Energy Hegemony by Taking Nuclear Fusion Material from The Moon

Lunar Rover on The Moon

According to a report at Japan’s The Diplomat website on June 16, as the world biggest energy consumer, China is profoundly aware of the urgency to find alternative energy source to overcome its energy predicament.
It is, therefore, putting in lots of resources to exploit the newest and most unavailable non-traditional energy: nuclear fusion.
According to the website, the nuclear fusion research now mostly focuses on the nuclear fusion with deuterium or tritium as material.
There is lots of deuterium in various kinds of water but no natural tritium on earth. Tritium has to be produced by hitting neutrons at lithium.
However, there is the isotope of another element helium-3 on the periodic table of elements able to generate substantial nuclear fusion.
Helium-3 is an isotope of helium, very light in weight. Nuclear fusion of helium-3 is very efficient in generating lots of electricity free of waste. The radiation from the fusion is negligible. Unfortunately, there is almost no helium-3 on earth.
However, there is indeed helium-3 on the moon, which has come from the sun for billions of years in solar wind. As a result the dust on the surface of the moon is filled with helium-3. There must be about 1.1 million tons of helium-3 deposit from the surface to the depth of a few meters on the moon.
The electricity generated by 40 tons of helium-3 is equal to the annual consumption of electricity in the United States. Nuclear fusion of helium-3 will greatly reduce world consumption of fossil fuels and greatly enhance human productivity.
The human race shall first return to the moon before it can provide the earth with electricity for centuries from nuclear fusion.
At present, only China has this idea and a lunar program to send astronauts to the moon in early 2020s. If China wins in the second “moon competition” and has established a sustainable station on the moon to mine helium-3 there. It will have a monopoly like British East India Company in the past that will create lots of wealth for China.
At least, the consequence will be tremendously significant.
Of course, when fossil fuel has nearly been used up, other countries will also begin their lunar program to break China’s monopoly but that will be the situation long after China has become very rich from its lunar expedition.
Source: mil.huanqiu.com “Japanese media: China targets nuclear fusion material on the moon, which will probably enable China to have energy hegemony” (summary by Chan Kai Yee)