Back in July, the U.S. slapped an extra 50% duty on a wide range of Canadian exports, including items like dairy, alcohol and cement, with the Trump administration citing alleged Canadian trade discrimination against various U.S. goods. In response, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government implemented dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs targeting U.S. goods such as steel, aluminum, appliances and electronics as the tit-for-tat tariffs and trade war between the two nations escalated.
Despite Trump’s frequent bluster, Canada remains the United States’ second-largest trade partner behind only Mexico, as well as its largest foreign supplier of crude oil, accounting for ~60% of total U.S. crude imports. And now, industry experts are saying that Canada can leverage its dominance in a certain critical element in future trade negotiations with its neighbor to the south. According to Chris Cassin, chief executive of Zero Point Cryogenics, Canada, is in a unique position to stockpile and sell helium-3, a much-sought-after ultra-rare gas.
Canada is the leading, non-military producer of helium-3 globally, a non-radioactive, light isotope of helium used in quantum computing, deep cryogenics, border security neutron detection, and experimental nuclear fusion. Canada generates the precious gas in significant quantities as a byproduct of tritium removal from heavy water in its CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium ) nuclear reactors. CANDU reactors use unenriched, natural uranium (about 0.7% U-235) instead of enriched uranium, eliminating the need for expensive, complex uranium enrichment facilities, resulting in lower fuel cycle costs. Their high neutron economy also allows CANDU reactors to run on alternative fuels including recycled uranium, mixed oxide (MOX) fuels, thorium or spent fuel from conventional pressurized water reactors. Canada is home to 17 of the world’s fleet of 26 CANDU reactors.
In contrast, the U.S., Russia and China produce helium-3 mainly as a by-product when it’s removed from nuclear bombs to achieve higher tritium concentrations. Most of the helium-3 these nations produce stays in government hands for use in neutron detectors by port inspectors looking for smuggled nuclear materials.
Quantum computing is projected to be the biggest driver of commercial helium-3 demand in the coming years, with governments worldwide increasingly viewing quantum supremacy as a cornerstone of national security and economic sovereignty.
The looming threat of Q-Day has forced governments, banks, and enterprises into a defensive arms race, fueling massive, immediate investments into post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum-safe security architectures. Q-Day is the future moment when quantum computers become powerful enough to break public-key cryptography--such as RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC)--that currently secures the internet, financial systems, private communications and digital identities.
The quantum computing boom is likely to drive future demand for helium-3. Quantum computing requires operating temperatures near 0 Kelvin (absolute zero). Conventional cooling methods can cool ordinary helium (helium-4) down to 1–4 K. To go even colder, scientists mix helium-4 with super-cooled helium-3, with the entropy gain from the mixing cooling the system further down to as low as 5 millikelvin.
And that’s probably the biggest reason why the U.S. government is investing in a startup that’s looking to mine helium-3 from the moon. Back in May, NASA awarded Interlune a $6.9 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop a lunar payload suite that will fly to the moon by 2028 to scoop, heat and extract helium-3 and hydrogen directly from lunar regolith. The DoE even signed a first-of-its-kind agreement to purchase 3 liters of lunar-harvested Helium-3 from Interlune, marking the first time a government agency has agreed to buy a non-terrestrial natural resource from space. Interlune is a Seattle-based space startup that builds robotic systems to harvest natural resources from the Moon.
The Moon is estimated to contain 1-3 million tons of helium-3 embedded in its surface dust, compared with about 15 to 20 kilograms of helium-3 per year produced annually in our planet, mostly as a byproduct of the decay of tritium used in thermonuclear weapons or minor amounts in natural gas wells.
Over billions of years, solar wind from the sun continuously bombarded the lunar surface and "spray-painted’’ helium-3 on its surface thanks to the moon’s lack of a protective magnetic field. Additionally, whereas tritium is a radioactive isotope that decays to helium-3 with a half-life of about 12.3 years, the economics make little sense for countries like the U.S. to produce helium-3 from tritium, with a kilo of the heavy hydrogen isotope going for ~$30,000 compared to $20,000 for a kilo of helium-3.
Interestingly, there’s no shortage of companies betting on helium-3 from the moon: Interlune has already secured nearly $500 million in binding purchase orders and supply contracts from customers looking to use the rare isotope for quantum computing cooling systems, national security and clean fusion energy development.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
