Differences between revisions 31 and 32

### How much fission energy?

Assume a technology like the integral fast reactor, that reprocesses fuel and sends the radioactive fission products back through the reactor for neutron bombardment and de-activation. Assuming 200 MeV per fission, 50 MeV lost to deactivation processes, and 33% thermal efficiency, we can expect 5e7 eV per nucleon plant output, or 4.8e12 J/mole.

I don't have numbers for thorium in the mantle, but assume it follows the same 3.33 to 1 ratio to uranium as the crust.

 Crust Uranium 2.57e5 kg 0.238 kg/mole 1.1e6 moles Crust Thorium 8.58e5 kg 0.232 kg/mole 3.7e6 moles Mantle Uranium 4.44e5 kg 0.238 kg/mole 1.9e6 moles Mantle Thorium 1.41e6 kg 0.232 kg/mole 3.3e7 moles WAG Total 4.0e7 moles

4e7 x 4.8e12 = 1.9e20 J, or 5.3e13 kWh. Half the energy we need for the lift. Of course, if we lift only the crust and mantle, the energy needed will be smaller. OTOH, burying the waste (and everyone elses) at the earth's core might be worth the cost of exposing it. At 4 cents per kilowatt hour, a mere 2 trillion dollars worth of energy.

### Conclusion

Overall, the two processes are within an order of magnitude of each other, both delivering gravitationally sorted but otherwise non-beneficiated rock of approximately equal (low) value to the earth's surface. The "core the earth" approach is obviously silly ... besides access to a nickel-rich core, there many disadvantages compared to a mine 20 km deep and 67 acres in area, or a mine 200 meters deep and 6700 acres in area, which would require far less energy to remove. The product is the same: uninteresting rock, unless this was done around a concentrated ore body. Asteroid mining to provide raw materials to Earth is ridiculous.

Asteroid mining to feed raw materials to simple manufacturing processes to produce objects used in the asteroid belt may be less ridiculous - except there is no factory infrastructure there. That infrastructure may grow from nothing to full local capability over hundreds or thousands of years - but please keep in mind that this growth will require new kinds of processes to manufacture new kinds of objects, and that will require a vast accumulation of new knowledge, and a vast infusion of capital to speed it up appreciably (in order to pay for all the mistakes and rapid obsolescence incurred during rapid development). It took 8 trillion dollars to develop the rocket fleet we have - use that to estimate the cost of vastly more ambitious projects.

Terrestrial industrial civilization took thousands of years to develop, with the whole human race participating. Please do not underestimate the effort required to recapitulate the process in a far more challenging extraterrestrial environment. It will never happen without understanding the realities of terrestrial extraction and production; the only advantage we have over our ancestors is accumulated knowledge, if we do not ignore it.

BackyardMinerals (last edited 2021-04-18 00:58:37 by KeithLofstrom)