NASA Taps Three Companies To Design Nuclear Power Plants For the Moon (techcrunch.com) 246
NASA announced on Tuesday that it's contracting three suppliers to provide concept designs for nuclear fission energy systems designed for use on the moon. TechCrunch reports: The winning bids for this award came from Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX (a joint venture from Intuitive Machines and X-Energy). Each will be working with a few partners to develop their systems, which will be "initial concepts" only for the purposes of satisfying this particular contract, and each will receive roughly $5 million for their work, expected to take around 12 months.
NASA is aptly partnering with the Department of Energy (DOE) on this project, and the specs include a 40-kilowatt power generation capability, capable of generating that for at least a decade. That's about what a full charge on a current entry-level Nissan Leaf contains -- but as a fission generator it would obviously provide that continuously. It may not seem like much, but deployed singularly or in groups to support a lunar base, it could solve a lot of the challenges of the kind of prolonged occupancy of the moon that NASA plans to eventually establish through its Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to our largest natural satellite for ongoing science missions. NASA also notes that the work done for this contract could have other future applications for propulsion systems for long-range spacecraft for deep space explorations.
NASA is aptly partnering with the Department of Energy (DOE) on this project, and the specs include a 40-kilowatt power generation capability, capable of generating that for at least a decade. That's about what a full charge on a current entry-level Nissan Leaf contains -- but as a fission generator it would obviously provide that continuously. It may not seem like much, but deployed singularly or in groups to support a lunar base, it could solve a lot of the challenges of the kind of prolonged occupancy of the moon that NASA plans to eventually establish through its Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to our largest natural satellite for ongoing science missions. NASA also notes that the work done for this contract could have other future applications for propulsion systems for long-range spacecraft for deep space explorations.
Power != energy (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it that hard for technical writers to figure out the difference between power and energy?
What kind of statement is "it generates the same amount of power as what a nissan leaf contains"
He might as well be saying a football field uses an olympic pool worth of water (with no reference to time over which it is used)
Re:Power != energy (Score:4, Interesting)
Also: would it have killed the editors to provide a link to, ya know, the actual NASA announcement [nasa.gov]? Notably absent from the summary is whether that 40-kW rating is the electrical output, or total thermal output from the fission reactor. I am going to assume the former, since electricity is the most useful form. Although bulk thermal power can be useful for many things, in space you usually need to go through a lot of effort to get rid of waste heat. Even during the lunar night, I doubt the astronauts will need to worry about freezing.
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If you are going to try being snarky about people making intelligent points - on a site subtitled "News for Nerds" - at least get your damn pop culture references correct. The glow was definitely not green [youtube.com].
Re: Power != energy (Score:2)
FYI: We use the same units for electric power, just not engines for some reason. But thank you for hating, please hate again soon.
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Is it that hard for technical writers to figure out the difference between power and energy? What kind of statement is "it generates the same amount of power as what a nissan leaf contains" He might as well be saying a football field uses an olympic pool worth of water (with no reference to time over which it is used)
There are engineers, and there are journalists. The engineers tend to write articles that are pretty bad, and journalists tend to not know shit about science.
I've seen Engineer and scientist writes that were kinda incoherent, sometimes condense down to "Look how smart I am!" And we see the journalist efforts every day. It's a rare journalist who can take their thoughts and translate them into ordinary human-speak.
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The engineers tend to write articles that are pretty bad, and journalists tend to not know shit about science.
"Journalists" these days can't even form grammatically-correct sentences.
I've noticed that as well. Especially online. The problem with the spelling errors and grammar mistakes is that they make for "speed bumps" for anyone that reads quickly.
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Is it that hard for technical writers to figure out the difference between power and energy?
I guess the author doesn't simply know what he/she is writing about, and the mistake probably comes from the NASA announcement referring to power in kW, whilst car batteries energy capacity is commonly provided in kWh.
A side note, even though the Nissan Leaf battery has ~40kWh (older versions) capacity it is not capable of delivering 40kW of power, any attempt of would destroy the battery and likely ignite it. Comparing a nuclear power plant with 40kW capability over 10 years to a 40kWh battery is ... well,
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That's interesting, considering the Leaf apparnetly has an 80 kW motor.
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A side note, even though the Nissan Leaf battery has ~40kWh (older versions) capacity it is not capable of delivering 40kW of power, any attempt of would destroy the battery and likely ignite it. Comparing a nuclear power plant with 40kW capability over 10 years to a 40kWh battery is ... well, amusing.
Another user pointed out that the engine of the Leaf is 80 kW. It's not unusual for a battery pack like that to be able to deliver quite high wattage. The annoying thing is how hard it is to fins published numbers for this stuff. At least in a quick search. Maybe one of the reasons it is so hard for Journalists to get this stuff right is that even supposedly detailed battery breakdowns basically completely ignore that aspect of the battery specs. It's going to be more of a range that a fixed number of cours
TV Comes To Life? (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone remember Space 1999?
Ok, that one was about nuclear waste storage...but I guess it could still happen sometime in the future if these lunar nuclear plants follow legacy nuclear waste protocols.
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Space 1999 was the first thing I though of when I read the headline. Transporting fissile materials to the moon and not irradiating everyone in the process of transport and use is a challenge. Also, most reactor designs depend on cooling systems, which are difficult to implement on the moon.
Solar Power should be a good option. It is well-proven in space. With 400W solar panels, it would only take 200 to 300 panels to generate 40 kWh continuously with a 2x-3x margin for nighttime & problems. A lith
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Solar power is a good option for half the time. The other half of the time the moon is dark, so not a good option. The lunar night last about 14 days. So unless you plan of freezing for 14 days, to have a permanent base on the moon you will need nuclear power. There is simply no other option.
Oh, if you want a pretty good show about building a moonbase I recommend the show For All Mankind on Apple tv.
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Solar on the moon is really about the batteries. Lithium batteries can handle 14-days of power storage. At 40 kW, the battery packs will tend to heat themselves. The vacuum atmosphere on the moon tends to making cooling an technical challenge, and heating easier to accomplish. A 14-day battery pack will have between 1/40th and 1/100th of the cooling needs of a fission reactor, which simplifies cooling.
Weight is a factor, but a fission reactor with cooling system will not be light. There is the issue t
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No. Lithium batteries are not practical for any kind of power storage on the moon with the exception of emergency power. During the lunar night where will your biggest power drain be? Heat. At -200 degree for 14 days you will be using most of your power to keep warm if you use lithium batteries. The power drain that will be placed on your battery pack for a base of any substance size will be to great.
Which is another bonus of having a nuclear reactor. That excess heat can be used to keep warm duri
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Not true! You could build *two* 200-300 panel solar power systems on the moon. Then lay down 3000 miles of cable to connect them. When one is in dark, the other is in light. Problem solved!
Is it practical? Dunno. Just thought of it off the top of my head. But that there is "simply no other option" is untrue. There are always options.
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Is it practical? Dunno. Just thought of it off the top of my head. But that there is "simply no other option" is untrue. There are always options.
Generally when people say there are no other options they do mean no other practical options. On the other hand this opens up the doors to all the wildly impractical ones:
* Fly a continuous supply of diesel fuel and oxygen to the moon and run a diesel generator at night
* Put the base on giant wheels and keep driving it so it stays on the sunny side
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* Put the base on giant wheels and keep driving it so it stays on the sunny side
As impractical as that may be but when you look at it that way sounds kind of cool. We could have it roaming the lunar surface "eating" smaller moon bases as they roll along the surface for resources. On second thought that sounds like the plot to bad movie.
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Not a lot of details on what sort of reactors they're thinking of. Maybe they're thinking betavoltatic [wikipedia.org], which bypasses a lot of the problems with traditional reactors.
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Transporting fissile materials to the moon and not irradiating everyone in the process of transport and use is a challenge.
Not at all. The reactor will use uranium, which is barely radioactive at all before being started for the first time.
Space probes and rovers have already been launched with RTGs containing Pu238, which is millions of times more radioactive per kg.
Also, most reactor designs depend on cooling systems, which are difficult to implement on the moon.
These will be small and cooled by radiators.
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That is not a valid comparison. A hotter radiator will clearly emit more heat, and a stirling engine does not have the same requirements as a solar panel.
A hotter radiator will clearly emit more heat, and it needs to be made of sturdier, heavier materials, and it has to work properly in space. One wonders why NASA chose the radiators they did for the ISS when they could have just used hotter ones and saved weight. As for the Stirling engine not having the same requirements as a solar panel, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say there. Of course it doesn't have the same requirements as a solar panel.
Now, regarding the link you posted, a few things. Fi
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Yeah, it's a fun joke (Space:1999 was the first thing I thought of, too) but the "science" of the series was impossible on so many levels.
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One does not have to be a purist to take issue with describing that show as "science fiction" rather than "science fantasy," or, more accurately, "stupid."
Re: TV Comes To Life? (Score:2)
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Ok, that one was about nuclear waste storage...but I guess it could still happen sometime in the future if these lunar nuclear plants follow legacy nuclear waste protocols.
I mean, it could never actually happen because it's completely physically impossible. Even if we ignore issues like the speed of light and just consider solely moving the moon out of orbit, the power required to do it over a short period of time would destroy the moon, even if you distributed the thrust over an entire hemisphere of the moon. Thinking that something like that would be possible is just the typical human inability to understand the square cube ratio. As an object is scaled up in size, not all
journalists keep getting dumber (Score:5, Insightful)
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I love how when journalists use weird, "popular" units people complain it's news for nerds, and now we have the inverse when the article uses the only sensible unit. It's the power to light 0.2 library of congresses.
Or would you rather know how many lbs of water could be heated by one 100th of the temperature difference between a stable water-ice mix and the body temperature of a cow in, say, an hour?
Re: journalists keep getting dumber (Score:2)
Atomic batteries (Score:3)
Aren't good enough for this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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An atomic battery uses the decay of radioactive isotopes as the source of power, what NASA wants is something that runs on nuclear fission.
Atomic batteries are fine when power demands are small, and the duration in which the power is needed is very long. For the scales of power and time considered here that might not work so well. It would be interesting to see someone work out the math on an atomic battery option and compare that to what NASA has in mind. One thing is to work out the best material for t
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The atomic batteries such as used in the voyager probes were Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG's), weighed about 37kg each, including about 4.5kg Plutonium, generating about 1200w of heat and used a thermoelectric couple to produce about 150W of electricity from that heat - so they were very inefficient (about 12% thermal efficiency) in generating electricity from the plutonium, but were basically solid state devices that were extremely reliable with very little to go wrong.
A regular nuclear power
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The amount of radioactive material that would need to be taken to the Moon could be an issue. To provide the kind of energy they want there are going to be environmental concerns if launches fail, unless you take up very small amounts at a time.
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Your out of date data knowledge is showing through.
They are not calling for a reactor design that will create mega watts of power on scale with a commercial reactor. They are talking about a sphere of material to create 40K watts of power, about the size of basketball.
An contrary to what you anti nuke types like to think we are quite capable of building a containment device that can survive a launch explosion, or crash, and remain intact. We have done it before.
Re: Atomic batteries (Score:2)
If it works on the moon then it works on Earth. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing an article about putting nuclear reactors on the moon reminded me of a TED Talk I saw some time ago: https://www.ted.com/talks/kirk... [ted.com]
In the talk is Kirk Sorensen talking about the energy needs of a human colony on the moon, and the challenges faced in getting that energy. On the moon people would need energy for heat, light, cooling, food production and preparation, processing of waste, and so much more. The challenges for getting energy on the moon is there is no wind for windmills. There's no water for hydroelectric dams. There's no coal to dig up, or natural gas to drill for, and no oxygen to burn it even if either were possible. Solar power isn't helpful because the sun sets for a very long time.
To solve this problem he discusses a kind of nuclear reactor that runs on thorium for fuel. But he goes on to explain that such a reactor would be exceedingly useful on Earth too.
If we can make a nuclear fission reactor provide power for humans to live on the moon then we solved a lot of our energy problems here on Earth.
We have floating nuclear fission powered cities we call aircraft carriers. We have nuclear powered submarines, where people sleep, eat, and work in a big steel container with a nuclear fission reactor providing heating, cooling, oxygen, lights, and so much more. So, in a way, this is largely a solved problem. Clearly they have to scale the reactor down considerably for NASA to consider it for a trip to the moon.
The article mentions future applications in long range spacecraft and deep space exploration. I see future applications in providing power here on Earth for hospitals, airports, military bases, prisons, and any place else where we don't want to see the electrical power blink for even a second. I could see reactors like this used for disaster relief. Keep a few of them at the ready for the next hurricane to hit land, a volcano erupting, or whatever. A problem might be that once deployed it will be too radioactive to move for decades. No problem really, just leave it there producing power until it runs out, cools down, and can be dug up from the dirt mound it was put under for radiation shielding.
If this works on the moon then it can work on Earth. A 40 kilowatt electric power source that will not need fuel for a decade would have nearly infinite applications right here on Earth. This will be money well spent, no matter how much development ends up costing.
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Do we really need to worry not only about the nuclear waste, but also about what people that are not so friendly to your government might do with it (and there is lots of domestic terrorism in the US). Reactors like this need to be as he
Re: If it works on the moon then it works on Earth (Score:2)
and there is lots of domestic terrorism in the US
I suppose if you massage the definition of the word "terrorism" there is, but it's generally not the "ruin everything for everyone" variety.
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One of the reasons I'm not sold on thorium reactors is if they where so great we should have had at least a break even experimental by now.
At least on the moon you don't have to worry about someone boosting your small nuclear reactor. Probably want to keep it guarded though just to keep the curious and potentially stupid people away from it.
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You need to think a bit more carefully about the refining. It's quite expensive. Expensive enough that only a government is likely to do it.
Yes, there are lots of ways that work. And they're ALL expensive.
Re: If it works on the moon then it works on Earth (Score:2)
Re: If it works on the moon then it works on Earth (Score:2)
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Huh, and until I 'duck duck goed' Pennisetum Clandestinum, I had assumed it was a body part of a human...
Well, today I learned that it is not! :)
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Ah yes, the Sloshdat Thorium trope. A Thorium reactor is a Uranium reactor and has all the problems of a Uranium reactor, plus a few more due to starting up with Thorium.
Remember the last time a new reactor designed as approved in the US? Me neither, because it hasn't happened in my lifetime (I'm in my mid-40s). Kinda hard to make a commercial technology when the government won't issue licenses for them. And the cost? Mostly lawsuits from nutty, anti-nuclear green groups who will keep appealing and dragging out the lawsuits indefinitely (the completely baseless AP-1000s lawsuits have been dragging on for over 15 years at this point). Thorium has many advantages over Ur
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Mostly lawsuits from nutty, anti-nuclear green groups
It's not nutty to be anti-nuclear. You opened with an insult in order to try to discredit the opposing view. That's cheap and disingenuous.
who will keep appealing and dragging out the lawsuits indefinitely
Not indefinitely, but as long as nuclear waste is hazardous. Of course, on a human time scale, the two are the same thing.
Thorium has many advantages over Uranium
It also has disadvantages, so? No nuclear power is a good idea, being slightly less bad is not selling it.
On the other hand, you have to force a utility to do something wind or solar based by giving them money and then forcing them to do it. What was that about listening to the "science", BS
In the USA, the utilities can by law[s designed to rope in their willful malfeasance] only really profit from producing new generation capacity,
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The argument about "he lifecycle CO2 emissions of nuclear power per unit generated " is weak, and depends on specifications in the current licensed designs.
I am of the opinion that designs of nuclear fission reactors should be extensively researched. Also those for plants that can digest "spent" fuel from current reactors. (Often these are claimed to be the same.) I don't think any are currently good enough to build-out with, but if we don't test, we won't know. I am not at all enamored with the current
Re: If it works on the moon then it works on Eart (Score:2)
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Solar power isn't helpful because the sun sets for a very long time.
Three-ish days on the poles is not really "a very long time". Especially if the assumption is that you'll generate your own fuel for the trip back. So this is really not that much of an issue.
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"If it works on the moon it works on Earth"
Sure, if your goal is to make The Earth look like The Moon.
Thanks for tipping your hand.
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Thanks for tipping your hand.
I'll say the same to you. All you have is FUD, like all anti-nuclear types do.
I can point to the need for energy that is low cost, low in CO2, and reliable. I can point to how renewable energy won't meet our needs because of EROEI, land use, material requirements, and all kinds of other reasons. I show data to back up how we need nuclear fission power if we are to sustain our standard of living, and if we are to explore space. All the anti-nuclear people have is FUD. Only fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
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I can point to the need for energy that is low cost, low in CO2, and reliable.
So what? All the stuff you say about nuclear after that is bullshit, trivially disproven which is why it's been done again and again, but you still won't go away.
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Go ahead, post some data for everyone. I want you, I'm begging you, to post links to data so everyone else has something to base their opinion on.
They did that one time a few years ago. We spent a grand old time picking it a part and disproving everything they posted. They haven't done it since.
Dink is one of the big three who's only goal is to spread FUD about nuclear options.
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Simple question. Why are you against nuclear on the moon?
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I can point to the need for energy that is low cost, low in CO2, and reliable.
The problem is that a lunar nuclear reactor doesn't really fulfill the first two. It's not low cost and not low in CO2, because in order to develop it, build it, and launch it, you expend the work of hundreds of engineers and technicians, then a whole rocket, and a crapload of rocket fuel. For comparison, just the fuel for an Atlas V rocket to launch to LEO is equivalent to 350 tonnes of CO2 emitted -- and this is a lower bound given purely the fuel burned; there will be extra emissions incurred just in cry
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We already tried thorium reactors several times, they don't work very well. There are unresolved problems with the reactor vessel being damaged and failing well before its design lifetime, as well as the cooling systems. The other major issue on the Moon is that there is the potential for producing weapons with a thorium reactor, so other countries are likely to object.
They will end up going for a conventional reactor, or using these amazing new things called "batteries" that let them store solar power duri
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They will end up going for a conventional reactor, or using these amazing new things called "batteries" that let them store solar power during the lunar night. The challenges of putting even a conventional reactor on the Moon are significant, e.g. there is no water or atmosphere to carry away excess heat.
You need to stop right here and right now. This one quoted paragraph show you have no clue what you are talking about. We are not talking about earth based reactors, we are talking about lunar based reactor. Your normal, out of date, anti nuclear FUD wont' fly here.
It has already been explained why batteries are impractical for a base of useful size on the moon for a 14 day night. The heat issue has already been addressed. There maybe no water or atmosphere to carry away heat but there are such thi
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NASA isn't proposing a thorium reactor, you are.
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Thing is it doesn't work on Earth and nobody has built one on the Moon, so your statement is meaningless.
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We have floating nuclear fission powered cities we call aircraft carriers. We have nuclear powered submarines, where people sleep, eat, and work in a big steel container with a nuclear fission reactor providing heating, cooling, oxygen, lights, and so much more. So, in a way, this is largely a solved problem. Clearly they have to scale the reactor down considerably for NASA to consider it for a trip to the moon.
This exactly. This is really not a problem. We have the designs we need for small nuclear reactors. The problem is we need to get them away from the military and put them to a better use.
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"Solar power isn't helpful"
Except for two locations - the poles - where even with lunar precession, you have massive amounts of easily-gathered solar power basically 24/7.
This makes these two locations critical 'high ground' for a permanent lunar base, as well as the likelihood of water ice nearby.
I sure hope someone at NASA or at least the DoD recognizes this and understands that putting a base at either location or both will be vastly tactically more important than say 'flag planting' is at Earth poles.
Wot? (Score:5, Funny)
In case of an accident, they'll let contaminated water into the Mare Tranquillitatis?
All the Moon-fish will die.
have they learnt from the past (Score:2)
In seriousness (Score:3)
A fission reactor on the moon comes with a lot of challenges.
It needs cooling. There is NOT a convenient atmosphere to dump it into. The only heat sink you have is the colony itself, and the surrounding bedrock.
Additionally, the cooling loop has to be completely closed, and the coolant cannot become contaminated. (Because there is precious little of it on the moon, its heavy as fuck to fly up there, its the stuff circulating in the walls to prevent cryogenically frozen colonists, and generally, its very hard to clean up a superfund site in low gravity with space suits on)
Additionally, since its whats keeping life support running, it needs to have a redundant backup, or you will have all the problems of fukushima daiichi, just on the moon. (Namely, cant afford to shut it down for extended and costly maintenance, with entirely predictable results)
You also need a waste disposal plan for spent fuel.
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You'd need to use radiative cooling. Only possible way. One option would require a truly giant combo refrigerator/radiator. Which is then vulnerable to micrometeorites. I can't think of a second option that's any more realistic.
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Well, that and the giant, quite cold thermal sink you're sitting on.
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I think your design for the base is wrong. You don't circulate fluid in the walls of the base, you insulate with Styrofoam or something similar. It saves a lot of weight and mechanical complexity. It's got other advantages.
Cooling the reactor, though, is a big problem. You want it to be reliable, which means solid state. If it exposes extensive surface area (almost certainly necessary) you want it to be robust in the face of micro-meteor impacts. Etc. And you want it to be as light as possible (or bu
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Cooling the reactor, though, is a big problem.
Waste heat is a big problem because it's wasted energy. Being able to slow or repeatedly stop the reaction to keep the temperature in an ideal range is a much more efficient use of the fuel.
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You are mostly incorrect. Please read about the project kilopower also known as KRUSTY.
1. You've forgotten about the most important, the simplest and the most used in space applications cooling by radiating heat to the coldness of the Universe
2. The proposed power plants are not even close to what is build on Earth, hence cooling by radiating is the most reasonable.
3. Building a base with pumping liquid from the reactor to the base makes no sense, most of the time this base would have to be cooled not heate
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Totally, we've never used a fission reactor in space before. It's completely new territory. We certainly haven't used them fairly routinely on satellites, which are even more challenging than a lunar colony.
Too late! (Score:4, Informative)
The deadline for the nuclear accident was September 13th, 1999.
Reminds me of Andy Weir's _Artemis_ (Score:2)
In _Artemis_, Andy Weir writes about a nuclear reactor on the moon, that uses a lot of radiator panels to cool it. I just thought it was cool that the NASA name is also Artemis.
Remember the KiloPower reactor for Mars? (Score:2)
Thanks to slashdot, we already know how to do this. Or not, depending upon your view.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
By the way, the conceptual picture in the linked articles is from the Kilopower project articles..
https://www.space.com/nuclear-... [space.com]
https://www.nasa.gov/directora... [nasa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Dumb Question... (Score:2)
How do you get the U235 up there ?
For the dark side? Otherwise solar is efficient (Score:2)
Gallium-arsenide solar cells could last far longer than a single decade and generate good continuous energy. What is the point of nuclear plants that will require new fuel, except if used on the dark side of the Moon? Yes, you will have weeks with and weeks without power but in very predictable time intervals. There are no storms or clouds. You could use batteries or supercapacitors (last much longer).
Also, it seems to me that a decade is a very little time for things in space. It costs a lot to move t
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They make sense in space because the main concern is getting a lot of power out of a relatively small package, with cost being a side issue.
Looking at the Voyager RTG's for example, they used about 13.5kg of plutonium each (in 3 RTG's per probe) to generate 480W of power, which has now decreased to about 250W of power. Over the 44 years they have been in operation that's a total of 140 MWh of power generated.
it's hard to get a price for plutonium, which isn't exactly a corner drugstore item, but from what
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it's hard to get a price for plutonium
Your local law enforcement applauds your curiosity. They just have a few questions to ask you about your findings. Mind if they swing by later? /s
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I'd be more concerned about the Libyans...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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There are two different sources of energy here which are radically different.
A plutonium-238 RTG (radioisotope thermal generator) is not a fission device and plutonium-238 is not fissile. It works by harvesting the heat generated by radioactive decay (not nuclear fission). They are extremely reliable and safe (there are pacemakers that use them that work well), but they produce only limited power. These are not used to produce a large amount of power cheaply; they're used to produce a small amount power for
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Yes, but his argument was that for space power supplies cost isn't an overriding factor. That's still valid despite the differences you point out.
IIUC, the main difficulty with a fission reactor in space is getting rid of the excess heat. That's going to require a design that optimizes things you don't optimize down here. It's probably also going to require being run without on-site experts. OTOH, waste disposal can probably be "haul it over into that unused crater".
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IIUC, the main difficulty with a fission reactor in space is getting rid of the excess heat.
This isn't that big a problem as you might think. Normally we would get rid of access heat by running water through the reactor and discharging it into a river. As you probably can figure out this is not a opium solution on the moon. As it stands, there are two solutions to discharging excess heat.
The first is heat radiators, like the ones in use on the ISS. The second one is to build a net work of under ground pipes and discharge the heat into the moon surface. Turn the whole moon in to a huge heat
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... for plutonium, which isn't exactly a corner drugstore item...
BTTF FTW!
Even here in 2022 it's a little hard to come by.
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I'm rather certain you don't want the kind of reactor they're designing for use down here. The design constraints are rather different.
Re:How about for Earth first? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can afford to build nuclear reactors here on hearth nobody's stopping you but you ain't building those things with other peoples tax money.
Why not? Have you seen how much tax money is spent on corn ethanol fuel, wind subsidies, solar subsidies, hydroelectric dams, and so many other means of producing energy? We see tax money spent on building power plants all the time, be they coal, natural gas, or whatever. One big role of the government is providing infrastructure to aid in commerce, national security, and utilities. Building power plants is what people expect their taxes to do for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not? Have you seen how much tax money is spent on corn ethanol fuel
You can't justify an expense just by pointing out that we have spent money on other things that are even stupider.
Each project should be evaluated on its own merits.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can afford to build nuclear reactors here on hearth nobody's stopping you but you ain't building those things with other peoples tax money.
Why not? Have you seen how much tax money is spent on corn ethanol fuel, wind subsidies, solar subsidies, hydroelectric dams, and so many other means of producing energy? We see tax money spent on building power plants all the time, be they coal, natural gas, or whatever. One big role of the government is providing infrastructure to aid in commerce, national security, and utilities. Building power plants is what people expect their taxes to do for them.
Is "whatever" a euphemism for nuclear power generation? That has hella subsidies, including it written into law that the guvmint picks up most of the tab if a reactor gets spunky and throws up.
Re: (Score:2)
Is "whatever" a euphemism for nuclear power generation?
No, it's just a phrase I use to cover all my bases. It's so people don't reply with "but you forgot...." By adding on "or whatever" then people can fill in anything they like in their own minds. That's all.
That has hella subsidies, including it written into law that the guvmint picks up most of the tab if a reactor gets spunky and throws up.
That's true for hydroelectric dams and "whatever". Your point?
Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act covers nuclear power, not hydroelectric, and "whatever". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]–Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act
People bring up the "big three" on nuclear power accidents all the time.
And my astute friend, you will notice that I brought up no such thing at all. I merely brought up something that is truthful, and not any opinion. I'll note that every time I bring up the Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, it triggers the bejabbers out of some folks.
Re: (Score:2)
Priceâ"Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act covers nuclear power, not hydroelectric, and "whatever".
Price Anderson Act covers nuclear power. Other acts cover "whatever". So, just FUD, not an argument.
Silly Muchacho, You bring up all these things, but use "whatever" as a euphamism. Fud? No. Intellectual dishonesty. A person engaging in intellectuazl honesty would indeed include nuclear power generation if they were brining up subsidies for other power generation methods.
Dood, ya ain't fooling no one, your use of the euphemism whatever in an attempt to sidestep the fact that all methods of power generation get some form of guvmint assistance is what would be called out instantly in any serious discussi
Re: (Score:2)
The chart on the Wikipedia page shows nuclear power getting 1% of all energy subsidies. The chart on another Wikipedia page shows nuclear power producing 9% of energy produced in the USA.
The question is what is the relevance of mentioning these two figures. We keep being told that nuclear power is really cheap to run and mostly expensive to build, but new nuclear plants are not really being built in the US right now, just the old ones are being operated, so what should be the relationship between those two numbers? Surely it's not proportional unless you have a steady state of reactor units being progressively replaced so that in every age group there's roughly the same number of reactor un
Re: How about for Earth first? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are mistaken. [nrc.gov] It's a lot more complicated than buy car insurance, but all reactors in the US are insured by private insurers for first tier.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't talk about The People having to insure the reactors because no private insurance company will touch them (because any typical nuclear incident would bankrupt them) then you're lying when it comes to talking about subsidies. And lo, that page makes no mention of insurance.
An this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. None of your FUD will work here. There is no comparison to cost of operating a reactor on the moon that can be compared to operating one on earth.
Back to your cave troll. None of your FUD will fly here.