NASA looking to go nuclear on the moon
By Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 11th 2008 4:08PM
posted Sep 11th 2008 4:08PM
As we've seen, NASA has some pretty big plans for the moon (which may or may not come to fruition), and it's now finally offering up a solution for how it might keep everything powered. Turns out, it's looking at going nuclear -- with a fission surface power system, to be specific. That system, seen above in an artist's concept, would consist of nuclear reactor buried below the lunar surface (which provides some handy radiation shielding), with the engines that convert the heat energy into electricity placed in the tower above the reactor -- those long radiators would "radiate into space" any leftover heat energy that wasn't converted to electricity. All told, the system promises to generate a steady 40 kilowatts of electric power, or enough for about eight houses on Earth, but with NASA's various power-saving measures, they say that'd be more than enough to sustain a serious lunar outpost.
10 bucks environmentalists are going crazy about this
I don't really care about the environmental implications on the mood, I'm just a bit worried about what's going to happen when the thing melts down and explodes...which is sure to be a lot of fun since it's buried underneath the surface.
hello?
Considering that there already seem to be people up in arms about the whole notition of nuclear in space, you're probably right. It's rather silly though... space has more radiation than we humans could ever hope to create!
40kW powers 8 houses on Earth or specifically 8 houses in the United States?
@ 1234321
40 kW of STEADY nuclear electricity is definitely much better than solar panels, which are interrupted in darkness.
"when the thing melts down and explodes"
Look up pebble bed reactors. Melt-downs are a thing of the past, and explosions impossible.
@(01)
Despite what movies may tell you, Nuclear reactors don't *explode*. Not only is it the wrong kind of Uranium, but there's also no way for it to become "supercritical". The biggest danger in a meltdown is for radoactive material to be released into the atmoshpere. However the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere (not one worth mentioning anyways), and its surface is constantly bombarded with radation anyways.
@ Reader
You'd be surprised how many idiots like the poster have no clue how Nuclear power is generated and can only think of Chernobyl and TMI every time the word nuclear is uttered
It's not just certain parts of the environmental crowd, it's the masses of uninformed citizens. Your average Not-in-my-backyard American thinks of 3-mile island when you say the word "nuclear" (or "nuc-u-lar" in the backwoods south). They don't understand that there has been three decades of research and development and new reactors produce much less waste and are a million times safer. Nuclear energy on the moon could be great, and the excess heat could be used to warm the compound, right? Not to mention it could be re-used again to capture energy with thermocouples after the turbines...
On a related note, I've never understood why it appears so much waste heat is released into the atmosphere at energy plants. Shouldn't they be able to harness almost all of the heat produced? Why can't they just keep re-injecting the steam into the turbine until almost all of the energy is gone?
@aguiluz
wait...solar panels don't work when it's dark?! crap! that sucks!
what on earth are you talking about Aguiluz, that's not what I asked
loosely_coupled: do you actually think they are going to send water to the moon and use the nuclear reactor to heat up the water to turn the turbines? The reactor should be generating electricity using only thermocouples.
@ Aquiluz
It doesn't matter that they don't work in the dark- only 1 side of the moon faces the Sun, and it faces the Sun 24/7/365- we have never seen the dark side of the moon (que Pink Floyd music). Just put the solar panels on the light side and there will be no problems.
@ Zeus
There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look alight, is the sun.
The same side of the moon is always facing the Earth, not the Sun. The dark side would be better called the far side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon
@ Reader
Look up pebble bed reactors in zero gravity and atmosphere. Oh wait, it's never been done before.
Given recent off-world screwups (Columbia, Climate Orbiter, Beagle 2) the idea is deserving of some skepticism.
@loosely_coupled
Because we're still using heat engines.. It is impossible for a heat engine to be 100% and there will always be waste heat... I really think we should come up with something better than heat engine. Imagine how much energy we've wasted to heat up the world...
....And 40 years later, the US finally catches up to Russia.
All you guys freaking out on the implications of putting nuclear reactors on the moon seem to have forgotten the fact that when we (the US) were putting on a publicity stunt by sending people to the moon to play golf, the Russians sent a nuclear-powered rover (actually much like the Mars rovers) which collected lots of very useful data. So these arguments are moot since there's been human-sent nuclear material sitting on the moon for quite some time.
I like tits, and im not talking about your name ;]
@Zeus.:God
That's the problem with getting your facts from stoner bands.
There's one side that always faces the EARTH... It does NOT always face the sun. The other side of the moon looks all dark, deformed, and marred by impacts because it's like earth's personal shield, always facing away from the earth and taking constant asteroid abuse. It does indeed cycle day and night on the moon.
Also, just for the record, nuclear power is quite safe. It's used all around the world (especially by the military). It has much less environmental impact than damming rivers or burning coal. And society, healthcare, science, and engineering would be so much farther advanced today if not for our anti-nuclear attitude. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for solar power too. But in my opinion, we should focus on dropping highly damaging coal burning plants and water turbines, and instead focus on improving solar but bridge the gap with nuclear.
I wish we would have developed nuclear further along. Imagine, instead of having all these mobile devices creating a constant stream of dead batteries into our landfills, we could have miniature, clean, safe nuclear power packs that last 50 years before depleting.
Nuclear is definitely a green energy, no matter who thinks otherwise.
I'm not worried about it once it is on the moon, but what about if the rocket explodes on the way up...it does and has happened you know...
I knew that... No, though, thanks for correcting me. That was a stupid mistake.
Also, Lars, Pink Floyd isn't really "stoner music", nor do I listen to them. I was just making the connection before someone else would.
Of course they are freaking out.
The environmentalists went nuts when when NASA wanted to put a nuclear reactor on a space probe. They were complaining about the radiation it would put out regardless of the fact hat solar wind is more radioactive than what would leave the probe.
Anyone who goes nuts over this is probably not considering the fact that nuclear power in space already exists...
Yem, first of all, if memory serves me correctly, pebble bed reactors are in a closed chamber filled with a noble gas. The idea behind pebble bed reactors is still the same, gravity or not/less than earth. If it gets too hot, the beads push away until they are at a stable reaction. Zero G isn't even a problem since this is the moon, but even if it was I'm sure repositioning the pebbles after contraction wouldn't be an impossible problem to solve.
@loosely_coupled
Because although you're obviously very well informed about how well our brilliant new reactors are.
You may have not recognized that the second law of thermodynamics says that it is impossible to convert heat completely into work and that the heat difference needed by those wonderfull reactors is about 100K°minimum to what we normaly have here.
Which let's me suppose that you are not that very well informed and I may not trust you when you say nuclear is save,
and we have nearly no 100.000.000 years radiating waste that will cost us billions on the long run.
Have a nice day.
All together now in your best Barbara Bain monotone: "Oh John! MoonBase Alpha will be destroyed"
You can't be serious.
We are that power crazy?
I guess nobody at NASA watched the 1st episode of Space 1999 (in which the nuclear waste site blows up and rockets the moon out of earth orbit, and as a side effect heavily damaging the earth). maybe they should
Alert, alert! Old man posting, I repeat, an old man is posting on the blogs! :)
As I mentioned above, wikipedia pebble bed reactor.
I think it's a good idea (maybe not the nuclear tech). I doubt we can survive very much longer on Earth at the rate we're handling her. Colonizing off-site/planet is great, no matter what the obstacles are. Mars is next.
People keep going on about Mars and colonization and such, but afaik it hasn't even got a magnetic field to shield inhabitants from solar radiation and stuff.
But then, I'm sure NASA has people working for it that are a lot smarter than me.
It's well beyond me as well. I'm sure extra-terrestrial living would consist of NASA MagLife™ Magnetic Resilience certified Biodomes - unless Google beats them to it.
I doubt you Momma'll last much longer the way I'M handling her...
I disgust myself sometimes...
Those who can't ignore the truth smother it...
this is hilarious...and people get paid to come up with these ideas. They don't have a trip for an unmanned ship planned till 2020 and since the president himself can't seem to get a nuclear plant built in the US, you think the next best thing is the moon? by when 2100 to get all the shit up there they need to build it.
THE ONE BENEFIT of using Fission as a moon power source is that you can DUMP thee radioactive waste ANYWHERE and you never have to worry about "moon terrorists" getting to it to use as a dirty bomb on earth. That is...as long as Iran never develops a nuclear program that can launch an Iranian to the moon to retrieve it and make it back in one piece.
My question is, considering the huge, wide open spaces of the moon, would it not be more convienient to just place solar cells there and bury the cable? There are parts of the moon constantly exposed to sunlight. With no atmosphere, the light is almost never blocked by Earthlike weather systems. As there is NO WIND, you could put up flimsy cells and not have to worry since there is no wind to knock them over.
Humanity's future lies in inventing the technology neccessary to create FUSION power. The radioactive half-lives of waste material is significantly shorter than that of Fission...the reactor is far less prone to catastrophic disaster as a fission reactor and is considerably safer and the other benefit is that a fusion reactor cannot easily be tooled to build weapons grade nuclear material.
Don't say it can't be done. It can be done. But if your sucking down billions of gallons of oil a year so some Prince Amir can ride around in a Hummer or a Veyron... and his American counterparts are busy driving around in their $100,000 S-classes and going on vacations in the SWISS ALPS... IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
The Moon rotates on its axis at the same rate at which it revolves around the Earth. This is another way of saying that the same side of the Moon is always facing the Earth. There are not, however, parts of the moon constantly exposed to the Sun.
Cue Pink Floyd...
What about those little specs of what-have-you constantly hitting the moon at 10,000-odd MPH?
we dont need more energy , we need less people.
Haha, "moon terrorists." Don't be so sure there aren't any!
http://socialhoneycomb.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/mooninites_explosion.png
Damn Joseph, stealin' all mah references.
Totally, sinjin, we need less people on the moon.
It'll be better when we have, like, -7 people there instead of 0.
All your base, are belong to US.A
lol, you have to love japanese game makers..few people on this board totally understand your comment..clearly you and I have too much time on our hands
GOHN - It's not that much of a mystery anymore. It's a phrase that has been so beaten up that nobody draws much on it's nostalgia anymore. The club has disbanded...
yep, no one else gets this 10 year old meme.
The next thing that you will tell me is that I should put on clothes and leave my parents basement. I think not..so it will be the year 2000 and my friend, alot of computer code cannot account for the Y2K bug. Proctect yourself, the world is about to end
@darth lord
Internet much?
So cliche and regurgitating, that Darth is seems.
Since when did the moon belong to the US entirely?
oh the greatness that is internet memes....
"somebody set up us the bomb"
we need more video games like this...
"those long radiators would "radiate into space" any leftover heat energy that wasn't converted to electricity."
"but with NASA's various power-saving measures..."
Err, hello? Do power-saving measures not include using waste heat to keep your astronauts warm? Or were you planning on letting the fissioning nuclear core do that?
"I'm cold!"
"Then go sit by the reactor for a few minutes"
"Errr....Actually, I'll just go put on a jumper..."
There needs to be a giant radiator somewhere. Any heat engine, even a nuclear reactor, is driven by the temperature difference between its source and its cold sink. The bigger the difference, the more efficiency, so in the simplest design, you want the reactor on one end and the 3.2K of space on the other. You can try to scavenge extra energy from the cold sink itself, of course, but you're still going to wind up having to disperse most of the energy somewhere to keep the main energy-generation stage efficient.
Great idea! Until Congress gets involves and mandates the same regulations (or more!) that we have to abide by on terra-firma, and it'll be logistically impossible (", but it'll be 10 years before there's any benefit! That's just _too_ hard "). Congress can take political cover behind presumably saving yet another piece of virgin, unspoiled by defiling human contact, piece of property for the lunar Caribou.
Instead, maybe we'll be lucky enough to find lunar Governors that can make this happen.
But, if we can't, the Dem Congress can take comfort in knowing that by blocking any non-Algore santioned energy efforts (on or off world!) other countries can successfully leapfrog us with our own ideas (brilliant - libs win either way! Wait, I think I smell a strategy...)
This project could easily be self-funded.
For the first few years, use the power generated for some JumboTron style moonvertising.
like this?
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb18/joejohnson9182/Avatars/pepsi_moon.jpg
I was thinking they could fly some of the eliptical machines that generate electricity that they have at my gym up there...since lack of gravity causes atrophy and all they could get a spinning class going for the spacenuts for a couple hours a day and combine that with a field of solar pannels and you're set.
Solar cells would be such a better idea. Eventually they would just run out of fuel for these plants. Then what? It's not like we have enough uranium to sustain Nuclear power on earth for more than 75 years.
uh, yeah we do.
Not really. Just because the USA doesn't use Nuclear power plants doesn't mean other countries don't.
uh, wtf are you talking about?
Uh, what? First, we have enough uranium to last 75 years or more, secondly, there are is also thorium. And just because a nuclear plant hasn't been built in 20 years, doesn't mean we don't use nuclear power. It currently provides like 20% of our electricity needs, and that isn't to mention the plants they are planning to build.
Also, NASA has already been using nuclear power in space, for a very long time.
From Wikipedia:
Current economic uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates, while it is expected there is twice that amount awaiting discovery. With reprocessing and recycling, the reserves are good for thousands of years. It is estimated that 5.5 million tonnes of uranium ore reserves are economically viable, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction). An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was feasible).
I meant we don't build newer Nuclear plants.
But anyway, I was wrong about the Uranium reserves then. I actually read that in my AP Human Geography book so I thought it would be correct.
No, a Helium-3 using power generator is perfect for the moon. There is, afterall, tons of the stuff on the moon.
Solar cells to not have the same energy return.
How do they get the nuclear material into space without WW III happening?
Diplomatic pouch ftw.
Rockets?
It's called diplomacy, look it up.
Imagine what the Chinese and the Russians would do if the Americans tyred to put that on the moon. It would be like Cuba all over again.
Ok, isn't the moon pretty easily crahsed into by all sizes of meteorites? I mean there is no atmosphere to burn those little guys up so don't they end up smashing into the moon at pretty high speeds? I.E. all the craters on the moon.
Wouldn't that be an issue?
Ok, I'm super lame. It's going to be underground. Worst article reader, ever.
First the Hadron collider, now they want to blow up the moon?
Stop playing Jesus, scientists!
Yes, because Jesus loved to build nuclear reactors and make LHCs. We are so playing jesus, man you're so right, not sure why I didn't see it before.
Sorry Whamblam... I guess some people have a hard time recognizing sarcasm when they encounter it...
What are you some sort of geiger counter for sarcasm?
All your base are belong to us.
At least a moon nuclear station has the benefit of being able to permanently and almost instantly dispose of nuclear waste., low gravity makes it easy to just launch a few tons of the garbage into space. Point it in escape path/velocity of our solar system and bingo, problem solved.
What would be the effects of firing into the sun, if nothing severe they could easily do that?
@(01)
Despite what movies may tell you, Nuclear reactors don't *explode*. Not only is it the wrong kind of Uranium, but there's also no way for it to become "supercritical". The biggest danger in a meltdown is for radoactive material to be released into the atmoshpere. However the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere (not one worth mentioning anyways), and its surface is constantly bombarded with radation anyways.
Oi, this was meant to be a reply under ▀█▀ █ ▀█▀ ▄█▀.
WE CAN, SHOULD, AND WILL BLOW UP THE MOON!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpX5aa5Lz4
This sounds like a pretty good idea, but it still has some problems.
1) If the radiator arms are on the surface, aren't they under constant bombardment by meteorites?
2) If the nuclear power plant is underground, how are you going to build it? It's not like we can take a couple shovels and start digging on the moon for a month or two.
3) Even if the power plant was build, we still have tons of other issues revolved around actually having a sustainable environment on the moon, including water source, air, meteorite resistant habit structure...
With all that said, it's hard to believe this is the solution NASA has come up with, a multi billion doller R&D budget should result in something better than a half thought out sketch.
Sorry, scratch number 2, the actual article itself provide more detailed of the nuclear reactor itself. Not enough research on my part.
If the US don't take control of the moon I'm sure Russia or China will.
It sounds like this would be a similar system to the ones that have been in use in space for decades on satellites and space probes. Maybe scaled up slightly.
They are ultra-reliable, because they have no moving parts, they just produce steady heat through radioactive decay. There's no mucking about with control rods, or any real possibility of it melting down or even increasing its output.
Nuclear > Uninformed Average Joe who's afraid of the word "nuclear" > Greenpeace
Nuclear power FTW.
statisticians say people are STILL freaking dying from chernobyl all over europe, FTW indeed.
The environmental applications have nothing to do with the moon. Another disaster like Challenger or the myriad of failed launches will spill the fuel across a great swath of the planet. The moon is already bathed in radiation anyway.
actually I think there will be concern from environmentalists, not with the installation itself, but with the transportation. While it will be safe on the moon with no appreciable risk to us, getting the reactor to the moon requires placing the radioactive material on top of a large highly combustible transport. Though NASA has a very successful launch record, especially with rockets, there is always a risk that the rocket will fail or need to be aborted and the radioactive elements will be shed in the sky and carried possibly to population centers. (Very minimal compared to Chernobyl)
The exact same concerns surfaced when Cassini was launched a few years back.
You just KNOW that when they dig that hole to bury the reactor they're gonna find a large black monolith with dimensions in the ratio of 1:4:9...
If they start digging on the moon and find a Snickers wrapper I'm going to be pissed.
Eco freaks are going to jump all over this. "What if it leaks.. those poor moon rocks."
WOOT! I love technology advancing this fast, go NASA!
ive never seen so many gutless whiny loser complaining that "we cant do this or we cant do that because x." im glad you clowns werent around during ww2 or trying to put men on the moon or even change your oil you might just think its too hard and give up.
SPACE 1999!!! Seriously, with no atmosphere wouldn't solar be the energy of choice?
Since when did Nasa start using Antony Gormley as their designer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_the_North