Break-even He3-He3 or He3-D will be harder to achieve than D-D fusion - they require higher temperatures and give less energy per fuel fused. And we haven't yet made a D-D fusion reactor that can generate energy in any commercially useful fashion. We'll want to have D-D fusion working well before we even start to think about He3 fusion, and we won't have that for a while. And the only advantage of He3-He3 fusion is that it fuses without giving off neutrons, so the walls of the fusion reactor don't become so radioactive over time.
IMHO, He3 might become a valuable resource sometime far in the future. Right now we're nowhere near even having a reactor that can generate energy from it.
|