___________ and volatile storage and separation gear, mass _____________

Run roasted regolith thru magma electrolysis to make oxygen, Fe-Si alloy, possibly just iron, and cermic bricks, mass ___70 tons______ nuclear battery power sources; mass ____________ oxygen storage tanks, compressors;mass____________

Separate magnetic material; requires a hopper with sieve, electromagnet, power source, regolith transport (small skip cars); mass_______________

Run magnetic material in CARBOTEK devices; mass plus power ________________

Iron, TiO2 and titanium can be used for FORGE CONSTRUCTION

Mills, magnets, or CO iron separation system, and FFC cells to get the Iron and Titanium and TiO2 hi temp ceramic from CARBOTEK process; mass ____________

Use ceramic blocks from magma electrolysis to build forge. Robots;mass________

block shaping devices, grinders or molds;mass ________________

Need pipes for lunar forge, not cast basalt (m.p. Too low only 1200 C. like FeSi), or devices to make pipes, valves (3D additive e-beams) for oxygen and CO pipes and electrical controls. Pipes of cast titanium or sintered TiO2. Mass of pipe, etc. making devices _______________

Use iron, titanium and sintered TiO2 to make massive top cover and cap for lunar forge. Use regolith mining tractors to dig slag trench and liquid iron trough and ceramic bricks from magma units to line iron trough and divide it so we can get ingots. Will need electromagnets for tractors to lift out solidified iron ingots; mass__________

Use iron from CARBOTEK, titanium from FFC cells and TiO2 and some FeSi and cast basalt to make underground high pressure gas storage vaults. Better yet, with foil solar shielded radiators we can liquefy the oxygen and CO. Will need pumps, compressors; mass _______________

Have to make a cap lifting crane.

Nuts, bolts, assorted hardware, arc welders, power sources; mass _____________

START making cast iron and high silicon alloy cast iron

Weld up H2SO4 leaching tanks. Leach non-magnetic material separated from aluminum rich Highlands regolith rich in plagioclase (Na,Ca)Al2Si2O8

Make solar furnace or solar "zapper" to decompose sulfates to oxides.

Build solar silicothermic magnesium refining retorts. Use FeSi from magma units and CaO from leach/solar heat decomposition of sulfates to refine mixture of Al2O3 and MgO from H2SO4 leach.

Make acid recycling and production stuff (pipes, tanks, valves, pumps) out of high silicon alloy cast iron from the forge. Will need imported vanadium pentoxide catalysts, mass in kilograms _____ We need a sulfur+oxygen burner and tube stuffed with catalyst and water tanks. S+O2=SO2 SO2+O (catalyzed)= SO3 SO3 +H2O = H2SO4 SO3 and H2O spontaneously react, give off heat.

Need reflector foils;mass ______________

need electrostatic separation devices to sep. SiO2 from CaSO4 and sep. Al2O3 from MgO; mass_______________

3D additive e-beam devices, power sources, tools for making molds from CaSO4, cement, "sand" and cast basalt or ceramic blocks; mass ____________

Initial power supplies, Nuclear Batteries, mass _______________

Make ethyl alcohol solar still so we can wash BaO out of CaO mix (BaSO4 and CaSO4 both repelled from SiO2 electrostatically, correct?) And ethyl alcohol to wash out manganese carbonyl from Al2O3 and MgO after treatment with CO. Al and Mg don't form carbonyls....No chromium in Al2O3/MgO mix because the chromite is magnetic and will end up in the iron right where we want it.

LiCl and LiF salts from Earth. Mass____________ And carbon electrodes for aluminum electrolysis furnaces, fluidized bed for carbochlorinating Al2O3 and aluminum electrolysis pots, or do we make the Al electrolysis pots on the Moon? Mass ____________

I presume we can electrolyze SiO2 to Si in magma units, just crush it up and throw it in there to get silicon since we will probably have more glass than we know what to do with. Should be able to make solar furnaces for boiling excess silicon away from iron in Fe-Si alloy. I bet that alloy is like steel in some ways, with free silicon (call it silicite) and chemically bound FeSi (iron silicide) mixed together.

WE'VE GOT OXYGEN, FeSi, CERAMICS, CAST BASALT, RUTILE (TiO2), TITANIUM, IRON, GLASS, SILICON, PLASTER, LIME, MAGNESIUM, ALUMINUM, CALCIUM, MANGANESE, EVEN BARIUM OXIDE. AND VOLATILES AND CO GAS AND CARBON.

We need gear for shifting CO and CO2 to CH4 and H2O, pyrolizing CH4 for pure carbon for the CO2 reactors, electrolysis of H2O; mass ____________

We need to make BASIC OXYGEN FURNACES to make STEEL

We need spacesuits, food and water supplies, landed habitat for small crew of four or five technicians and rocket return vehicle fueld by CH4 and LOX. And robots.

Then we go to work and make more mining tractors, more refining machines, electric motors WHICH IS WHY WE MUST HAVE ALUMINUM FOR WIRES AND CABLES!!!! AND ALUMINUM FOR SOLAR ENERGY REFLECTOR SYSTEMS. We can build solar thermal power systems but we will need a working fluid....water? Hi pressure CO2? And we'll have to land the turbogenerator units because those will be too sophisticated to manufacture for a while, or will they? Because we want AC power for motorized tools of all sorts, fans, air conditioners (using CO2 as refrigerant?) Even DEEP DRILLING EQUIPMENT. Because although we will mine regolith and roast out volatiles like hell for carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen we might also tap massive amounts of CO and CO2 from chambers in volcanic domes....

Next thing you know we will be mining KREEPy regolith and getting uranium for British style CO2 cooled MAGNOX reactors on the Moon.

land a magnetic separator, foil reflectors, power supplies (nuke batteries or solar panels or both), magma electrolysis furnace, robots, some heat probes (for melting holes thru bricks, welding bricks together, glazing/sealing inner lining of forge), and CO2 electrolysis cells that might double as SOFCs on CO and O2 at night, although I opt for nuclear batteries to get thru night. We will probably need some manpower in a lander/habitat and an inflateable habitat. We will need some CARBOTEK devices and an electrostatic separator to extract ilmenite (FeTiO3). Since regolith is already rather fine and pulverized we might use screens and a ball mill for fine grinding of coarser yet small particles.

Send robots out to harvest volatiles. We will need a space radiator and distiller to separate the gases. We will need some storage tanks. Cannibalized upper stages might serve as storage tanks if we land them. We will store up H, N, NOx, CO, CO2, CH4, SO2 and H2O from volatile harvesting. Could NOx and CH4 serve as return rocket fuel if we harvest enough? Have to harvest a lot of regolith, but the robots just shovel it up, roast, dump, so they don't have to move lots of moondust long distances, so they can do big harvesting.

Put roasted and screened/ground regolith thru magnetic separation. Then remove the ilmenite electrostaticly from the magnetic material. Put the ilmenite thru the CARBOTEKs and get oxygen and a mixture of iron and TiO2. Screen, grind, and use magnetic separator to get iron from TiO2. If this doesn't work we just use CO to make iron carbonyl and distill it, decompose it to recover CO and get pure iron and TiO2 (rutile, makes good high temp ceramic). So we might need a carbonyl/still system, unless we can do this in the regolith roasters of the wheeled volatile harvesting robots. Two birds, one stone.

Take the iron bearing titanium free material plus regolith that has had the FeTiO3 removed (I don't want it in the blast furnace, unless it won't hurt) and put it thru magma electrolysis to get more oxygen, iron, silicon, or FeSi alloy( for use later) and ceramic blocks.

Stack the ceramic blocks to make a ten foot tall blast furnace with a crucible volume of about three cubic meters. I figure that will give us a few tons of iron (O.5 m3) and more of slag per charge. If we have TiO2 and a FFC cell we can make titanium metal for the iron outlet pipe and use cast basalt for the other pipes. Use the heat probe to make the holes in the brick pyramid for the pipes. Make the top and cap out of cast titanium because of its hi-temp resistance or sintered rutile with heavy blocks on top and/or bolts into the pyramid. Don't want the top and cap on the input blowing off, or melting!

The best ore will be FeO bearing glass, 20% FeO by wieght. We will magnetically separate the FeO+glass particles, grind, screen, etc. To get a good charge of FeO with some glass-SiO2. We will pulverize some ceramic blocks. These will consist of CaO, MgO, Al2O3 and make good flux. The minerals Ca2Al2Si2O8 (most lunar plagioclase is calcic, very little sodium), (Fe,Mg)SiO4 (olivine) and more common (Fe,Ca,Mg)SiO3 (pyroxenes) will have their iron and silicon and the oxygen atoms they are bonded with stripped away by magma electrolysis, so oxides will remain and they are all high melting point materials, so the ceramic blocks must have high m.p. And high softening temps. There will be trace substances, but we can't worry about those, except for Cr, Mn and V bearing minerals that are magnetic and will get into the iron, right where we want them...With providence on our side they will make good steel in natural concentrations. The free iron and regolith has a little nickel and cobalt in it too. So by magnetically separating regolith we should get small amounts of Ni, Co, Cr, Mn and V in the iron/steel. Not stainless steel with 10%+ chromium in it but good stuff, like a Damascus blade perhaps.

Then we fire up the forge. FeO + CO ==> Fe + CO2 CaO + SiO2 ==> CaSiO3 slag

Carbon will dissolve into the iron (ferrite). Some CO2 will dissociate to CO and O and some CO will react 3FeO + 2CO ==> Fe3C (cemetite) + CO2 We might want to put some plain carbon in there also made by pyrolizing CH4 at 900 C. Make cast iron, build an open hearth (reverberatory furnace), make steel, make anything just about.

We must figure out how to make high silicon iron alloy to make acid leaching vats and associated plumbing and pumps, or we must line everything with glass, but what about pump rotors? The ceramics? Import enough Cr and Ni for this special purpose? Start leaching "de-ironed" anorthostic highland regolith. Get some glass, plaster and lime. Cement making must be done with a solar furnace to make clinker which is then ground, we could pulverize the clinkers first with big hammer then ball mill them, mix with a little CaSO4, etc. We would need concrete to make molds for acid leachers, so it have to come first. Or we have to make molds out of cast basalt (mp 1200 C, iron 1500 C, but the temp. of the bast basalt depends on the number of BTUs it absorbs and hope for the best, make huge sand molds to make the basalt molds, or make metal plates and weld them up. We could make valves with 3D additive as well as all sorts of things from titanium. We could make some steel skip cars. Welding plates might be best as long as it doesn't ruin the high silicon alloy iron.

A silicothermic magnesium retort could be made out of sintered rutile. We pour the pulverized and ground ceramic material in a mold and heat it up. How? Might need microwaves. Or the solar zapper might melt droplets of the material into a mold. Then we have to give the refractory retort and steel jacket for strength. Molten salt pipes must be installed. We will have to build a solar thermal power tower of steel. I wonder if hi Si alloy iron is best for molten salt as it resists corrosion or if we should line steel pipes with cast basalt which resists abrasive slag even. If the molten salt pipes run underground or have regolith piled over them they will be insulated against heat loss. Then we add flux, MgO, FeSi from magma units and we are in the magnesium business. Could make sheets of magnesium for light wieght reflectors on steel and cast basalt mountings.

Separating MgO from Al2O3 is a problem I haven't solved. I'm just dumping them into the magnesium retort together because Al2O3 is a flux in Mg production. Electrostatic separation might work. Once we have the Al2O3 we need to carbon-chlorinate it to AlCl3 and electrolyze it. We could import LiCl salts and electrolyze them to get the chlorine and use the lithium for grease made with thermally depolymerized livestock guts, so we need a small human crew and perhaps some Tilapia fish ponds and some chickens. Just have to bring the fertilized eggs up and incubate them. Hatch chicks and baby fish. We could convert the animal shit to oil for grease also by thermal depol. We could make the Al electrolysis units out of ceramic bricks with a steel lining. We don't need cryolite. AlCl3 can be electrolyzed itself and the carbon electrodes won't be burned up even. Aluminum production will take a lot of electricity so we won't be making a lot of it except for wires and cables and windings in motors and generators. Steel, iron, magnesium, ceramics, titanium, cast basalt, concrete and glass will be our major building materials. 3D additive manufacturing will allow us to make any complex small titanium part.

We could build a rolling mill out of steel and shape steel in various ways and weld it up. We will make molds for chassis and buckets and make more mining machines. Cast magnesium wheels or steel for strength? We will have to make steel cables for mining shovels.

The future is out of sight.