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Developing Nuclear Power Plant Tech For the Moon and Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the green-cheese-fission dept.

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."

9 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Protesters by chill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    1. Re:Protesters by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    2. Re:Protesters by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:Protesters by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:Protesters by Teancum · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  2. Re:Nuclear on the moon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Nuclear on the moon? by RockClimbingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Solar Power by coldfarnorth · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
  5. Re:Nuclear on the moon? by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.