Russia and China plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon
Russia and China plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon
intlmonitor.com
Russia and China plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon - International Monitor
51 comments
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New Space Race while Americans just want healthcare.
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I would settle for no fascism/the supremecist court to pull its head out of billionaires’ assholes
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Look on the brightside: you can either have no healthcare and no space race or no healthcare and a space race.
Sure you are going to spend your last years dying of a preventable diabetes complication, but at least you get to see cool stuff going on. Instead of dying the same way anyhow and not seeing cool stuff.
If you other people could vote I would really appreciate it.
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Why not both?
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I'm all for this. This is the beginning of how all wars should be fought: On the moon. With giant robots.
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How would you cool a nuclear power plant on the moon, no water?
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Good question. Not all reactors by design need water as coolant. Some use molten salt, others are gas cooled.
These alternate cooling materials would likely still need to be imported though, so it doesn't particularly make it any easier.
My main question is the effect of the lower gravity on cooling the reactor (thermal hydraulic effects). All of our current reactors are designed for 1 g use, not 0.1654 g that's on the moon. Heat mixture rates in fluids would be different, which is important when you're calculating effective heat dissipation.
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Maybe only turn it on at night when the surface gets cold and conduct it into the ground or land it in a permanent shadow? The article said they planned to do it fully automated so I am guessing digging of any form is out.
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You cool it with liquid thermal transfer and radiators. Here's what a kilopower plant looks like, the big disk is a radiator.
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With Blackjack! And Hookers!
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Actually, forget the nuclear reactor and Blackjack!
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Ehhh, screw the whole thing
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Don't forget the blow!
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A bit of a tangent, but I’m fascinated by the idea of a few “bases” permanently orbiting between Earth and Mars as a way to make that trip in comfort, to afford more shielding, larger quarters, more amenities. You just need to get it up to speed once, then future trips are just small shuttles to dock and drop off. I wonder if we’ll ever get to that point
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Them: We're gonna put a nuke plant on the moon
Sane people: How are you going to get power back to Earth?
or: why?
Them: Did you know we're gonna put a nuke plant on the moon?-
The idea is not to get the power back to earth, but to have power on the moon. Without power, you'll never have humans living there.
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Lasers. It will be powering their orbital laser platform.
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I really like that TV show: For All Mankind.
It's non-fiction 😉
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lmao
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I'm glad somebody is doing something useful while the dying American empire flounders around doing genocides.
51 comments
Strange that the article would say that when, in point of fact, the US is also working plans for lunar nuclear power. It's really the only sensible way to power a moon base with current technology, so anyone who is considering one is working designs for a nuclear power plant.
How do you cool a nuclear reactor on the moon?
The ground would probably work fine as a heat sink.
It's already pretty cold
Go Thorium MSR and bury it underground and you don't really have to worry about it. Might need some modification for moon gravity but otherwise seems like the best bet.
https://www.thmsr.com/overview/
That was my first thought, but then my second thought was even more terrifying - how do you protect your nuclear power facility from celestial impacts? The moon must get pelted with thousands of little bits of space debris every day considering it has no atmosphere. All it would take is a basketball-sized meteorite to slam into the reactor chamber and possibly cause a meltdown.
That's a challenge that people are working on for sure. Likely some kind of radiant cooling, but it's a lot of heat.
Heat also dissipates via radiation, not just conduction. I would imagine that nuclear power on the moon won’t involve hauling a lot of liquid coolant/heat exchanger/energy transfer because liquids are wicked heavy, hauling that up to orbit and then landing it is gonna take a lot of energy. They do acknowledge that cooling is an issue they’re working on.
Maybe some kind of RTG? I couldn’t find an article that said what the NASA contractors chose to build.
Is solar power combined with battery storage not an option?
Not really. Current battery technology is to put it lightly not the type of thing you want to rely on for long term life support. Lithium ion the current go to for rechargeable batteries physically degrades as you charge it. One of the main things you can do to reduce this is don't fully charge the battery. For example if the battery degradation from 0% to 100% is a cycle then 50% to 80% is only 21% of a cycle. That'll extend the lifetime of the battery (not the capacity) by about 5 times! That's pretty significant but you lose out on 20% of the batteries capacity permanently, even as the capacity decreases from degradation.
You've probably seen the hype about Sodium batteries which are currently 50% less energy dense which just immediately means NOPE for use in space.
Lithium ion batteries are extremely difficult to actually fully discharge (controller won't let you)
Lithium ion batteries should never be fully charged it causes them excessive damage so the controller prevents this from happening
Much less power for the weight, and weight is the big deal when you're sending things from earth.