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Power United Kingdom Government Moon

UK Backs Rolls-Royce Project To Build a Nuclear Reactor On the Moon (cnbc.com) 72

The UK Space Agency said Friday it would back research by Rolls-Royce looking at the use of nuclear power on the moon. CNBC reports: In a statement, the government agency said researchers from Rolls-Royce had been working on a Micro-Reactor program "to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon." The UKSA will now provide [around $3.52 million] of funding for the project, which it said would "deliver an initial demonstration of a UK lunar modular nuclear reactor."

Rolls-Royce is set to work with a range of organizations on the project, including the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and Nuclear AMRC, and the University of Oxford. "Developing space nuclear power offers a unique chance to support innovative technologies and grow our nuclear, science and space engineering skills base," Paul Bate, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said. Bate added that Rolls-Royce's research "could lay the groundwork for powering continuous human presence on the Moon, while enhancing the wider UK space sector, creating jobs and generating further investment." According to the UKSA, Rolls-Royce [...] is aiming "to have a reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029."

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UK Backs Rolls-Royce Project To Build a Nuclear Reactor On the Moon

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  • Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by yo303 ( 558777 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @02:07AM (#63379875)

    Do you want Space: 1999? Because that's how you get Space: 1999.

  • F*ck the moon (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wet-socks ( 635030 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @03:16AM (#63379957)

    How about building some nuclear plant back down here where we need it?

    • These people are definitely gonna.

    • How about building some nuclear plant back down here where we need it?

      After the Hinkley debacle, it may be a while before UK taxpayers are ready to pay for another nuke.

      • After the Hinkley debacle, it may be a while before UK taxpayers are ready to pay for another nuke.

        Except that taxpayers are not bearing the cost for Hinkley Point C. EDF / CGN are, through a negotiated fixed price on the MWh for the first 35 years of operation (£92/MWh if my memory serves well, feel free to double check).

        If you want actual numbers, not made up from thin airs:
        - 10,300 jobs
        - £1.67 billion spent with companies in the region
        - £119 million of community investments

        You can download the socio-economic impact report here [edfenergy.com]. It's 20 pages long, but I am sure you can manage.

        • - 10,300 jobs
          - £1.67 billion spent with companies in the region
          - £119 million of community investments

          I love your logic: "Hinkley had decades of delays and massive cost overruns, but that's a GOOD THING because that money went into other people's pockets."

          • Nice example of straw man fallacy [wikipedia.org].

            I will reiterate my argument:
            - taxpayers don't bear the cost for Hinkley Point C increased costs (refuting your argument, please see the sources in the previous post)
            - the socio-economic impact of Hinkley Point C (unrelated to the increased costs) on actual people (or taxpayers if you prefer) is positive: 10300 jobs, £1.67 billion spent with companies in the region, £119 million of community investments

            I will add one more advantage for Hinkley Point C, again unr

    • Any research of nuke energy, regardless for moon, saturn or middle of nowhere, possibly has some beneficial research for earthly nuke energy as well.

      So I will consider it as a net positive for nuke energy here.

    • Ze Germanz would never allow it, since Chernobyl and Fukushima struck deep in the hearts and minds of all Germanz.

      So better back to burning coal like it is the 60s! Even on the moon!!

  • How are they going to manage what Andy Weir pointed out in Artemis, that in a lunar atmosphere, to generate enough power to support human life, dumping all the waste heat is incredible challenging? On Earth we handle this by building nuclear power stations close to large amounts of water.
    • You could use a thermal loop in the ground.
      • It's either that or radiation into space, which would take a vast amount of surface area, so a ground loop is a good bet. But that isn't going to be small, either...

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Clearly, it will be into a loop in a big greenhouse to grow tomatoes to send back to the UK where they are hard to get.
      • by macwhiz ( 134202 )
        Problem is, being Rolls-Royce, the cooling fluid will be mineral oil, and it will leak all the time...
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Problem with that idea is that you need to dig a fairly deep hole, or long trench. Lunar dust hasn't been eroded by wind and wave, so it has very sharp edges that quickly destroy digging equipment.

        I haven't done any calculations, but I bet that heat dissipates more slowly in lunar regolith and bedrock because of lower moisture content. Regoith and rock are not particularly good conductors of heat.

    • Well for starters there is no lunar atmosphere. Secondly the subsurface temps are very cold. Only the surface in direct sunlight is hot(enough to make glass beads btw). The lunar night is 327hrs long and some spots of the moon never see sunlight. Should have no problem cooling down a reactor in the lunar regolith.
  • Britain is a house of cards in the process of collapsing, but is still shooting for the moon.
    This won't end well.
    I have sown the corn that will grow a cob from which i shall make my popcorn.

  • ...by the govt that can't organise a press conference or an economic policy, see the new Ealing Comedy, "Carry On Mooning!"
  • Lots of people are not there.

    Not Nimbys, bananas nor cavemen.

    BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything

    CAVEmen: Citizens Against Virtually Everything

  • I assume the 'nuclear power' will be in the form of a small modular reactor (SMR), which Rolls has been trying to make for terrestrial deployment as well.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]

    Surely it is too heavy to launch in one piece, which means multiple very expensive shipments to the moon and some manual assembly there. In the near term using solar arrays and batteries on bases at the lunar poles seems a lot more doable for way less money.

    • I assume the reactor to be more like NASA's Kilopower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The NASA prototype weighs 134 kg, with 28kg being the highly enriched uranium core. Perhaps we assume the UK doesn't want to use HEU fuel. Further assume the power plant needs some auxiliary systems to produce power on the moon, as well as survive the trip. Both will add mass. So, just how much mass can we get to the moon? We could look to the Apollo lunar module for guidance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The m

    • In the near term using solar arrays and batteries on bases at the lunar poles seems a lot more doable for way less money.

      That will be fine if it's only intended for short-term use, or by a very small number of people. Sooner or later, there's going to be a long-term facility up there, away from the poles. Maybe not a true colony, with families, but at least a research station with a crew there all through the lunar cycle, and they're going to need a power source that doesn't depend on having the Sun ab
      • Hey, some day there will be all kinds of things on the moon. Small modular nuke plants as well perhaps. Meanwhile you can get a whole bunch of existing solar panels and batteries to the moon relatively easily now. The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth so the poles are always illuminated by the sun.

        "Americans will return to the Moon in 2024. Following this 2024 landing, we will develop a sustained, strategic presence at the lunar South Pole called the Artemis Base Camp."

        https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]

        • There's a good reason to build a station on the backside of the Moon: you can put an array of dishes there for radio astronomy outside the atmosphere and well shielded from any electromagnetic interference from the Earth. Unless you really want to run power cables all the way to the pole, you're going to be wanting reactors.
          • "backside of the Moon" can be just over the horizon at the poles. On the Moon that isn't very far.

            • If you're using the Moon as shielding to keep electromagnetic radiation from the Earth away from your equipment, just over the horizon isn't enough to hack it. It tends to curve around obstacles to some extent, and you have to take that into account in your planning. And, if you're trying to block out interference, you might as well get it down near the Moon's equator, as long as other factors don't put too much of a limit on what's possible. That doesn't mean that I think that you have to put your stati
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  • by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Monday March 20, 2023 @12:31AM (#63384087)
    From what I recall, the ISS has a nuclear reactor produced by Norway because no one trusted anyone to provide the nuclear... anything to the ISS. Norway was the only nuclear capable country which could be agreed upon to build a nuclear reactor for the ISS. I don't know for certain, but if I understand correctly, Norway is (or was) the only nuclear capable country that didn't actively invest in producing nuclear bombs.

    Who would bring this nuclear reactor to the moon for the UK?

    Was England planning on starting their own space program?

    I certainly can't imagine that anyone other than maybe the Russians (for enough money and eventually good faith) would be willing to launch a nuclear reactor to the moon for England.

A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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