"This agreement enables closer collaboration between NASA and the Department of Energy to deliver the capabilities necessary to usher in the Golden Age of space exploration and discovery."
The US really wants a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. 'Achieving this future requires harnessing nuclear power,' NASA chief says
byu/Astrox_YT inAstroxia_SRT
27 Comments
~~Artemis is down to three missions total, with its ship being retired after Artemis III.~~ One moon landing over the last decade+ of the project. And now we’re supposed to get a nuclear reactor on the moon in 4 years, with a fraction of the budget that it took to get a man on the moon in 10? what are they thinking.
If they want a golden age of space exploration, they need to fund NASA seriously. Otherwise any aggressive plan like this is all talk.
Edit: Fixed out of date information in my comment. Artemis III is not the end of the program, that was part of a budget proposal that was rejected by Congress. I still maintain that the pace we are going means 2030 is an absurd deadline for nuclear reactor on the moon.
How are they going to do that without water?
This is absolutely not happening.
What will happen is billions of tax dollars laundered in straight up bribes and kickbacks to the regime’s buddies. The US Gov. is so incredibly rife with corruption right now that they’re more likely to get Homer Simpson’s model nuclear plant strapped to a bottle rocket than a reactor on the moon.
Can we plz get nuclear reactors on EARTH????
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if these clowns say they’ll build a coal plant there…
The sooner the stigma around anything nuclear dissolves, the better. So many possibilities can be unlocked.
Nawww best the US can do is more gold for their orange Master.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180007389/downloads/20180007389.pdf
One proposed option has already been built and demonstrated.
Good luck nasa, I’m more certain the current administration will try to drill the moon for oil before getting nuclear power there
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So much money for boiling water in space.
Have fun figuring out the cooling issue with a fraction of a percent of the DoD’s budget.
Would be nice if we could get nuclear reactors on EARTH first, for PEOPLE.
Hopefully that rocket with nuclear material doesnt blow up over Florida..
Watching for all mankind show makes me upset that our reality could have been vastly sped up if we committed more to exploration.
“Achieving this future requires harnessing nuclear power,’ NASA chief says”
I sure hope America is successful in harnessing nuclear power. And putting first man on the moon? Amazing!
Nuclear reactors for space are nothing new. Nuclear reactors were first demonstrated in space [in the 1960s ny the US’s SNAP program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A). The US didn’t do much with nuc)ear power in space after that (untio the oast 10-15 years), but the Soviets and Russians operated a number of satellites powered by nuclear reactors. (The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators powering the Voyagers and Mars rovers are NOT nuclear reactors.)
No, you don’t need a body of water to cool a reactor in space (or, necessarily, on Earth either). Heat pipes filled with liquid metal (such as sodium or NaK) transport heat from the reactor core to the power generator. The waste heat from the generator can then be piped to radiators by a secondary cooling loop, potentially using solid metal and/or H2O instead of liquid metal. The heat is ultimately radiated into space. All the fluids are contained in closed loops within the reactor system.
In the 2010s, NASA’s [Kilopower](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/tech-demo-missions-program/kilopower-hmqzw/) developed a working prototype of a modern reactor, KRUSTY. KRUSTY/Kilopower used liquid sodium to transfer heat from the reactor core to the Stirling cycle generator. Titanium heat pipes, containing H2O (which evaporates and condenses) as the working fluid transfered waste heat from the cooler end of the Stirling engine to the radiators. The cooling was passive, with no pumps required to circulate the fluids.
The Kilopower project was concluded, and NASA moved on to the current [Fission Surface Power](https://www.nasa.gov/exploration-systems-development-mission-directorate/fission-surface-power/) project, working with contractors to develop more powerful reactors. The FSP requirement was 40 kW of elecrircal power, recently increased to 100 kW. NASA has been working with three companies/teams (Lockheed Martin/BWXT; Westinghouse; and Intuitive Machines/X-Energy) doing initial development and vying for the main contract.
For example, [Westinghouse’s proposal](https://www.ans.org/news/2025-01-15/article-6686/westinghouses-lunar-microreactor-concept-gets-a-contract-for-continued-rd/) is a scaled down version of their [eVinci Microreactor](https://westinghousenuclear.com/data-sheet-library/evinci-space-microreactor-enabling-sustained-human-presence-beyond-earth/), which uses (similar to Kilopower) passively cooled sodium heat pipes to extract the heat from the core. The heat powers a brayton cycle generator, and additional heat pipes (solid metal, I think) would transfer heat to radiators.
They fired 22% of NASA, mostly scientists and engineers. I hope administrators can get a rocket to land on the moon without landers or spacesuits.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1qcb27u/stub/nzh2agt “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1qcb27u/stub/nzh3p6h “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[LC-39A](/r/Space/comments/1qcb27u/stub/nzh8rkb “Last usage”)|Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy (SpaceX F9/Heavy)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1qcb27u/stub/nzh4bxi “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
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Just put it on the next Sea Dragon launch
I mean, we actually need to get to the moon by 2030 in order to put a nuclear reactor on its surface by 2030. This is just huff and puff to keep the orange narcissist happy.
I’d really like for NASA to deliver on anything. Any one project on time and on budget. They have shown themselves to be nothing but bureaucrats that promise the moon and deliver nothing.
It is becoming increasingly likely that China ends up returning humans to the Moon before the US does (they are aiming for 2030) And honestly I kinda hope they do. Maybe it’ll cause a stir like Sputnik or Gagarin, a national embarrassment that makes you Americans realise letting the orange guy gut NASA of all it’s funding and lay off ***20 PERCENT*** of your scientists and engineers maybe isn’t the best idea.
You could also try putting a cute little solar panel on the moon. Why don’t we start with that? ☺️
Not happening with America the way it is. We are spending the money on gestapo instead of space exploration.
I’m not sure if a Nuclear Moon is what we need..
Can someone please ELI5 what is the point of putting a nuclear reactor on the moon?