Developing Nuclear Power Plant Tech For the Moon and Mars

With his first accepted Slashdot submission, Zandamesh sends this excerpt from ZDNet: "On earth, nuclear reactors are under attack because of concerns over damage caused by natural disasters. In space, however, nuclear technology may get a new lease on life. Plans for the first nuclear power plant for the production of electricity to be used by manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets have been unveiled at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. 'The reactor itself may be about 1 ½ feet wide by 2 ½ feet high, about the size of a carry-on suitcase. There are no cooling towers. ... The team is scheduled to build a technology demonstration unit in 2012."

Comments

Protesters

[chill]

While possibly a good idea, be prepared for the protesters. Specifically the group that complains every time a rocket blasts off carrying fissile material. What if it explodes on launch?

Also, expect a few wingnuts who complain about ruining the pristine landscape of the moon.

Re:Protesters

[chill]

A more accurate link would have been this.

I'm not arguing for complete negligence, but rather that this is an engineering issue that can be solved.

Re:Protesters

[LWATCDR]

Very little. Uranium is actually natural. They will not "turn on" the reactor until it is far from earth. You can stand next to uranium all day long and it will not hurt you. The main problem is when it decays it produced Radon gas "again this is natural" which can cause lung cancer. So this as actually safer than an RTG and really very safe. The thing is that people will yell in fear first and then ignore research. BTW.
I do not work for NASA or any Aerospace firm and the launch pad is pretty near my home so it is sort of in my back yard so I have ZERO interest in down playing any danger.

Re:Protesters

[TheRaven64]

I'd prefer the moon without nuclear contamination

This makes about as much sense as standing next to the mouth of a volcano and complaining that your neighbour's barbecue is making you too hot.

Re:Protesters

[LWATCDR]

What? Do you not know the difference between safe and harmless?
Anyway just more fear mongering.
Enriched uranium is not significantly more radioactive than natural uranium as long is it is sub critical.
A launch vehicle exploding will not convert reactor fuel into powder. Have you ever seen what is left after a rocket fails? It is pretty big chunks.

Combine the facts that very little uranium dust will be formed with the fact that it will not be near people AKA a few miles away and you have pretty harmless and nothing to fear. Well fear any more than any rocket. That is why they don't let people stand next to them.

Re:Protesters

[DerekLyons]

While possibly a good idea, be prepared for the protesters. Specifically the group that complains every time a rocket blasts off carrying fissile material.

The number of such protesters has been steadily decreasing over time and is now essentially zero. Heck, Curiosity is within a few weeks of launching and nobody (of those who protest, file lawsuits, etc...) seems to have even noticed.

Re:Protesters

[chill]

Physics is the same in both those places as here on Earth. Yes, they would work.

Re:Protesters

[Teancum]

But won't a pile of enriched Uranium go "boom" in the night if too much of it is put together? (just kidding.... I know better about that too).

The problem is really ignorance of nuclear physics, coupled with a sanctification and consecration of THE HOLY WRIT that anything nuclear must be reserved for the exclusive province of just a few specialized priests (aka researchers) who have gone through a sacred refinement and ordination by the ONE TRUE LEADER (aka a series of national security clearance reviews) in order to be even allowed to gaze upon the sacred texts which permit you to even begin to comprehend all of that most terrible knowledge. Forget about experimentation, all of the knowledge we really need to know can be obtained through simulation with our trusty supercomputers.

I call that utter bullshit, where there is an irrational fear of anything nuclear. There are legitimate concerns about radioactive materials and it can become dangerous under certain conditions. The same can be said about water, dirt, molten steel, and a large number of other things in our environment. Far more people die of Dihydrogen Monoxide poisoning than die from excessive radiation, so should we ban that chemical from society too? I'd love to see an activist try.... seriously!

If you are worried about contamination from uranium dust, just don't live downwind from a coal-powered electric generating plant. That is by far and away a much more dangerous proposition in terms of radiation contamination alone (forget the "greenhouse gasses) than even being literally next door to a multi-gigawatt nuclear power plant.

BTW, getting back to the meat of the actual article rather than responding to obviously clueless people (not really trolls, they are just ignorant) one thing I like about this particular proposal is that it is a small scale nuclear power plant. I wish we has more plants like that here on the Earth, where literally every small town had their own municipal nuclear power plant generating perhaps a couple hundred kilowatts rather than having these major gigawatt plants. While there are economies of scale that I'll admit, the problem with big plants is the concentration of material where an accident is much harder to clean up. A much smaller plant like is suggested in this article could be cleaned up by just a small team or even entirely by robots and easily contained even if you had a Chernobyl or Fukushima situation, both of which represented lousy reactor designs in the first place. Current generation nuclear power plants simply can't have a melt-down due to raw physics being applied to the design.

Re:Protesters

[LWATCDR]

Nope because the again there will be very little if any dust. The average rocket if it explodes tends to be a "soft" explosion and not a high explosive. Challenger if you remember was blowen to pieces but some of the crew survived until impact. It was not reduced to dust. A reactor will be much tougher than a human body or even the shuttle. So again no fears.

"OK loooong time ago so I may be misremembering but it seems to me there were arguments about this with one or more of the Apollo missions because a tiny reactor was going to be taken along and the statistical analysis was provided for detonation at altitude and the resulting expected increase in number of cancer deaths. The reactor might not have been uranium based - like I said looooong time ago.
"
So why post it as it is all wrong information. The Apollo missions never carried a reactor, no reactor was ever flown on a US manned mission. They did carry the SNAP 27 which was an RTG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliary_Power
During Apollo 13 they did make sure that the SNAP 27 would fall in deep water since it was going to hit the Earth at a very high speed. All tests show that it survived and frankly that was a lot rougher than any launch vehicle failure mode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator.
So just to make it clear.
1. It was not a reactor.
2. It was not fueled with Uranium.
3. It was very tough and didn't fail even under worst case.

I have no doubt that NASA did do a study to figure out, If it did completely fail at different altitudes just how bad it could be that would just be prudent but then they did everything they could to make sure that didn't happen again because that is the prudent thing to do.
So why did you waste time with that fear and missinformation packed paragraph?
We have the internet and can look things up. Google is great because if you had just typed in Apollo nuclear reactor it would have taken you to the first like I supplied.

Solar Power

[mfh]

If they would just cover Mars where the Sun shines, with Solar power facilities, they would generate as much energy, if not more, and they wouldn't have to worry about any messy nuclear waste or negative press. So the interesting part of this discovery is that back in the 1950's when there were all the sci-fi movies about Martians attacking us and sending probes up our you-know-whats, the reality is we will be likely sending an army of robots to Mars to do our bidding!

Re:Solar Power

[coldfarnorth]

That DOES sound easier than sending suitcase sized devices to places where we actually need power.

Re:Solar Power

[Hijacked Public]

A power plant on Mars...necessary human development if we intend on colonizing space

Which is we they want to fly a nuclear plant up there.

we'd better learn about getting along and maximizing our resources so that we can continue to thrive as a species

This is the exact problem nuclear solves, better than any other current technology. Which is why it is the best option for powering a moonbase.

Re:Solar Power

[coldfarnorth]

I'm not disagreeing with your statement that good power generation on Mars is necessary for colonization, but a) it has downsides:
- Solar cells do not produce much power per unit of mass.
- The available sunlight is substantially weaker, due to the increased distance from the sun
- Getting accumulated power off planet is still a difficult problem.

b) it's a solution to a different problem than we are really discussing. The problem that these suitcases are designed to address is this: where do you get power while you are building bigger and better things, and there is no easy power source available.

Cheers!

Oh great

[bigredradio]

So, in case of an accident we remove the possibility of nuclear radiation poisoning, but now we have the threat of General Zod, Ursa, and Non.

Re:Nuclear on the moon?

[Anonymous Coward]

not when solar energy on the Moon is a readily available alternative.

Maybe for Earth, but solar energy is not viable for long-term use on a world in which night lasts for two weeks.

Sending a bunch of solar cells to the moon is easy. It's launching the batteries that's the dealbreaker at current launch costs. If you need lots of baseline power in a small package, nuclear's the only viable tech.

Ditto for Mars - not just because it's further away, but because soft-landing a lot of mass on Mars is arguably more difficult than landing on the Moon. Not just due to gravity, but Mars' atmosphere is dense enough to burn up a spacecraft, but not dense enough to avoid the requirement for colossal parachutes or really fancy retro-rocket landing systems.

Re:Nuclear on the moon?

[RockClimbingFool]

Solar power is hardly "readily available" on the moon, unless Bob's Discount Solar Panels has relocated their manufacturing complex on the moon.

Solar panels have weight. I am going to guess that the kilowatts per pound for solar doesn't come anywhere near nuclear.

Solar panels degrade over time. You then have to launch all new panels. The reactor mass for nuclear would stay on the moon, you just send up more fuel.

You're concerned about losing it on launch? First, launch it over the ocean, like we do for pretty all US launches. Second, these reactors are pretty small. You can put launch abort systems on them. You can encase it in a lot of shielding. More than enough to survive a ballistic ocean crash.

Even if you do lose the thing, it is a small reactor. It will have a limited amount of fissionable material. You could dump it in the ocean and it would affect no one.

Re:Good luck launching it

[NotQuiteReal]

It's a political non-starter

You are assuming, of course, that it would be launched from a country whose political leaders give a damn about that sort of thing. Last time I looked all of the places that cave to NIMBY whiners don't have any money to launch such a thing, so it is a moot point.

Re:Cooling towers? In a vacuum?

[bigredradio]

FTFS:

There are no cooling towers. ...

best I could find on short notice

[nten]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsCold

Re:Nuclear on the moon?

[0123456]

In order to get a reactor to the moon you have to launch it on a rocket, and rockets do not have a really great safety record.

The reactor doesn't start up until it's in place, so it's relatively safe until then. Plus if the launcher fails after the first minute or so it ends up at the bottom of the ocean.

The Russians have put reactors into space before, and I believe NASA did launch one before they settled on RTG and solar.

Gee, that's great.

[kaizendojo]

A nuke plant the size of a CARRY-ON SUITCASE. I don't see any problems with that getting into the wrong hands...

Re:Gee, that's great.

[Sockatume]

A nuclear reactor isn't a nuclear weapon. It's no more dangerous - and a good deal less covert - than a lead suitcase full of nicked nuclear fuel.

Re:Gee, that's great.

[psydeshow]

A nuke plant the size of a CARRY-ON SUITCASE. I don't see any problems with that getting into the wrong hands...

Yeah, in the hands of the wrong person it might just allow poor people to have heat, light, refrigeration, filtered water, cooked food, and the Internet without paying a dime to the local energy conglomerate. That absolutely must not be allowed to happen!

mining is the first step

[0111 1110]

Before we even think about a permanent lunar settlement we need to think about lunar mining to extract iron, aluminum, copper, and uranium ore.

Then we need to work on solar (parabolic or fresnel) furnaces to melt the ore and process it into metal. The lack of oxygen will make some of the traditional smelting techniques more difficult however. We may have to live with metals with inferior properties because we have to invent a whole new metallurgy up there.

Having a working nuclear reactor there in the beginning would make everything a lot easier. I don't know if photovoltaics could supply enough power for things like earth (regolith) moving machinery.

In the beginning we could limit ourselves to collecting the loose regolith with solar powered bulldozers, backhoes, and more specialized mining equipment. For the heavier minerals underneath we'd have to wait for a higher power density solution.

Re:Just wondering...

[LUH 3418]

Just like there's alot of heat all around us on earth, which is kinetic energy. Not a physicist, nor an engineer, but I think we have no way to harvest energy unless there is a potential difference between two nearby locations. To get power from a nuclear reactor, for example, you need to use the heat to turn water to steam... However, this would't work if the entire environment around the reactor was already at 2000 degrees, and the water was already superheated steam. Same with a stirling engine, you need a temperature difference, so that you can harvest the energy transfer that occurs between the different potentials.

It should be said though that solar cells are akin to harvesting radiation in space. It's just that the radiation you harvest happens to be in or near the visible spectrum. I don't think the wattage of the invisible radiation in space is anywhere near as "bright" as that of visible, UV and infrared light, though.

RTG or not?

[hackertourist]

TFA is remarkably light on details. The ZDnet article refers to the SNAP-10A satellite, which had a 45 kWt reactor that produced 650 watts of electrical power via thermoelectric converters, which is not much for a device that's about the same size as this new proposal. If they want to produce 40 KWe from a small package, some other technology may be needed.

Reticulating Splines

[Alternate Interior]

This is beginning of something far more important than nuclear power: Microwave Transmission.

Didn't the soviets already do this?

[wisebabo]

No I don't mean did they put one of these on the moon (and certainly not mars, I don't think any of their landers made it).

No, I mean didn't they have a bunch of high powered satellites in earth orbit that used reactors (NOT just RTGs, they wouldn't produce enough power). I believe they were radar satellites that scanned the oceans looking for American carrier groups to kill. (The U.S. really has a HUGE advantage in its many bases and allies worldwide, this is something that required the soviets to create satellites like this. It is an advantage that will also take the Chinese a very long time, if ever, to match). In fact didn't one of their satellites COSMOS I think it was, crash in Canada spewing plutonium all over the place and costing millions to clean up?

That said, if the design is sound (the spacecraft malfunctioned not the reactor right?), wouldn't it be easy to adapt their zero-gee design to work on the moo or mars? Should actually be easier, gravity will let convection work and (on mars) the thin atmosphere will help the purely radiative cooling.

Re:Cooling towers? In a vacuum?

[w1nt3rmute]

Isn't it something like -200 degrees F outside of direct sunlight in space? I'm not an engineer, but do you really need anything more than passive cooling of circulating coolant and a big reflector?

We've Already Done Most of the Work: LFTR Reactors

[__aaozat5889]

This is a nearly perfect application for the Thorium-based molten-salt LFTR (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor) concept.

LFTRs advantages:

1. - adapt to load and are self-regulating: the molten-salt blanket around the core expands as heat increases and contracts as heat reduces
2. - require no high-pressure containment vessel or water cooling
3. - will auto-shutdown if there is a critical power failure
4. - use a Uranium/Thorium cycle which consumes 99.9% of the fuel, increasing energy output and reducing waste products
5. - use a 50% efficient Brayton cycle gas turbine generator, waste heat can be used to purify water (important on moon)
6. - could be mass produced and delivered on trucks. A LFTR the size of a semi-truck should produce at least 100KW.
7. - waste products that do remain can be contained and become safe in 300 years instead of 300,000 years. (87% waste safe in 10 years, 13% in 300)
8. - proliferation-resistant: removing the only useful actinides for weapons would shut the reactor down, are deadly (hard gamma emitters) which also make them traceable

There are also abundant levels of Thorium on the lunar near-side

The base concepts of the LFTR were desinged in the late 50's by Alvin Weinberg for a nuclear airplane design. Further refinements of the molten salt concept were tested very successfully for four years (1964-1969) at Oak Ridge National Lab.
The project was eventually discontinued because the molten-salt reactors can't be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium and they are very safe relative to almost any other reactor and made fast breeder reactors look bad. LFTR reactors could be mass produced and delivered on trucks, from 100kw to multi-gigawatts.

A LFTR the size of an 18 wheeler should deliver at least 100kw.
The quantity of Thorium on Earth is thought to be enough to power the planet at the current rate for approximately 100,000 years.

Why not fund LFTR research at NASA while they are at it? The Chinese have already restarted all of our original research. If they create a good reactor and patent it we will feel like total idiots.

Energy From Thorium: here

Re:Nuclear on the moon?

[rocket rancher]

not when solar energy on the Moon is a readily available alternative.

Maybe for Earth, but solar energy is not viable for long-term use on a world in which night lasts for two weeks.

Sending a bunch of solar cells to the moon is easy. It's launching the batteries that's the dealbreaker at current launch costs. If you need lots of baseline power in a small package, nuclear's the only viable tech.

Ditto for Mars - not just because it's further away, but because soft-landing a lot of mass on Mars is arguably more difficult than landing on the Moon. Not just due to gravity, but Mars' atmosphere is dense enough to burn up a spacecraft, but not dense enough to avoid the requirement for colossal parachutes or really fancy retro-rocket landing systems.

Really? Why don't you try using your imagination, instead of echoing tired-ass, discredited memes? Oh wait, you are an AC. The day/night argument against solar power goes away when you put the collector in orbit and use microwaves to transfer the energy. The day/night argument is fucking stupid and has been for about half a century, now.

Putting a solar collection/conversion facility in a Lissajous near the L2 Lagrangian and beaming the energy to where you need it on the surface of the Moon/Mars solves all the problems you associate with solar power, elegantly and simply. Bonus points for assembling the power station in situ at the L2. Imagination is a really cool thing, you know -- more important than knowledge, according to a certain egghead...

Water

[ResidentSourcerer]

Why is this important:

Exactly because water is scarce on the moon. Some form of purification step is needed to turn pee into drinking water.

Here on Earth most of the water is unusable for non-biological reasons. Salt in sea water. Carbonates in well water. Various contaminants such as heavy metals, H2S.

Water is also a source of oxygen (breathing) and Hydrogen (rocket fuel) and is the easier way to store both. With a large energy source on the moon it will be a lot cheaper to ship liquid (or frozen) water than to ship LOX and LH2

***

Whether people live on the moon will depend on the economics. Bad idea to say 'never' to an economic notion. See G. Harry Stine's book "The Third Industrial Revolution" for details.

Consider right now the economics in the oil patch. Compare the cost of a mobile platform deep water rig to the costs of the crew. lf there is a sufficiently valuble product people will go there to produce it.

As an example, consider some of the Near Earth asteroids. What is the value of a cubic kilometer of a nickle iron asteroid moved into above synchronous (> 40,000 km) orbit?

1 cubic km = 10*9 cubic meters. = 5 E12 kg of what amounts to impure stainless steel. At $100 per pound that's worth 500 trillion dollars just because it is mass in orbit. (And right now no one can do $100/pound to orbit.)

Ni-Fe meteors assay out at significant amounts of gold and the platinum group of metals. Something like 0.1% Even a 1 km3 rock has more of these metals than we have ever mined.

***

During the age of colonization, colonies died. Not just people. Whole colonies. This was new technology. It was expensive. Compare the cost of sending exploration/colonization ships to the governmental budget.

I don't expect to go there next Tuesday. But after seeing the changes in the last 50 years, I am reluctant to say that it can never happen.