Helium-3: Market, Price and Physics
Is helium-3 from the Moon a real business, and if so, how big?
Chapter summary
Helium-3 is a rare isotope deposited in lunar regolith by the solar wind at concentrations of a few to about twenty parts per billion.
Key takeaways
- 1
For decades it was promoted as fuel for future fusion reactors, a market that does not exist yet.
- 2
Today there is a smaller, real market on Earth: helium-3 is used in dilution refrigerators that cool quantum computers to near absolute zero, and in neutron detectors, and terrestrial supply from tritium decay is a few tens of kilograms a year at most.
- 3
One US start-up, Interlune, reports about $500 million of binding purchase orders, including up to 10,000 litres a year for 2028–2037 from Bluefors, and prices of about $3,000 per litre, roughly $20 million per kilogram.
Key figures in this chapter
- ~$20M
- per kg (~$3,000 per litre)
- ~$500M
- binding purchase orders reported
- 10 kg a year
- first operation target (2030s)
- ~1M t
- regolith a year for ~8–10 kg at 10 ppb
Source: Interlune as reported; Setcoin calculation
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Oxygen, Metals and Building Materials from Regolith
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