America Wants to Build Nuclear Power Plants on the Moon and Mars (time.com) 243
"The U.S. wants to build nuclear power plants that will work on the moon and Mars, and on Friday put out a request for ideas from the private sector on how to do that," reports Time magazine:
The U.S. Department of Energy put out the formal request to build what it calls a fission surface power system that could allow humans to live for long periods in harsh space environments.
The Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility in eastern Idaho, the Energy Department and NASA will evaluate the ideas for developing the reactor. The lab has been leading the way in the U.S. on advanced reactors, some of them micro reactors and others that can operate without water for cooling. Water-cooled nuclear reactors are the vast majority of reactors on Earth. "Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government," the Energy Department wrote in the notice published Friday...
The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026... Officials say operating a nuclear reactor on the moon would be a first step to building a modified version to operate in the different conditions found on Mars.
The Idaho National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility in eastern Idaho, the Energy Department and NASA will evaluate the ideas for developing the reactor. The lab has been leading the way in the U.S. on advanced reactors, some of them micro reactors and others that can operate without water for cooling. Water-cooled nuclear reactors are the vast majority of reactors on Earth. "Small nuclear reactors can provide the power capability necessary for space exploration missions of interest to the Federal government," the Energy Department wrote in the notice published Friday...
The goal is to have a reactor, flight system and lander ready to go by the end of 2026... Officials say operating a nuclear reactor on the moon would be a first step to building a modified version to operate in the different conditions found on Mars.
Space 1999 (Score:5, Funny)
Does someone at the DOE know about the Sun? (Score:2)
Quote from the article:
"The U.S. Department of Energy put out the formal request to build what it calls a fission surface power system that could allow humans to live for long periods in harsh space environments."
My attempt at a joke:
Possibly people at the Department of Energy don't know about this: There is a thing called the "Sun" that puts out a huge amount of energy that arrives at the Moon. Solar cells could generate all the necessary ele
DOE means Dumbest On Earth? (Score:3)
Quote from the article:
"Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, said his organization is concerned the parameters of the design and timeline make the most likely reactors those that use highly enriched uranium, which can be made into weapons."
List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents [wikipedia.org]
The U.S. Department of Energy would put every person on Ear
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The U.S. Department of Energy would put every person on Earth at risk? An explosion could spread radioactive material throughout the atmosphere.
Uranium is a naturally occurring mineral.
The oceans contain about 4 billion tonnes of uranium.
You can buy uranium on eBay.
Re: DOE means Dumbest On Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
But not the fissionable kind.
Actually between 2% and 4% of it will be the fissionable kind (U-235). That's LEU. Natural would be about 1% the fissionable kind.
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Solar is much less mass to get into orbit and power requirements are much lower than for a moonbase where you're manufacturing stuff from lunar aluminium.
(Maybe the first thing they manufacture on the moon should be solar panels, but 14 days of darkness and temperatures close to zero Kelvin every month is a problem that solar panels won't solve...)
Re: DOE means Dumbest On Earth? (Score:4, Informative)
but 14 days of darkness and temperatures close to zero Kelvin every month is a problem...
...that the first lunar bases most likely won't have, seeing that they're expected to be built on the poles [nasa.gov]. Maybe once we move to the non-polar regions this will be an issue, but for decades to come, it most likely won't be.
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that they're expected to be built on the poles [nasa.gov].
Thanks for that info.
LEU definition (Score:2)
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Re:DOE means Dumbest On Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Department of Energy wants to send a huge amount of radioactive material to the Moon?
Enriched uranium fuel is actually quite safe from a radioactive point of view. It's made from isotopes which have still not decayed 6 billion years after the supernova that created them so they are almost stables (half-lives in the billions of years) and barely radioactive. After they have been burnt in a reactor the story is very different since the fission products are highly radioactive with half-lives in the years to decades or even longer but that will not happen until they are on the moon.
As for concerns about using weapon's grade uranium if the reactor is on the moon then it's going to be more secure than just about anywhere on Earth and anyone with the technology to retrieve it almost certainly has the technology to enrich uranium themselves.
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I think the concern about weapons grade material on the moon would be more about the possibility of it being turned into a warhead up there and then used as a deterrent against other countries. The Soviets looked into it decades ago, the idea being to place some missiles on the moon so that if the USSR was attacked then 3 days later unstoppable nuclear warheads rain down on the United States.
It's a bit far fetched... It might be possible to launch something from the Moon back to the Earth with a warhead but
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test new reactor designs with little to no risk because there's no environment to wreck and no large population of humans to endanger.
Ha! Nice idea, but no. These reactors will be thoroughly tested on Earth before being sent to space, and are very low risk due to their tiny size, even compared to naval reactors.
Both solar and nuclear power will be important for manned bases on the moon and Mars.
...and at night? (Score:3)
Solar cells could generate all the necessary electricity.
Not at night which, because the moon is tidally locked, lasts about 14 days. Solar is fine for a short stay on the moon, not so good for living there unless you have really large batteries or just use it to power colling systems during the lunar daytime.
Perhaps it's possible that at least some of the people at the US DoE actually know what they are doing.
Re:...and at night? (Score:5, Informative)
um... they know something about the MOON (Score:5, Informative)
The moon orbits the Earth about every 28 days, and because it's mass in not uniformly-distributed one side is "heavier" than the other, so it self-orients one side towards the Earth which it orbits (this is called "gravity-gradient stabilization" and has been utilized in some man-made satellites to keep their sensors and/or antennas pointed properly at no propellant cost). This means that we always see one face of the moon, but unlike what many think, there is no "dark side". All of this results in a lunar day of about 14 Earth days, and a lunar night of about 14 Earth days.... so any solar array on the moon would only generate power 14 days per month and batteries would be needed to cover the other 14 days, with the solar panels deep-freezing to about -300F during the 14-day long nights and the potential for wiring and connector failures during those periods unless energy from the batteries is wasted heating the panels and their circuits.
Even the massive solar arrays and battery systems aboard the ISS are only required to power that orbiting outpost crewed by only 6 or 7 people through orbital nights of about 90 minutes.
Every single Apollo mission landed, stayed, and lifted-off within the span of a single lunar day, even thought the later missions lasted several Earth days.
Many deep space probes are solar powered on very long missions, but they are generally on highly elliptical trajectories with no shadowing, or if they go into orbit around some planet, their batteries only need to power them through orbital nights of a few hours (their orbital periods might be MUCH longer, but they are generally only in the shadow of planet they are orbiting for a few hours).
As a general rule, it's a good idea not to presume people far smarter and better-informed than yourself are idiots - they might well be, but you should study the subject a bit before making the presumption and then advertising your own ignorance.
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Nuclear isn't suitable for many deep space probes because of the possibility of contamination. We go to great lengths to clean them before launch to avoid contaminating other worlds so the last thing we want to do is have nuclear waste crash landing or getting stuck on the surface in a decaying lander.
The moon is okay because we know there is nothing much up there to contaminate. Mars... Well it seems to be dead so probably okay too, would be a shame to start colonization of a new world by polluting it but
Re: um... they know something about the MOON (Score:3)
"...any solar array on the moon would only generate power 14 days per month and batteries would be needed to cover the other 14 days..."
Generally a correct post identifying the problem with solar power on the moon, except I wouldn't say "any" as, conceivably, it would be possible to deploy a solar array at the poles which would be in sunlight constantly.
In fact, I believe it was Clementine data that showed the north rim of Peary crater is high enough to defeat the moon's 1.5 degree inclination issue.
We just
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Possibly you don't know about this: a moon base powered by solar would have to deal with a two-week long night. The batteries required to so operate would be quite massive, and very expensive to boost. Especially if we are going to produce rocket fuel on the moon (which will be pretty m
Previous comment: "... 2 days without sunlight." (Score:3)
We can't build them on Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
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... Or maybe at the same time, in parallel.
Government support would be a good step in the right direction.
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From a project management perspective, the good thing about the moon as a location for a nuclear reactor is that there is nobody up on the moon who can stop the project. At any location here on earth, there are many, many ways to prevent the project from going forward (which is why it has not been done).
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I want to joke and say "anyone who thinks this is a good idea, slept through 'The Time Machine' film where they blew apart the moon, or maybe didn't see something like Cowboy Bebop.
Like at least with the moon, if there is a meltdown, there's no water table to worry about, but there's also no salvaging it either, if it melts down, it's going straight to lunar-china.
Mars is probably the more worrying one. Mars has an atmosphere, so that means a serious screw up on Mars means potentially destroying any possibl
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Yeah, but there are plenty of reactor designs that fail safe now. It's possible that they would want a system that would make more power vs weight and less safe, but most failures can be mitigated with proper design. The most dangerous phase for atmospheric contamination is probably landing the thing. A potentially better choice could be nuclear reactor in synchronous orbit beaming power to the surface...
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I think you're a little optimistic about the ability of a single small reactor to wreck a whole world. If you could get them there, you could drop every nuclear weapon and scatter every bit of high-level waste we have on Mars, and it wouldn't be anywhere near the biggest obstacle to habitability-- it'd be rounding error.
I am not sure this is a good idea, but for other reasons: there's science that may be precluded forever by having had man-made nuclear reactions happen there. On the other hand, long durat
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Cost wise even a meltdown on the Moon could set us back decades by making whatever kind of base we built unusable.
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If only it were that easy to clean up a melted down reactor, and if only launching stuff into the sun didn't require massive amounts of delta v compared to even just flinging it out of the solar system.
Re: We can't build them on Earth (Score:2)
What other viable option is there? Blanketing the moon with solar cells and truckloads of batteries to sustain like on another planet with a hostile environment?
Windmills, Hydro, and geo-thermal aren't options, and consuming fossil fuel, natural gas, coal or wood are obviously out.
On the plus side, environmental groups likely have no standing with regard to building a nuke on/sending a nuke to the moon or mars.
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well its not like you need a lot of power for the population density
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No zealots filing lawsuits, no endangered rat (Score:2)
without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
We won't have the costs artificially inflated by lawsuits. No environmental zealots (note many thinking environmentalists now accept nuclear as part of the anything-not-carbon option), no endangered rat species habitat, no unsightly towers visible from the rich neighborhoods, no NIMBY, etc.
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yep, but think of how you build it. it'll either need loads of manpower (with its own problems of to sustain them on the moon) or tons of robots (controlled from earth) to dig the ground and assemble a prefabricated system that will have to be delivered to the moon - just think of how many moon shots that will take plus the costs of the delivery system in fuel and rockets
You're thinking of this in terms of an earth based reactor, where we pile up concrete so some crazy doesn't fly a plane into it, sink footings ungodly deep in case of earthquake, surround it basically with a military installation to keep morons out, etc. In space a nuclear reactor has no need to be protected to anywhere near that degree. Stick it in a lava tube or a hole you dug and covered to protect from micro meteor impacts. Don't bother with tons of shielding around it, rely on R squared to keep dose
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These reactors will be like naval reactors (Score:3)
without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
These reactors will be like the reactors used by naval vessels. These are extremely cost efficient.
The moon is the readily available heat sink (Score:2)
without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
These reactors will be like the reactors used by naval vessels. These are extremely cost efficient.
But it's quite expensive to create an ocean on the moon to cool them.
The ocean is merely a convenient heat sink for a submarine. The convenient heat sink for a lunar base would be the moon itself. Not too dissimilar from geothermal cooling used in some homes here on earth. Plus they could use some waste heat to heat the habitat.
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without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
Rubbish. The US navy has successfully built and operated hundreds of small nuclear reactors in recent decades.
They are expensive, but not so much compared to the cost of manned space travel.
Commercial electrical power stations are a totally different animal in scale, have to compete against cheap alternatives not found in space, and the moon has none of those pesky NIMBYs.
Solar is the other obvious contender at the lunar poles. For Mars, sun is weak, and you need batteries for night. Batteries are heavy, bu
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without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
We can't do shit with nuclear power development on Earth because of liability.
And if we can't figure out how to get Greed in check, then our species deserves to sit here and die on this rock, morbidly chained to Stupid and Ignorant.
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There's no point trying to fix it on Earth, there are cheaper and cleaner alternatives already.
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without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
We are. On the moon no one can get cancer from unsecured nuclear waste.
Re: We can't build them on Earth (Score:2)
Fixing one fixes both.
It is rare for the solution to a problem to have no wider implications.
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without cost overruns so insane they bankrupt everyone involved. How about we fix that first.
The cost issue with this is one of risk, not the technology. The nuclear industry has effectively been regulated out of existence with an extensive and ever-changing set of regulations that make the risk/reward calculation of building a nuclear plant unattractive. Everybody gets involved in a nuclear power plant's construction, from local governments all the way up and every one of those governmental layers can and will change the rules on you during the project. Changes cost money, LOTS of money, so chan
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Fixed.
On the moon we don't have the costs associated with environmental impact studies, local politicians, local people, reduced physical security, reduced potential environmental hazards (no tsunamis, etc.)
The costs related to nuclear plants on Earth are almost all tied to keeping people and the environment safe in the event of an event. Those concerns, and thus related costs, are almost non-existant on the moon.
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This is an apples to oranges comparison. Scale matters in engineering. A twenty story building isn't 5x cheaper than a hundred story one; it's probably more like 50x cheaper. A one story building is going to cost you 200x less than a twenty story one.
The reactors NASA is talking about will produce only about 10 kilowatts. That's 100,000x smaller than a typical commercial reactor. Because it's going on a spacecraft, it will be small enough to be assembled, fueled, and tested on a factory floor then put
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As for fixing the problem here on Earth, some actually *do* think reducing the scale of a nuclear reactor to something that can be manufactured on a factory floor is the answer. Again, that's a sound idea but the gap between conceptual soundness and reality is what makes engineering hard.
Those people are forgetting about economies of scale. There's per-unit costs to both construction and especially decommissioning which will be magnified by using more reactors.
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Economies scale with *units produced/processed* as well as *size of each unit*.
Being able to assemble the reactor more or less completely in a factory allows that factory to operate at economies of scale on-site construction can't achieve. For example if part of a reactor is found faulty in construction tests, it can be replaced from on-site parts inventory. At the other end of the life cycle, being able to put the reactor on a flatbed truck and transport it to a decommissioning facility allows that faci
We seen this TV show before... (Score:3)
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Favorite line "We're sitting on the biggest bomb ever made". Not a bad description of the show.
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All it would take is one nuclear meltdown to send the moon out of Earth's orbit into the galaxy at large
Unless the plant is on the dark side.
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Whoooooooshshshsh... [wikipedia.org]
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*facepalm*
Wow, you are fucking idiot. We could detonate every single nuke and bomb that we have on the moon and all that would happen is we'd create a few small craters. It certainly would not cause the moon to budge in the slightest. You have absolutely no concept of the scales involved here, junior.
*facepalm*
Wow, you are fucking idiot. You completely missed the obvious sarcasm. You have absolutely no concept of the humor involved here, III.
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*facepalm*
Wow, you are fucking idiot. We could detonate every single nuke and bomb that we have on the moon and all that would happen is we'd create a few small craters. It certainly would not cause the moon to budge in the slightest. You have absolutely no concept of the scales involved here, junior.
If only you had been around in 1975 to point this out to Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, we wouldn't have to keep making jokes about it for the last 45 years.
You could also point out that in the real world, a planetoid on a random uncontrolled trajectory out of our solar system would have zero chance of encountering a fresh alien lifeform every week.
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*facepalm*
...We could detonate every single nuke and bomb that we have on the moon and all that would happen is we'd create a few small craters. It certainly would not cause the moon to budge in the slightest. You have absolutely no concept of the scales involved here, junior.
I would not be so sure. What will happen if we detonate several nuclear charges say at the Yellowstone Park? Probably nothing, or perhaps the end of the word.
There numerous good theories, but no one was even 100 km below the surface. We do not know for sure how stable these things are.
What happened to Nasa's kilopower project? (Score:4, Interesting)
We talked about it on slashdot not long ago. The kilopower project seemed to work well. 10 kW in 1500 Kg for a few tens of millions.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Here's a summary:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]
https://www.nasa.gov/directora... [nasa.gov]
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Isn't 10kW is a pretty low end for anything meaningful in terms of building a meaningful Moon/Mars base? Once you start thinking about things like getting into the soil, expanding beyond a first few humans, you start needing things like power tools. Drills, digging implements, larger habitat etc. Those are not going to be powered by 10kW to any meaningful extent. And since there's no abundance of oxygen, we can't burn things for power either.
I'm guessing this is more for initial outpost since weight limitat
Re: What happened to Nasa's kilopower project? (Score:2)
Lava tubes on Mars will allow you a space the size of Great Britain. That's capacity for 10-20 million people with absolute self-sufficiency.
No power tools are needed for that.
And then you simply move onto another lava tube as needed.
You could probably host a few hundred million on Mars without ever having to mine or quarry anything.
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That's extremely optimistic to the point of absurdity.
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you can have more than 1, i promise
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That makes very little sense, as you get increased maintenance and increased risks while keeping poor efficiency of each individual unit. In case of power generation, economy of scale is the king.
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That was my point of comparison as well. Something else to consider is that while heating is not going to be a significant concern on the Moon, Mars actually has an atmosphere. So power requirements there will be massive to simply maintain habitat thermals at levels acceptable to human life.
Thermal challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
The two challenges are:
1. What do you with the waste heat? Carnot's theorem [wikipedia.org] means that the waste heat will be similar to the energy output. In space, you have no lakes or air to release the heat into. The vacuum of space creates has insulating effects. This makes it challenging to get rid of waste heat.
2. Can fission be controlled with a small amount of difficult to replace fuel? As tempting as it is to build a 4 GW nuclear reactor, in practice, for space applications, something small will be desired. This will reduce the amount of shielding and weight.
One solution is the RTG [wikipedia.org]. However, the article is talking about a much larger device.
It would be tempting to point a particle accelerator (or possibly a laser) at a fissionable target to see if a regulated amount of power output could be achieved. If the fission reaction was just a little less than self-sustaining, hitting a fissionable target with neutrons would cause a consistent amplified energy output. A laser would be much smaller and more power efficient than a particle accelerator. I just don't think the nuclear physics works that way (at least not for a conventional nuclear reactor.) Laser light tends to excite the electrons in the outer shell. For fission, the nucleus needs to split.
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One solution is the RTG [wikipedia.org]. However, the article is talking about a much larger device.
For space flight, until we get a space elevator it should be the only option. Moving a nuclear reactor to the moon is dangerous and building one there isn't much easier. An array of RTGs even if they would have to be delivered over multiple flights would probably be much better.
It would be tempting to point a particle accelerator (or possibly a laser) at a fissionable target to see if a regulated amount of power output could be achieved. If the fission reaction was just a little less than self-sustaining, hitting a fissionable target with neutrons would cause a consistent amplified energy output. A laser would be much smaller and more power efficient than a particle accelerator. I just don't think the nuclear physics works that way (at least not for a conventional nuclear reactor.) Laser light tends to excite the electrons in the outer shell. For fission, the nucleus needs to split.
Those are called Accelerator Driven Reactors [wikipedia.org]. They work. Would be lovely if we could get the permits to test them at scale. Its a reactor with an off switch, which is a great feature in a nuclear reactor. However, it isn't easi
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Moving a nuclear reactor to the moon is dangerous and building one there isn't much easier. An array of RTGs even if they would have to be delivered over multiple flights would probably be much better.
Sorry, but you (and others here) have it completely backwards! RTGs use highly radioactive isotopes, and large amounts for the power required.
A reactor in contrast, is fuelled with enriched uranium, which is barely radioactive at all. Until you start it up that is - but that only happens after it is installed on the moon, or wherever.
A nuclear powered rocket would be a radiation hazard if exploding during launch, but not a clean reactor launched on chemical rockets.
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Those are called Accelerator Driven Reactors. They work. Would be lovely if we could get the permits to test them at scale. Its a reactor with an off switch, which is a great feature in a nuclear reactor.
Yes, they do work but they are also impractical.
If you look at any proposed designs they will still have control rods for a SCRAM condition. Why is that? Because in case of the proton flux getting too high then the reactor becomes critical and therefore the reaction becomes self sustaining. To prevent this the reactor must have a means to remove those neutrons, and that means control rods.
If the control rods have to be there anyway then there's no advantage to the proton beam as an "off switch". Perhaps
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In the daytime, circulate coolant in pipes deep underground where the lunar temperatures are really cold .. easier if inside a deep crater which is super freezing anyway.
Re:Thermal challenge (Score:4, Informative)
The temperature just two meters underground is a constant -40 .. if you build a large network of pipes underground that should work .. even in places where there's no ice. The heat capacity of the soil determines how large that network has to be .. hopefully not too great. Also, you can situate the whole thing in in a crater shadow.
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Given that both the US and Russia have operated nuclear reactors in space, #1 is no big problem. #2, also-- you can make a fuel assembly last a loooong time. Even the primitive BES-5 based on mid-60's technology produced 3kW of electricity constantly for over 6 months in space-- this is a heck of a lot of power--- and lifetime was mostly limited by the lifetime of the thermocouples rather than the fuel assembly.
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Given that both the US and Russia have operated nuclear reactors in space
Both? The USA tested one, but the USSR actually operated dozens of nuclear-powered radar imaging satellites. (They orbited so low that solar panels would have had too much drag.)
Re: Thermal challenge (Score:2)
Waste heat on Mars is interesting.
Some of it can be piped underground through each of the expected 20,000 square miles of inhabitable lava tubes, stabilizing the climate.
The rest is superheated water. The question is, can you radiate that heat away sufficiently quickly?
Could you use a lava tube for cooling?
You need to massively and rapidly expand the volume, which isn't hard as it'll go from liquid in a small pipe to gas in a large cavern easily enough. But you've then got to shift that heat away.
Or you cou
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Any time you are reduced to saying "or you could build a giant x" you've just ruled it out for an early mission. Maybe much, much later, when there's much, much more equipment up there.
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The two challenges are:
1. What do you with the waste heat?
The same thing we do with waste heat on the ISS, dump it into space using thermal radiators.
Yea, it's a bit cumbersome and if you have a lot of heat to get rid of it can be quite large from a surface area perspective, but it's not a difficult technical problem to solve. Getting the equipment onto the moon might be a difficult task, given you basically have to burn fuel to get it out of earth's gravity well and into the moon's then burn fuel to stop it before it impacts the surface of the moon... But that'
Where is blindseer!?!? (Score:2)
blind, bro, this is your moment.
THIS is the time when nuclear makes more sense than any other time in history.
YES to nuclear on the moon - YES to nuclear on Mars!
FINALLY an application that is perfectly suited. They can probably even just pick a good spot to bury all the waste without any NIMBY folk getting in the way.
Or... (Score:2)
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Thorium Reactors.. Wind Turbines? (Score:2)
I don't see the point of uranium reactors or solar panels (unless perhaps gallium arsenic solar cells). The reason for both is that the lifespan is not very useful. Both small uranium reactors and conventional solar panels will need replenishment too soon. If a small uranium reactor needs need fuel every 10 years and shipment can come--at best--only once every 5 years then that leaves a colony too dependent on Earth. Similarly, you are not going to build solar cells on Mars in any early stage settlement
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.[..]conventional solar panels will need replenishment too soon.
30-50 years isn't a long enough lifetime for you? And that's on Earth, there's less insolation on Mars and thus they should last even longer.
They will not only wear down in 15 to 20 years
Give them a removable ablative glass layer which can be replaced, at a fraction of the cost (least importantly economic cost of production, most importantly cost of transportation) of a full panel.
but will also be useless during the months long Martian dust storms.
This is the real problem with solar on Mars. As such it's probably smarter to put the panels in orbit, and beam the power down to a rectenna field. It will be smarter to do
NASA's Role (Score:2)
I hope NASA will drop it's work on the SLS and re-prioritize science. Right now, NASA's work could be more fruitfully if focused on technologies and infrastructure essential to man's moving off-world. This includes the Moon, Mars, and deep space.
Who cares anymore about the effects of weightlessness on the human body? It's very clear that we need spin gravity. It's very simple and the idea of spending years in micro-gravity is absurd to begin with. How about work on inflatable or other light weight spac
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Or a Little Closer to Home (Score:2)
Fukushima 2 (Score:2)
These heavenly bodies do not have a dense atmosphere, so they are being bombarded by the small asteroids constantly.
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One would hope they would be using modern reactor designs, which are exceedingly safe compared to the much older designs like Fukushima.
And how can you build one on the Moon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Without power you have to assemble most of the reactor on Earth and launch it to the moon, including uranium, What happens if one of the ships carrying up uranium explodes during launch. Not a pleasant possibility.
So instead have the manufacturing on the moon to make the nuclear power plant. But that needs power, so you must have a sourcce of powere, so why would you need to build a nuclear plant?
Blowups happen (Score:2)
So, can we know who in the DEA is a fan of the golden age of sci-fi?
Or am I really old for having thought immediately of Heinlein's "Blowups Happen" [wikipedia.org]?
I totally get Mars, but the Moon? (Score:2)
The Moon has sufficient insolation for viable photovoltaic plant - perhaps placed in the transition ring, to protect the solar cells from the highest temperatures.
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The moon is a harsh mistress.
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Speak for yourself. I'm sure there are plenty of weebs who want their celestial body waifu.
Re: Who wants to live in harsh space environments? (Score:3)
What's harsh about Mars?
Lava tubes are gigantic there, you could build a colony the size of Great Britain with an infinitely better climate in one.
How's that harsh?
You'd even completely escape daytime television.
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You couldn't see the striking Martian sky, though. I'd rather live in a canyon wall habitat.
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We already have nuclear power plants on the dark side of the moon. The greatest president knows this because he saw a documentary about it on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/czKOT6gjc7g [youtu.be]
#Qanon #WeAreTheStorm
Yeah, but those are fusion reactors built with patented alien technology, and the royalties we pay to use that tech are killing the interplanetary travel and lunar mining industries, so we need some good home grown tech up there.
#WeAreIdiotConspiracyTheoristsWhoJumpFromTopicToTopic.BecauseWeHaveNoEvidenceOfAnythingAndAreOffOurMeds
Re: The late 1990s seems like a utopia compared to (Score:2)
It was an utopia. I was there.
Yes, all of Murica, and its entire influence on this planet, social aswell as physical pollution, went full retard.
Luckily, it is curreny collapsing at light speed. It's hilarious. We're all eating chips (fuck popcorn) and having our 3D glasses on over here. Come on over, let's watch the show together!
huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
do you imagine that the moon is some pristine safe wilderness of pure water and beautiful trees and magical immortal bunny rabbits? The moon has no atmosphere - every square inch of the place is blasted by direct solar radiation and cosmic radiation. It's been crashed into repeatedly by bits and pieces of who-knows-what from who-knows-where over many millions of years, and it has no atmosphere or ecosystem to degrade any of the debris from any of that. Every time something crashes into the surface and creates new pulverized rocky debris, the stuff has very sharp edges at the microscopic level which NEVER get smoothed by winds and waters so moon "dirt" is extremely gritty and quickly destroys thinks like bearings, gaskets, and o-rings.
The moon is a sufficiently toxic place already, so humans are not going to do anything, even with nuclear power, to ruin its environment. We have to be careful with nuclear and chemical stuff there to keep from exposing our astronauts to additional radiation, or having them enter a base/spacecraft with radioactive particles or toxic chemicals on their suits, but that's about it - there's no need to worry about the moon itself - it would already be considered a hazmat zone.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically zero. If we can affect it that much accidentally, we can also affect it intentionally to maintain it.