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NASA Developing Nuclear Reactor For Moon and Mars
Al writes "NASA recently finished testing a miniature nuclear reactor that would provide power for an astronaut base on the Moon or Mars. The reactor combines a small fission system with a Stirling engine to make a 'safe, reliable, and efficient' way to produce electricity. The system being tested at NASA's Glenn Research Center can produce 2.3 kilowatts and could be ready for launch by 2020, NASA officials say. The reactor ought to provide much more power than solar panels but could prove controversial with the public concerned about launching a nuclear power source and placing it on the Moon or another planet."
"We are not building a system that needs hundreds of gigawatts of power like those that produce electricity for our cities," says Don Palac, the project manager at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The system needs to be cheap, safe, and robust and "our recent tests demonstrated that we can successfully build that," says Palac.
I read this as, "the system needs to come in at no more than half the cost of a gigawatt power plant". I'm all for space travel, but I can't help but flinch when I hear somebody at NASA say "cheap".
It shouldn't be more controversial than the reactors that powered Voyager and other deep space probes. There have been protests over some of the more potentially dangerous reactors that might have caused contamination over a wide area if they blew up; but IIRC they launched anyway.
A reactor that small shouldn't require a huge ammount of fissile material. I bet it could blow up in the atmosphere and produce less radiation than we get from a day of coal fired power in the Eastern US. Coal is full of trace radioactive elements, and it adds up when you burn as much as we do.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think Solar panels would be more problematic. Your right in that "the sun doesn't run out", but there's a lot more to consider. IAMAS (I'm not a Scientist) but wouldn't Solar Panels require more work to keep functional? They've always struct me as rather fragile compared to a nuclear power planet. Plus after the rovers and the problems with keeping their solar panels cleared of dust and such, I don't think you'd get 100 years out of a solar panel like you would with Nuclear.
Considering how hostile the moon's atmosphere (or lack there of) is, do you really think Uranium is going to screw up the environment on the MOON???
The Moon's "Day" is 28 days long. Unless you are on the poles, you have to have enough battery power for around 14 days of darkness. That said, a giant rotating mirror at one of the poles could provide a lot of power, and you could use a Stirling engine to convert the heat to electricity.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Great idea! Its not like there's a dark side of the moon or dust storms that blanket half of mars for weeks at a time or anything. And we all know how dangerous nuclear is. Remember that time the Soviets started messing with a poorly constructed one and ignored every safety protocol and it blew up? Sounds like the hallmark of unstability. And the waste, yeesh. It's not like newer reactors can reuse the spent material you know. Solar is clearly the superior choice. Yay solar!
And if a meteor *does* strike the reactor, we are going to contaminate the Moon with radioactivity? More than being exposed to an unshielded fusion reactor for 4.5 billion years?
Brett
When I first saw this, I thought it was for powering VASIMR plasma engines.
Recently, AW&ST had an article suggesting that transit times between Mars and Earth 30 days could be possible using a continuously running VASIMR engine (it has an insanely high specific impulse). BUT, it would require a nuclear power source because the amount of solar panels (especially outside of earth's orbit) woudl be impractical.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
1. Ignorance.
2. The Internet
There is a whole lot of people who can now be offended at things they would never have heard of before or hand reason to be offended of. Never under estimate the ability of humans to make ignorance even more prevalent. What many thought would free us from ignorance only seemed to exaggerate it more.
I guess there is another option, it never ceases to amaze me how many people can find offense in anything. I think they have a need to be noticed or to find a way to blame others for any condition they are in.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not really -- got these things called "Space Suits," I think -- you could place the reactor away from the colony, theoretically. We'd still have to test these "Space Suits" to see if they work, possibly land some men on the moon beforehand to see if they operate correctly, of course.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
If a sizable meteor strikes your moon colony, you're going to be worried about the chance that it hits the reactor? Not the mess hall or the kindergarten? Any accident on the moon that gives people time to don space suits is a best-case accident. What is it about "nuclear" that makes people's brains turn off?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I want one for my electric car. I would love to be able to drive anywhere in North/South America without refueling.
It could power my house as well when I am home. I have an efficient home and my electric bills are never over $30/month.
How much will it cost? Could it use radioactive waste/by-products from nuclear reactors as the small amount of fuel?
The real danger to the west is the overwhelming number of complete fucking idiots it breeds that demand that all technological progress is halted "for teh children!1".
They're a danger to the rest of the world too.
Ok, great, they put the heat in one side of the Sterling Cycle Engine, and it moves to the other side and we get motion, but what do they do with the heat? There's no air/water to bump against a cooling fin to get the activity of the molecules. Does the "icy vacuum of space" actually cool things very well?
If it did, why wouldn't a sterling cycle engine with one side in the shade and one side in the sun work pretty darn well anyhow?
I suspect that it DOESN'T, in which case they'll need to bore a big hole to put the heat in via fluid transferring to lunar dirt.
Wake me when I can buy me a Ford Nucleon. 5000 miles on a single fueling. Take that, Tesla Motors!
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
The 50's promise of a reactor in your basement to power those nifty gadgets are finally here!
I'm going to celebrate with some burgers in non-degradable styrofoam containers while driving my three ton car (with wings!) down a twenty lane highway.
Thank you Gernsback! *shudder*
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
Assume that a 100 MW reactor blew up and spread around the moon (and it would spread). It would contribute less radiation to the lunar surface each day than what the sun does each hour. So, what is the problem?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
BUT NO!! LET'S START FROM SCRATCH, BREAK THE BUDGET RE-DESIGNING THE WHEEL AND TAKE TWENTY FIVE YEARS TO GET THERE INSTEAD OF THE TEN IT TOOK US IN THE 60'S
We try to be a bit more careful with our astronauts these days, few applicants are test pilots any more, we like getting people back safely. There is no cold war or space race driving us to take risks to achieve goals. When we lose people and equipment, we now take sufficient time to understand what went wrong and how to fix it. And the budget hasn't been broken so much as drasticly slashed by people who have no concept of the benefit of space exploration.
Ignorance is Bliss -- And the Opposite is True -- Genius is Madness
Nuclear fuel != Weapon grade nuclear fuel. You cannont build a bomb with the stuff you put in a nuclear power plant. Why did the Russians have to fuck everything up for the entire world. Couldn't they have just build a radiation shield, written some rules. We would be going to pluto and back in a year with something like ORION launched from orbit by now except for the fact that saying 'nuclear' makes people crap their pants and hippies whip out the protest signs.
Well, in the poster's defense, if the sun literally "runs out" we have a slightly larger issue than our solar panels not working.
What is it about "nuclear" that makes people's brains turn off?
Hmm, that's a tough question, but I'm gonna go with the past 50 or so years of media hysterics.
I think Parent poster is correct. You see, when the sun dips behind the horizon it has not actually gone out. It is very much unlike the lightbulb in your refrigerator, which turns on when the door is open, and off when it is closed. The sun is actually on the entire time, it just happens to be on the other side of the planet from where you are. We call that night. At any given point in time there are places on the planet that are in daylight, and places that are in night.
Where the parent fails is in leaving ambiguous the location of the solar panels. If they reside on the planet then they will only periodically provide power. But that is an implementation detail, and to conclude that parent is wrong with 100% confidence means that you would have to clarify a lot of these details either through assumption or by getting more information out of the parent poster.
You may also be confused by the fact that the sun will die. But you must understand that this will not happen for many millions of years, which in terms of human population and energy needs has been already accepted as "forever" by international bodies and consortia concerned with sustainable practices relative to human societies on earth.
Somebody doesn't seem to have done the math here. 2.3 kW of power, assuming ~1100 W/m^2 insolation, a 30% conversion efficiency, gives something like an array of solar panels less than 9 ft by 9ft (2.7 m^2). Does the article discuss how much the reactor plus the engine might weigh? I have a hard time believing its lighter than a solar array (unless they intend to launch it cold and bury it on site to shield people from the radiation).
Note any lunar sites are likely to be in places where there is a mixture of sun/shade and where long term oxygen/water production is likely to be handled on-site (so they are likely to have gas storage and/or electrolysis capabilities) for energy storage during any dark periods.
Mars is a different problem where planetary rotation and reduced insolation (esp. during dust storms) may come into play. But given the increased abilities one can expect from semi-intelligent robots over the next 10-20 years we have no business sending fragile humans on risky missions to Mars anyway. The only humans who should be going to Mars are those who can afford to pay for the trip themselves and stupid enough to want to take the risks involved in doing so. At the risk of being flamed -- you might wish to keep in mind precisely *who* came up with the humans should visit Mars plan (ignoring the bright people who might have been involved who presumably have vested interests in human space exploration) [1].
1. And don't give me the "humans need a refuge site" song and dance. Give me a cost comparison per person study between a Mars colony and self-sustaining terrestrial sub-surface ocean/land colonies. Anything that represents a significant threat in the near future (millions of years) to sub-surface colonies on Earth probably represents a threat on the moon or Mars as well.