NASA Seeks Nuclear Power For Mars (scientificamerican.com)

New submitter joshtops shares a report from Scientific American: As NASA makes plans to one day send humans to Mars, one of the key technical gaps the agency is working to fill is how to provide enough power on the Red Planet's surface for fuel production, habitats and other equipment. One option: small nuclear fission reactors, which work by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power. NASA's technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years, with the aim of demonstrating the system at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas. Testing is due to start in September and end in January 2018. The last time NASA tested a fission reactor was during the 1960s' Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP, which developed two types of nuclear power systems. The first system -- radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs -- taps heat released from the natural decay of a radioactive element, such as plutonium. RTGs have powered dozens of space probes over the years, including the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. The second technology developed under SNAP was an atom-splitting fission reactor. SNAP-10A was the first -- and so far, only -- U.S. nuclear power plant to operate in space. Launched on April 3, 1965, SNAP-10A operated for 43 days, producing 500 watts of electrical power, before an unrelated equipment failure ended the demonstration. The spacecraft remains in Earth orbit.

Comments

NASA is increasingly insane

[elcor]

First spraying toxic metals in the air Then bumping asteroids for no reason And now what, making news for planing to use tech that's been used since the 60s? Anyone sane at NASA, please leak what's really going on in this asylum.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

No, troll, this isn't simply using 1960s technology. I understand the sarcasm in your post, but I still see that you're a troll.

There are challenges with fission reactors in space that don't exist on Earth. Specifically, you have to cool the fuel to prevent a meltdown. On Earth, this is accomplished by pumping large amounts of water through the reactor. The steam is used to generate electricity, but it also keeps the fuel cool. We generally build nuclear plants by bodies of water such as rivers, and the excess heat is transported downstream. There isn't an easy solution for dissipating heat in space. There isn't such an easy way to use conduction, convection, and advection to dissipate heat.

It's worthwhile to figure out how to do this, but it's not simply using 1960s technology. You, sir, are a troll trying to draw out people to argue with you.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Mad science is the only thing they're still allowed to do; and they need to hurry because pretty soon with the orangeutan's buddies and handlers in control of the National Space Council the only activity NASA is gonna be doing is helping corporations copyright, trademark and somehow-re-patent everything they've ever come up with, while altering every last bit of data to 'prove' both YHWH-Dominionists and Climate-Deniers 'right'. Even the launch platforms will be sold off to chinese or russian real-estate speculators.

That said; nuclear power's actually an excellent choice for outer-space. You don't need to worry anywhere near as much about the waste, or more importantly about people screaming in fear due to propaganda telling them how a simple RTG will glass the bloody continent as long as someone brown and sounding middle-eastern can smuggle it in the state.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[klingens]

No, NASA is very sane and totally right to use nuclear power for this use case. Nuclear power for earth side, widespread usage is utter lunacy due to the eternal waste, the immense costs and lastly the inherent incalculable dangers. Idiocy like thorium reactors and reprocessing are insane, not this.

For a small bootstrap colony or a science station on mars, nuclear power is by far the best option right now: proven and fairly reliable, small (think reactors from subs), easy to transport and set up (you have to insert the fuel rods on mars, transporting a mostly inert reactor). These small reactors are then used to build the infrastructure and bootstrap industry on mars so they can produce their own industrial base with solar power cells or hopefully fusion power or whatever else one can use on mars.

So as long as the nuclear reactors are limited in power and numbers, this is the exactly right solution until fusion reactors are possible.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise. Mars is the politically stated goal for NASA because anything else requires 5 minutes explanation to idiot politicians who require "announcables".

Stating that their goal is Mars satisfies that requirement and allows them to spend money on developing heavy launchers, technology for in situ resource utilization and other technologies for long duration missions.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[AmiMoJo]

They should talk to the Russians, they have much more experience with nuclear reactors in space. Been doing it for decades.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[quenda]

Yes, why not just buy a few from the Russians? It'd save a lot of trouble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise.

So?
The arguments for not going to Mars pretty much boils down to nihilism so why post at all? It is not like anything matters anyway.

Or to bring in a quote from popular culture:

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

You could use sodium or mercury in space.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

"Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise. "

Yup, there is absolutely no reason at all to go to Mars other than stroking it. Anything left that can be learned there can still be learned by unmanned Landers.
Antarctica may only have a tenth of the surface area of Mars, but Man can and have lived on it. Hell, anybody can sail there with a decently supplied Yacht, say a 10 Meter Beneteau, from New Zealand or Argentina. Flags have been planted all along the Antarctica coastlines, but nobody now there really gives a damn. It's too cold. But it is entirely possible to get a Sunburn there during those months when the Sun never sets.
The Air is breathable, and there is an unlimited supply of drinkable Water. The cooling needed for Nuclear Reactors is not an issue.

Yes, due to your Global Warming, Antarctica is shrinking, but it is a Continent after all under all that Ice. It can only shrink so far. Assuming that it shrinks down to 5 Million square miles, at a sparse density of a 1000 people a square mile, the density of a New Jersey including the farms, that's room for 5 Billion people, give or take.

Going Off-Planet is too damn stupid to be seriously considered. You have barely even begun to ruin the On-Planet, although you are making excellent progress. Leave Mars alone.
-Marvin

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[phayes]

Research & exploration are NASAs main missions and there is a need for around 500Kw in order to produce Methane & O2 for return flights from Mars that would be difficult to produce otherwise (at least on initial missions).

Spending billions on ILS launchers that have no mission is insanity (though Nasa spends the money it's the Senate that directs them to do so and micromanages the budget so that they must spread it around all 50 states).

It's interesting that the SNAP-10A is still up there as almost all opposition to the use of reactors in space is "What it it crashes on launch" by people that refuse to believe that we can build containment vessels sufficient to not spill the reactants even after a failed launch. I wonder, given that SNAP-10A is already in orbit, and didn't stop working due to any fault of the reactor itself whether it's fuel could be recovered to power a modern reactor. Probably not as it certainly wasn't engineered to to be disassembled easily, especially in space and things like vacuum welding may be an issue but it'd be a great hack if they could.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

"You could use sodium or mercury in space."

Mercury is already in space, near the Sun, so that would save money... ;)

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[stealth_finger]

And now what, making news for planing to use tech that's been used since the 60s?

We were building reactors on other planets in the '60s? I guess I really wasn't paying attention.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[dougdonovan]

nasa, always, good luck. fyi, i want to reserve a spot on the 1st golf course off #9 tee. 1/2 $ drinks for the 1st 99 members.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Joe_Dragon]

they rehired homer to run the nukes.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[KeensMustard]

Research and exploration is done by robots. Why would they need a return flight?

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

you're a cunt.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's interesting that the SNAP-10A is still up there as almost all opposition to the use of reactors in space is "What it it crashes on launch" by people that refuse to believe that we can build containment vessels sufficient to not spill the reactants even after a failed launch."

SNAP-10A did not failed at launch. It failed once in a stable orbit. And there is it, still in LEO.

Maybe we can build such containment vessels able to survive a launch fail in the very first seconds but an uncontrolled reentry just a few minutes too late and no practical containment vessel is going to avoid a spill.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[nospam007]

"Research and exploration is done by robots. Why would they need a return flight?"

It's destined for the Trump voters who believe in "slave children" on Mars.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[phayes]

Hello sheldonbot.

Some of us are intent on leaving our parents the basement (the earth) as not all exploration and/or interactions can be performed remotely. Should you be one of those pretexting that "it's too expensive and useless", then I reply that so are many other domains in which we spend so muck more: Cosmetics, recreational drugs, etc. I won't stop you from your face creams and getting high/drunk all the time, now move out of the way and let me and those like me move onto exploring and then colonizing other areas in the Solar system.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Pascoea]

Can't tell if elegant trolling or truly can't look far enough ahead to know what's coming. I will assume it's the former, and say "nice work"

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[jellomizer]

Progress, normally starts with a lets see if if we can do this.
Once we know how to get there, then we can determine if there is a value on returning. Sure we romantically see a Sci-Fi future of a Mars colony, however Mars at its best is Earth at its worst, for us. There is value in protecting or species in expanding out, a Mars colony will help hedge our bets on survival. A solar eruption has a slim chance on hitting both Earth and Mars. Also having two extinction level asteroids hitting both Earth and Mars at the same time.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can hear the voices too! They give me lithium so I can't hear the voices, but I only pretend I take it.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Applehu Akbar]

That drawing off of heat is not just "to prevent a meltdown." The heat represents the output energy itself, which to be efficiently converted into electricity has to be dumped into as low-temperature a heat sink as possible. We use large bodies of water as heat sinks on Earth for ALL thermal power plants because the temperature differential is the greatest.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Thermal radiators have been a part of spacecraft for decades. A significant portion of ISSs external equipment is devoted towards that end. No doubt they're not as good at it as terrestrial methods that can sink it back into the environment (air, water, ground) but they work. A fission generator would simply need to be scaled to fit the maximum thermal dissipation potential of its radiators. Making them fail-safe might be a bit difficult (continued dissipation of maximum heat potential despite power/control loss), especially in a compact form-factor but it should be possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to believe but you've just won the most-retarded-/. poster award for the year. Congratz.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[DontBeAMoran]

They could use peltier thermoelectric plates. All they need to do is put the generated heat on one side and make the other side cold with a flow of wat... I mean with an air fa... never mind.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[ElizabethGreene]

The scary thing about SNAP-10A is that it's been exposed to decades of bombardment by micrometeorites. It's been shedding parts, literally falling apart, for decades. Using it for parts, ignoring the fact that much of its fuel has decayed to uselessness, means getting close to it to see how bad it is.

We should ask the Russians for advice. They flew their TOPAZ reactors successfully.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[ElizabethGreene]

Apex predators, like humans, rarely see an extinction level event coming. It's not an exercise in flag planting; It's about redundancy.

You back up your porn to keep it safe, right? I want to make a backup of human civilization.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

parent: " say a 10 Meter Beneteau"

I'd rather have a 10 inch Prince Albert.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of your parents basement (Earth) have you explored or even studied at all? There are always way more people waxing poetically about the human urge to explore than I see when I visit even slightly remote places on Earth. Mars terrain is highly similar to the least popular places on Earth for humans to visit.

Mars is the ultimate armchair explorers destination. Mostly because pretty much nobody is at risk of having their bluff called by an opportunity to go to Mars. But even if someone made them an offer to go, they know they would be confined to various artificial habitats, dinking around with tech toys the whole time.

In other words, mom's basement as usual.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. There is pretty much no reason for humans to be alive. Really being alive is just one big ego trip. If we could all be like liberals we would all agree that the best thing for people to do is to kill themselves. If everyone would just kill themself at once, we would stop man made climate change. We would also leave a.pristine environment for the animals and stop the environmental destruction of the planet

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[phayes]

I subsequently took a closer look at the SNAP-10A design by following the rURL in the extract (I know, I know, actually reading of TFAs, the horrors...).

Snap-10A used a subcritical core that they brought to criticality by positioning beryllium Neutron reflectors and adding a Sodium-Potassium moderator. This all produced heat that was used to power a thermocouple.

I assume that shutting it down was by repositioning the reflectors. Once no longer critical the moderator would have cooled to the point the moderator would solidify in & around the core. micrometeorites may have damaged the surrounding satellite but I really doubt that the core has been exposed and degraded.

The uranium half life is long enough that I doubt that it has degraded to unusability (it's planned critical lifetime was cut short by external factors after all) but recovering it is clearly more expensive than it's worth.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[ElizabethGreene]

That NaK moderator is some terrifying stuff. It's a eutectic mixture that's a liquid at room temperature and will spontaneously combust from the moisture in earth air.

I'm stunned they let that fly. Excited, but stunned. :)

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Apex predators, like humans, rarely see an extinction level event coming. It's not an exercise in flag planting; It's about redundancy.

You back up your porn to keep it safe, right? I want to make a backup of human civilization.

Mars isn't a very good backup site. (Mars has just enough air, gravity and solar radiation to cause problems not enough to solve problems so it's a pretty crappy target over-all. )

Venus would be better (who doesn't like zeppelin cities?), as would some of the larger asteroids.
There's also some promis for Titan but that relies on solving the problems being that close to Saturn causes.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[HornWumpus]

How hot do black body thermal radiators on spacecraft run?

That's the cold side of any thermodynamic cycle for power, hot cold side temperatures make for craptacular efficiency.

If you're going to build a nuke for Mars, you would design it to not be started until you got it onto mars and had a _use_ for the waste heat as well as a heat dump (ground loop?).

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[KeensMustard]

Or an objective observation. Robots have explored the Solar System out to the kuiper belt - and are now leaving it. What part of the solar system have humans explored since we entered the space age?

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that shutting it down was by repositioning the reflectors.

The reflectors were held in place by a retaining band anchored by an explosive bolt. When the reflector was ejected from the unit, the reactor could not sustain the nuclear fission reaction and the reactor permanently shut down.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

The risks are very calculable.

It is one of the most well known, well quantified risks.

We know more about radiation and its effects than any other carcinogen.

I would implore you to at least audit a course in nuclear engineering to access better tools for evaluating nuclear power.

I think you would find it is very attractive in terms of risk.

Many of my coworkers switch to the nuclear side of production because it is cleaner and safer than the non-nuclear side of the house.

Re:NASA is increasingly insane

[phayes]

Reasoning through absurdities just proves that you're very bad at reasoning. I've lived on 3 continents and visited 5 but that has little to do with my drive to see mankind explore and colonize the solar system.

Your argument that Mars is the "ultimate explorers destination" is also pitifully weak as a greater even more widespread dream is visiting other stars but that is far beyond our capacities. Mars, isn't as with the progress in launchers we are on the cusp of visiting and even colonizing Mars.

However it is true that many basement dwelling cheetos munching ACs such as yourself cannot see beyond their creature comforts to see the draw that living on another planet has for many of us.

Re: NASA is increasingly insane

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not really sure what your point was.

Snap - The Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever came up with that acronym must love 80s music
https://youtu.be/z33tH-JdPDg

Resist!

[Anonymous Coward]

We must resist this racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, transphobic, fascist nuclear power. Demand that NASA power Mars missions with consistent, long-life, subsidised renewables!

Keeping people alive on Mars must be a secondly goal, and the priority should be the use of green energy. If the mission personnel happen to die because the renewable power supply cuts out, they can die with the moral upper hand.

Stock It Up

[mentil]

One of the few upsides of a manned mission to Mars is that we can send all the infrastructure there before the trigger is pulled to lift any humans off of Earth. We can make sure it arrives safely, and works, rather than having to send it on the same trip as the astronauts. Even if the solar cells, ice purifiers, and hydroponics work at a rate too slow to keep up with human consumption, they could be designed to operate when noone is there, to stockpile enough resources to last the duration of a human visit. Food silos, batteries, water tanks, and a habitat can be sent and filled up beforehand. Assuming everything but the seeds were sterilized, I wonder if the resultant food could be preserved indefinitely on Mars; ya know, until the humans show up and spread their microbiome everywhere.

If a colony is dependent on regular shipments of fissile material, that could cause problems, particularly if a shipment blows up/gets its launch delayed, or if the colony desires independence. Hawking et al suggest that we should get a Mars colony in part so that we wouldn't be doomed by a third world war; however, if said colony belonged to one of the major world powers, it's much more likely to be targeted. China already has tested weapons that can destroy satellites, I wouldn't put it past them to use a weapon that would destroy their enemy's Mars colony.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

What military value would a civilian Mars colony have to expend the huge resources necessary to destroy it?

Re:Stock It Up

[KeensMustard]

If robotics were sufficiently advanced to build greenhouses and farm food on Mars, what would the purpose of sending humans? Surely, for that level of complexity, we could skip the complex building of habitats and just send a robot to do {whatever} the task that have in mind for humans.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

lulz

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

The left doesnt think in terms of cost/benefit analysis. Its why so many of them are poor, and all the others are ultra-rich.

Re:Stock It Up

[drinkypoo]

If robotics were sufficiently advanced to build greenhouses and farm food on Mars, what would the purpose of sending humans?

Robots already have sufficient complexity to do that job. To be fair, we already have arguments over whether we should send humans, so you may have a point there. I, for one, would like to send robots and build a base with them before I set foot on the planet, if I were making the plans. I'd much rather have a nice place to sleep all set up for me than have to sleep in my car, so to speak.

Seriously, what part of the job of building a greenhouse and growing crops do we imagine a robot can't do? Especially given that "greenhouse" can cover a lot of ground, no pun intended. We're finally getting close to have cost-effective robots which can pick fruit, for example. We already have robot construction equipment which can level ground and plow it without a human's involvement. The human is only there now for liability reasons. We have robot excavation equipment, which similarly carries a human at certain times only for liability reasons. Plows, harvesters... We can do this soon if we want to. About the only technology not already developed is that for keeping the Martian dust out of everything, and it's not like we have no experience with such matters.

It does make sense to send lots of robots to Mars before sending one human. But you still send humans to solve problems that you didn't foresee. That time is passing, though. If you can 3d print new parts to let your robots do new jobs, then there's less and less need for humans on site.

Re:Stock It Up

[Applehu Akbar]

The left's only concern about wealth is that somebody else might get it. That is their fundamental reason for hating exploration programs.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

You think people on the left are against funding space exploration, and people on the right are for it? Is there no connection to the outside world in your mom's basement?

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, please provide a link to general purpose robots that can build and operate a greenhouse from components that would withstand the pressure differential on Mars. They have to be autonomous too, since with the time lag people controlling them remotely is out.

Re:Stock It Up

[drinkypoo]

Really, please provide a link to general purpose robots that can build and operate a greenhouse from components that would withstand the pressure differential on Mars.

I don't think you'd actually build it there. I think you'd ship an inflatable. Then you'd use a robot fork lift to open the container, and it would blow itself up from power stored from a solar panel on top of the can it came in.

They have to be autonomous too, since with the time lag people controlling them remotely is out.

They only have to be semi-autonomous. Humans can give them instructions, and they can carry them out, and then they can stop if they have a problem. The idea is to send everything well in advance of humans, so that there's time to solve problems.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the few upsides of a manned mission to Mars is that we can send all the infrastructure there before the trigger is pulled to lift any humans off of Earth. We can make sure it arrives safely, and works, rather than having to send it on the same trip as the astronauts.

I think a more interesting avenue of research would be designing a "boot strap" process to automate the infrastructure to reach nuclear power.

Solar power may very well not provide enough energy for everything needed together, especially once you add in life support for humans.
But when it comes to automated machinery to build out the required infrastructure, although stock piling that energy is one option, it certainly isn't a the only one nor a required one.
Let the machines do their work when they have power to do so, and go into a paused "sleep" or "hibernation" when they don't. It will take more time to finish construction of course, but we have plenty of that to go around.

Sending up the machines to do this, and the needed reactor parts to be assembled in place sans-fuel, would be quite a worthy project goal.
Designing machines to mine uranium on Mars itself would both be very worth while research (for more than just space travel, it would be of great use here at home too)
This would also remove the necessity of sending such fuel resources up in a potentially explody rocket which so many have a justified concern over.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

The left's only concern about wealth is that somebody else might get it. That is their fundamental reason for hating exploration programs.

The left's concern about wealth is that a minority of people will get it and use it on themselves.

The right's concern about wealth is that a majority of people will get it and use it on themselves.

Re:Stock It Up

[evolutionary]

It will take VERY little to destroy an initial colony. The first part of such an undertaking would be quite frail on it's initial setup as ability to carry supplies would be limited and it is unknown if you could mine materials from the planet (as far as we know in the public). If we ever get to Mars (and I think there is room for serious doubt with all the unknowns not being talked about publicaly including the effects of our nuclear power plants/waste on Mars' atmosphere), given mutual interest (especially in sending the unwanted elements of the population as colonists, true to the history of the USA and Australia), I think it less likely that foreign powers would attack/sabotage because they could potentially have FAR more to gain in resources and/or knowledge (successful or not). More likely major nations would demand to have representatives as part of the mission when we have a reasonable chance of surviving even a year there.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

What wealth can come from "exploring" a deadly vacuum?

Re:Stock It Up

[fahrbot-bot]

If robotics were sufficiently advanced to build greenhouses and farm food on Mars, what would the purpose of sending humans? Surely, for that level of complexity, we could skip the complex building of habitats and just send a robot to do {whatever} the task that have in mind for humans.

Get your girlfriend/wife a really good vibrator then re-think that question. :-)

Re: Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Somehow the left is now against Russia, and the right is against religious fundamentalist with guns. See the terms left and right do not have absolute meanings anymore.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

The left's only concern about wealth is that somebody else might get it. That is their fundamental reason for hating exploration programs.

Are you kidding me? You guys think the left is anti-exploration? The right is the side that hates science/NASA because they're afraid science/NASA might prove that god isn't real and trickle down economics is a scam.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the words "mutually agreed upon contract", "consent", "justice", "deserve", "responsibility", "ownership" mean anything to you?

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the words "mutually agreed upon contract", "consent", "justice", "deserve", "responsibility", "ownership" mean anything to you?

I'll take right-wing buzzwords for $200, Alex.

Re: Stock It Up

[KGIII]

I don't do this often, but noone isn't a word. I keep seeing people who don't understand how spellcheck works. Even autocorrect tries to fix it.

Re:Stock It Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power in and of itself is much cleaner than many of the alternatives. Solar on Mars would be a bit too weak, and with pebble bed reactors, it's just a matter of always being clean.

Re: Stock It Up

[mentil]

It's a perfectly cromulent word. Seriously though, I like how it looks more than the technically-correct usages, which irk me as much as seeing 'him/her'.

Re:Stock It Up

[Applehu Akbar]

Are you kidding me? You guys think the left is anti-exploration? The right is the side that hates science/NASA because they're afraid science/NASA might prove that god isn't real and trickle down economics is a scam.

This is the Greens on their reasons for opposing a pure science research telescope in Hawaii. An exploration program that takes place entirely in Earth and which involves not a dime of public money:
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civ...

Thorium, dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would NASA put effort into Uranium reactors when Thorium is so much more promising?

It doesn't get more "do-over" than an entire fucking planet. If you really must do something nuclear on it, why use the old shit?

Re:Thorium, dammit!

[MangoCats]

NASA isn't a leader (anymore), they ride on the coat-tails of industry and the military. There has been trillions of dollars of development in the Uranium infrastructure, replicating that for Thorium would be... less efficient than using the existing systems.

Re:Thorium, dammit!

[Applehu Akbar]

Why would NASA put effort into Uranium reactors when Thorium is so much more promising? It doesn't get more "do-over" than an entire fucking planet.

Because thorium designs have to be developed and proven out on Earth first. The ORNL work was just a proof of concept, not an operating commercial reactor.

Re:Thorium, dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet promises are not FUCKING REAL. Get your facts from something other than a youtube video.

NASA should use Coal!

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA should use COAL!

!!! Trump !!!

Re:NASA should use Coal!

[jellomizer]

I wonder if Trump is secretly a steam punk?

A coal power spacecraft with gold trims, and hardwood frames.

Re:NASA should use Coal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Space pirates are a necessary part of that picture. I wonder if Trump is a privateer admirer as well.

Re:NASA should use Coal!

[CaptnCrud]

adorned with fine corinthian leather.

Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

... for a lot of power situations, not just space. However the 60s CND hippie generation have managed to turn it into a bogieman (not helped of course by Chernobyl caused by a lack of training and maintenance on a reactor that was a poor design to start with). Sadly the younger generation seems to have swallowed this meme wholesale without actually checking the facts (eg France has generated around 50% of its power from nuclear without serious incident since the 1960s). So good luck to Nasa getting nuclear reactors on Mars without idiots demonstrating at the gates of Canaveral.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Kergan]

The bigger issue isn't the possibility of and potential costs of nuclear incidents. Rather, it is nuclear waste management.

As a power source it's competitive if you only factor in power production and rudimentary waste management like we're doing now. But that completely falls apart if you consider the future costs of storing the nuclear waste over hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

Where do you think Uranium comes from in the first place, the magic nuclear tree? It comes out of the ground. There is zero reason not to put the spent fuel back into it.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. There is no need whatsoever for nuclear waste management to be expesnsive, especially on Mars; drop the waste down a sink-hole and forget about it. To be honest, we could do the same on earth, if common sense ever prevails.

Radioactive materials already exist in nature, it's not as if it's something purely artificial. Even on the surface of the earth, there are places that are naturally highly radioactive, for example Karanagappally in India, where people have been living for thousands of years. Studies have shown that the panic over the the effects of high background radiation is largely overblown. So we can drop the waste down a hole, and we really don't need to worry about some minute possibility that at some point thousands of years in the future, some of the material might somehow escape; it really wouldn't be the end of the world.

It's only nutcase panic-mongers that keep costs of nuclear waste management high. By preventing it from being disposed of in a sane way, they ensure that large amounts of waste are stockpiled in expensive facilities basically forever, and that's what costs the big bucks.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

Processing the uranium out from the ore compounds is a lot of effort. Why do you think it's easier to put it back into those?

Or do you think you could just grind all the waste up into fine dust and sprinkle it around?

It's no longer bound to anything and water will wash it away. It's also no longer just uranium. If it were there would be no need to get rid of it.
Additionally anything that has been near the reactor for any length of time is also radioactive waste including the reactor itself.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

"Processing the uranium out from the ore compounds is a lot of effort. Why do you think it's easier to put it back into those?"

Care to point to where I said that? Save your lame straw men for a student debate.

"Or do you think you could just grind all the waste up into fine dust and sprinkle it around?"

No, you put it into a stable borosilicate glass substance that its stable for millenia.

"It's also no longer just uranium. If it were there would be no need to get rid of it.
Additionally anything that has been near the reactor for any length of time is also radioactive waste including the reactor itself."

The total radiation levels will never be greater than what came out of the ground in in the first place. If they were we'd have invented a perpetual motion/power machine. All solid waste can be stored and liquid waste can be evaporated and stored. So long as its a long way from a water table waste is safe to store underground.

What happens in 100K years you ask? Who cares quite frankly. If we don't get CO2 output down there won't be much of an enviroment in 1000 years to worry about, never mind 100K, and nuclear is one of the best ways to achieve this.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Kergan]

You need to enrich the stuff for it to be useful in a reactor (or for that matter, a weapon). You can't just shove the result back into the ground and expect it to be as benign as the naturally occurring stuff. Not to mention Plutonium and other nuclear waste, which you don't want anywhere near a water supply.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[hyades1]

Nice straw man you've got there. Did it take long to build?

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[MangoCats]

You can't do anything significant and public without idiots demonstrating at the gates.

What matters is whether or not the politicians who control the budget can (and choose to) hold office without placating them.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[MangoCats]

Who's factoring in the waste management costs of coal? Fly ash piles, atmospheric distribution of mercury and other fun stuff, destruction of landscapes for strip mines... someday people will tally up these costs and probably establish that fossil fuels are a zero-sum game, when you actually value the entire planet.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, start with copying the French, who have been successfully reprocessing fuel rods for 4 decades, isntead of being determined to throw away most of the fuel. Then, stop allowing every single idiot with an agenda to sue to block anything they want.

The solution for high level waste has been easy for a long time. Wait until it cools off, glassify it and stick it back into the earth. Not a major issue. Most of the "millions of tons" or radioactive waste is no less radioactive than a banana and should be burnt, the ash glassified, and again, given back to the earth. What's remaining is a bunch of concrete that's not actually radioactive, and some steel that's so minimally radioactive that diluting it 20:1 in a blast furnace is the best approach.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[someone1234]

Half-life, you surely heard of that. There is no need to store any nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Processing the uranium out from the ore compounds is a lot of effort. Why do you think it's easier to put it back into those?"

Care to point to where I said that? Save your lame straw men for a student debate.

It was kind of implied from your argument. If you state a reason for why something can be done it isn't wrong to assume that's the actual reason. That uranium was once mined from somewhere has no influence on whether nuclear waste can be safely stored underground.

No, you put it into a stable borosilicate glass substance that its stable for millenia.

That works for the highly radioactive parts. What about all the irradiated concrete.

The total radiation levels will never be greater than what came out of the ground in in the first place. If they were we'd have invented a perpetual motion/power machine.

Of course you can't create energy. But by transforming a substance that decays in 700 million years into one that only takes 245 thousand you make it emit the same radioactivity in a much shorter timespan.

All solid waste can be stored and liquid waste can be evaporated and stored. So long as its a long way from a water table waste is safe to store underground.

What happens in 100K years you ask? Who cares quite frankly. If we don't get CO2 output down there won't be much of an enviroment in 1000 years to worry about, never mind 100K, and nuclear is one of the best ways to achieve this.

There aren't that many places on earth were there is no water. There fewer places if any were there is sure to be no water in the next few thousand years.
That means you have to provide for a way to move the stuff somewhere else if necessary. And then you have to guard the facility to make sure no bad actors get their hands on it.
Don't get me wrong I am not against nuclear energy. CO2 is a more immediate problem and nuclear may get science to a point were we can have actually clean energy.
I just don't think the dump the waste in a hole and forget about it approach that is used in most cost calculations is viable.

On Mars though it's really the only choice. Any future settlers will have to content with radiation anyway because of the missing magnetosphere and if we get to the point where terraformation is possible we should be able to drop any waste into the sun including whatever we have stored here now.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

You bad at reading and physics. He clearly said to glass the stuff. In fact, you whined about that. Howeveer, glassifying it takes care of the water intrusion problem. In fact, that's one of them ajor reasons for glassifying it.

Concrete? Really? What exactly is radioactive in the concrete? Oh, it's the rebar. Oh, and it's trivially radioactive. Throw the concrete into a cement plant at 10% and you're good; it won't even be detectable. Then you've got the steel, which is also, actually, really easy to deal with.

It's itiots like you who have caused global warming with your irrational paranoia of anything nuclear. Billions of tons of CO2 are directly the fault of the anti-nuclear crowd.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

"That works for the highly radioactive parts. What about all the irradiated concrete."

What about it? Its very mildly radioactive a solid. Bury it.

"But by transforming a substance that decays in 700 million years into one that only takes 245 thousand "

245K ? Wtf are you talking about? No civil reactor has used or created plutonium for decades (apart from maybe in NK)! Its all uranium235 or thorium.

"There aren't that many places on earth were there is no water. There fewer places if any were there is sure to be no water in the next few thousand years."

There are enough. And failing that it could always be buried back where it was mined in the first place since the water table would already be poisoned by waste mining material.

"I just don't think the dump the waste in a hole and forget about it approach that is used in most cost calculations is viable."

Its a lot more viable than a runaway greenhouse effect.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Rockoon]

But OH NOES BIG NUMBER!!!!

That is exactly what these greenie lefties are responding to. They have no idea what any of it means, so the magnitude of the numbers is what riles them up.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

You bad at reading and physics. He clearly said to glass the stuff. In fact, you whined about that. Howeveer, glassifying it takes care of the water intrusion problem. In fact, that's one of them ajor reasons for glassifying it.

The water will destroy the facility were the glassed stuff is stored. The glass could then be crushed by cave ins.

Concrete? Really? What exactly is radioactive in the concrete? Oh, it's the rebar. Oh, and it's trivially radioactive. Throw the concrete into a cement plant at 10% and you're good; it won't even be detectable. Then you've got the steel, which is also, actually, really easy to deal with.

Maybe I am misinformed but as far as I know everything near the reactor gets neutron activated some things more some less. A lot of the decommission cost of old nuke plants is sorting through what needs to be stored long term and what doesn't.
And if you recycle old nuke parts into anything you better make sure nobody finds out. Even if it's perfectly safe most people won't life in a flat with floors made out of 10% reactor concrete.

It's itiots like you who have caused global warming with your irrational paranoia of anything nuclear. Billions of tons of CO2 are directly the fault of the anti-nuclear crowd.

Spare the ad hominem especially if you can't spell it correctly. If you had read my post completely I said I am not anti nuclear. I just don't like it if someone implies that nuclear waste is easy and cheap to deal with.

Re: Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be fine if it was still all uranium. The problem is the bit that isn't uranium any longer.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

"That works for the highly radioactive parts. What about all the irradiated concrete."

What about it? Its very mildly radioactive a solid. Bury it.

"But by transforming a substance that decays in 700 million years into one that only takes 245 thousand "

245K ? Wtf are you talking about? No civil reactor has used or created plutonium for decades (apart from maybe in NK)! Its all uranium235 or thorium.

I was thinking about uranium-234. Though upon checking that is apparently only at 0.01% in spent fuel.

"I just don't think the dump the waste in a hole and forget about it approach that is used in most cost calculations is viable."

Its a lot more viable than a runaway greenhouse effect.

That will happen in approximately a billion years due to the sun heating up. But not any time soon no matter what humanity does. There is enough inevitable horrible consequences of pollution that naming impossible ones isn't really that good an idea.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Applehu Akbar]

"However the 60s CND hippie generation have managed to turn it into a bogieman (not helped of course by Chernobyl..."

But the most wondrous thing about space from a human culture standpoint is that there are no liberals up there to prevent us from diverting asteroids, operating nuclear reactors, and using bioengineering to modify humanity itself for improved survival in non-terrestrial environments.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

"But not any time soon no matter what humanity does"

Possibly not, but we can make a large part of the earth unviable for crops or human habitation if we carry on the way we are. Thats bad news for 7.5 billion mouths to feed.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nuclear waste" is a bit of a misnomer, from what I understand a VAST majority (I think like 95%) of what we term as nuclear waste is still perfectly usable fuel, it is simply contaminated with highly radioactive components. Those components can be removed via reprocessing, which most countries do. Once that is done the actual waste is far more compact and radioactive for far less time. The US however sabotaged its own reprocessing program by banning it back in the 70s, and then wrapping the industry in obscene levels of red tape that effectively prevented most new projects.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[ElizabethGreene]

Don't ignore the radioactive bits of coal ash. A coal plant literally releases more radiation than operating a nuclear plant.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Viol8]

"The water will destroy the facility were the glassed stuff is stored. The glass could then be crushed by cave ins."

Uranium ore in the ground has been eroded by rivers for eons. It hasn't poisoned the planet yet.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, am happy there are nuclear powered satellites that stopped working, and are circling the Earth. And ones that are still working.

We need many more of them, as they will stop greenhouse gasses.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Ranbot]

The bigger issue... is nuclear waste management. ...completely falls apart if you consider the future costs of storing the nuclear waste over hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Your assumption that a nuclear waste management solution today must be essentially eternally effective is incorrect. Realistically, we only need an interim solution to contain nuclear waste until a foreseeable time when technology, resources, and knowledge advances to handle the waste more effectively. There are similar waste management examples in use too.... for example lead based paint and asbestos in buildings is dangerous to occupants, but an acceptable remedy is sealing/encapsulating it in the building, with the assumption the hazardous materials will be properly handled during future renovation/demolition. Or placing contaminated fly ash below roadways. The stakes are higher with nuclear waste, but the concept is similar. We can still debate if the benefits of nuclear power today outweigh risks/costs later, but we don't have to have an eternal waste solution now.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger issue isn't the possibility of and potential costs of nuclear incidents. Rather, it is nuclear waste management.

As a power source it's competitive if you only factor in power production and rudimentary waste management like we're doing now. But that completely falls apart if you consider the future costs of storing the nuclear waste over hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

The French seem to have this figured out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hague_site

We should look to the 3-Rs when it comes to nuclear "waste": reduce, reuse, recycle.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[jwhyche]

"I just don't think the dump the waste in a hole and forget about it approach that is used in most cost calculations is viable."

Actually, you can do just that thing. It is just a matter of how deep you want to put it. An we have the technology to do it.

In short, you drill a hole in the convergent boundary between two plates. Preferably out in the ocean somewhere. I think two miles down under the sea floor is what I saw in a paper.

You put the waste on the downward plate. Plate tectonics will carry the waste holes down under the ascending plate, down into the planet where it will be "cooked" for the next few million years.

The point being that this will be deep enough to be completely out of the biosphere. Once the wastes starts its downward journey then you can effectively forget about it.

Any disaster that is great enough to bring it to the surface after a few hundred years , well put it this way. Having a few tons of ancient toxic waste coming to the surface will be the least of your problems.

Sure the description here is a highly simplistic summary but that is the basic ideal.

Re: Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you put it in Yucca mountain.

It's geologically stable. It won't interact with the water supply. And when the public gets educated and allows next generation reactors, it can be retrieved and used as fuel.

Yucca mountain is studied to be safe for something stupid like a million years.

Too bad Obama shut it down as a political payment to Harry Reid for delivering Nevada. But that is typical of American politics. Power over policy.

Re:Nuclear power is the best option...

[Anonymous Coward]

David Brin used subduction into ocean rifts as his econological solution in his Uplift series. It does seem like it would work.

Longer lasting

[Anonymous Coward]

The old satellites that were built to last used nuclear power. They still operate decades after the missions are finished despite being quite old and obsolete.

Meanwhile, new and expensive satellites built to modern accounting and eco standards can barely last the duration of the mission. As soon as the objective is accomplished, the last semi-useful thing they can do is crash into the planet or comet and we fake it's a great thing!

Make Mars Great Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA should use COAL!

!!! Trump !!!

With it we can make Mars great again!

!!! Trump !!!

Re: Make Mars Great Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're trolling, but there are two main issues with burning coal on Mars. One is that it has to be transported from Earth because it isn't available on Mars. Uranium and thorium are available naturally on Mars. Plus, you'll be transporting more energy per mass with fuel for nuclear fission as opposed to fossil fuels. The other main issue is that combustion of hydrocarbons requires oxygen, which is scarce on Mars. It's better for humans to breathe the oxygen and generate electricity using methods that don't consume oxygen.

Were it not for these two big issues, burning coal on Mars wouldn't actually be a bad idea. The soot and ash would absorb sunlight. Dispersing it on the ice caps would heat them up, possibly producing liquid water or sublimating carbon dioxide. Additionally, combustion would directly produce greenhouse gases. Warming Mars would make it more habitable, and burning coal would actually help out. However, the limiting factor here is that any oxygen that would be used in combustion is better used to directly sustain human life.

I'd also point out that solar and wind energy are legitimate options to supply some electricity on Mars, too. We already have solar powered rovers on Mars. Although the atmosphere is thin, winds can be extreme on Mars, so there's likely to be enough energy to make this viable. Solar energy might be lacking during a dust storm, but that's when wind energy would be plentiful. If I'm building a colony on Mars, I'd want to rely on wind, solar, and nuclear, with batteries to store excess power generated. I wouldn't want to rely on just one source of energy, because equipment can and will break, especially in the harsh conditions on Mars.

Re: Make Mars Great Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know there isn't coal on mars? Would you know there is coal on earth by satellite pictures and a few rovers?

Re: Make Mars Great Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA should use COAL!

!!! Trump !!!

With it we can make Mars great again!

!!! Trump !!!

two main issues with burning coal on Mars. One is that it has to be transported from Earth ...

America has the largest space ships!

!!! Trump !!!

The other main issue is that combustion of hydrocarbons requires oxygen, which is scarce on Mars.

Mexico will give Mars half of all their Oxygen! And I'll make them send it there!

!!! Trump !!!

Re: Make Mars Great Again!

[Applehu Akbar]

If there ever was simple life on Mars at one time, then there might be coal. And by the time we settle the planet carbon could be a major construction material, making coal a valuable resource once again.

Re: Make Mars Great Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey mars is already great. It is a planet that has not been affected by man made climate change in millions of years. If the liberals have their way. Earth will be just like mars.

All we need to do is steer a large asteroid into the planet to wipe out all of mankind. This will stop the rampant man made C02 rise.

A liberal has an inherent distrust of humanity and is always seeking to control his fellow humans

A conservative has an inherent trust in his fellow man and trust him to manage the planet in a way to maximize the number of humans on the planet.

Neither of these terms have anything to do with democ4ats and republicans who both just want to gain power.

Of course: it's needed by Mark Watney!

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, you have to change the music from "Hot stuff".

Mars is red, Russia is associated with red, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

RUSSIANS!!!!!

Why not pressurized water?

[moeinvt]

We already have relatively small pressurized water reactors. It seems like a reactor that could power a submarine would be the right size for a small colony of people. Is that still too physically large, or would the problem be the quantity of water/coolant required for operation? Maybe they could figure out a way to include the human waste processing function in the reactor system? i.e. cool the reactor by peeing on it.

Re:Why not pressurized water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most submarine reactors weigh on the order of 1000 tons, and that's with the sub swimming in really good coolant. On Mars, you'd need giant radiators to run the cooling loop.

Smaller reactors are possible, the NR-1 mini submarine had a reactor with an output on the order of 100-300 kW, exact figures are hard to come by but it fit in a 20 m-long section of the sub and the NR-1 weighed 400 tons, so the reactor was some fraction of that.

There were experiments with a 3 MW reactor on board a B-36 bomber, which was air-cooled and had shielding on only one side (toward the cockpit).

Re:Thorium, dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Uranium works, has been demonstrated in space many times, and has a bunch of people who understand reactor design. Thoriuem is a pie in the sky idea that hasn't been demonstrated in proudction, hasn't been used commercially, and doesn't have any experts in reactor design. Oh yeah, its harder to find, extract, process, enrich, use and dispose of, and its resistance to nuclear meltdown doesn't have the same value in space.

Don't pollute there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't pollute the Earth, Moon, Mars, space, etc.

In lack of water, the radioisotopes of the fuel pollute the air, the land, etc.
In water, the radioisotopes of the fuel pollute the water, the molecules, the big particles, etc.

Re:Don't pollute there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh?

Re:Don't pollute there.

[jfdavis668]

Where do you think they get radioisotopes? They dig them up out of the ground. They are all over the Earth already, and the same with Mars. Now, except for a few places, they are very sparse. One of the big problems with going to Mars is protecting yourself from radiation. Without a magnetic field, Mars is bombarded with cosmic radiation constantly. I don't think spilling a few pounds of Uranium on the surface would make a difference.

Re:Don't pollute there.

[drinkypoo]

Without a magnetic field, Mars is bombarded with cosmic radiation constantly. I don't think spilling a few pounds of Uranium on the surface would make a difference.

If you spill it in a place we plan to use for human habitation eventually, and you manage to scatter it in the process, it'll be a damned shame. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use a nuke anyway, but it has to be designed such that if it does make a mess, it makes a very small and self-contained mess.

Don't invent a new power source.....

[Lost Penguin]

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/24/business/patents-nuclear-battery-converts-reactor-waste-products.html

http://www.rexresearch.com/nucell/nucell.htm

http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/strange-life-and-stranger-death-paul-brown-case-another-smart-guy-doing-dumb-thing

Re:Don't invent a new power source.....

[necro81]

That's interesting stuff. However - the patent is from 1989, and would have expired nearly a decade ago. There are plenty of nuclear boosters with deep pockets, including Bill Gates, that would love to create nuclear batteries that burned waste products. So why haven't we seen this? Is it just The Man keeping us on oil forever, or is it that the technology just isn't workable?

Re:Don't invent a new power source.....

[ElizabethGreene]

It's not the man; it's the paperwork. Literally half of the cost of building a new reactor (even a test reactor) goes to regulatory approvals.

My state is home to the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station. Construction started on this facility in 1973, and the first reactor was completed in 1996. The second reactor didn't come online until 2016, and it was the first new power-generation reactor to light up in 20 years.

How hard can it be?

[sjbe]

Hmm, doing what amounts to a controlled crash (possibly uncontrolled) on Mars with a fission reactor. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:How hard can it be?

[Gavagai80]

If a fission reactor crashes on Mars, presumably the planet itself will break into a group of extremely radioactive fireballs which will then collide with Earth and kill us all. Is that what the 70 years of nuclear paranoia sci-fi has you thinking?

Re:How hard can it be?

[DigiShaman]

A small area of the planet being radioactive. But that's ok, with no life as we know it, not much weather to blow stuff around, and lots of land mass, we've got plenty of chances at another try.

Re: How hard can it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not much weather to blow stuff around"

Apprently you've missed the dust storms that can cover the entire planet.

Re:How hard can it be?

[Areyoukiddingme]

If a fission reactor crashes on Mars, presumably the planet itself will break into a group of extremely radioactive fireballs which will then collide with Earth and kill us all. Is that what the 70 years of nuclear paranoia sci-fi has you thinking?

Well, and Hollywood. Everything we know about radioactive materials, we learned from Hollywood. If a radioactive spider bites you, you become super strong and can cling to the ceiling with cilia in your hands and toes!

Problems with pressurized water on Mars

[sjbe]

We already have relatively small pressurized water reactors.

Not a grand idea when you cannot have people monitoring it onsite 24/7 who are able to effect repairs. Requires high pressure piping and containment (heavy and $$) which increases the problems if there is a loss of coolant incident (not a trivial consideration). Lots of problematic failure modes not easily reconciled to space travel. Plus there is the fact that you need water which Mars has but not in abundance or easily accessible. You don't want to ship the water there

It seems like a reactor that could power a submarine would be the right size for a small colony of people.

Water as a coolant works great on a submarine when you are literally in an ocean of it. Not so obviously great of an idea on a planet where water is substantially harder to come by.

Maybe they could figure out a way to include the human waste processing function in the reactor system? i.e. cool the reactor by peeing on it.

??? That's like trying to put out a forest fire by peeing on it.

Misdirection

[VorpalRodent]

Here's my conspiracy theory.

While they may see potential value for Mars, I see this as a way to acclimatize people to the idea that nuclear is a safe option. Where NASA is in the industry and previous accidents aside, the American public, as a whole, still regards NASA as being the same, awesome NASA that it was in the 50s.

That being the case, if this can bring nuclear into the public consciousness as something that's good and safe and useful, then it won't be about Mars, it will be about how we can "leverage what was learned from developing reactors usable in the harsh Martian landscape for use safely at home".

Re:Misdirection

[UnknowingFool]

While they may see potential value for Mars, I see this as a way to acclimatize people to the idea that nuclear is a safe option.

So please tell me what other options does NASA have for power initially? Solar which can't provide all the amount of energy necessary? Fossil fuels because Mars is full of oil? Wind energy is minimal and you have to send/assemble extremely large wind mills. Geo-theormal is good for long term; however, it requires construction. Right now solar and nuclear are not the "safe" options. They are the best options for initial colonization.

Where NASA is in the industry and previous accidents aside, the American public, as a whole, still regards NASA as being the same, awesome NASA that it was in the 50s.

Doesn't change the fact that nuclear and solar are the best option for the initial settlement for Mars.

Re:Misdirection

[Anonymous Coward]

Fossil fuels because Mars is full of oil

There could be. There is strong evidence to suggest life was on mars. Do you think a few satellites and rovers will be enough to find it? Do you have any reason to suggest why mars does not have any fossil fuels?

Re:Misdirection

[Anonymous Coward]

a nice idea, and no reason to consider it conspiratorial.

Re: Misdirection

[Anonymous Coward]

Fossil fuel requires that life once existed on Mars and in large amounts. To date there is little evidence of life on Mars. While it's highly probable that life may have existed, there's no evidence that a large amount of life forms are there. Then there's the problem of extraction and refining which would be an undertaking.

Re: Misdirection

[Dr. Evil]

Not sure what you're going to do with fossil fuels without oxygen.

Re:Misdirection

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Solar on Mars can definitely provide all the energy you need, and at much better power-to-weight ratios to boot (and without moving parts to maintain!). You don't get fossil fuels but given the CO2 everywhere around, you might be able to use spare power to generate carbon monoxide fuel for vehicles, rockets and night storage.

Re:Misdirection

[UnknowingFool]

Other than why would NASA push an agenda about nuclear power. The DoE might but why NASA. If anything NASA would prefer not to use nuclear as getting nuclear fuel to power their space vehicles isn't exactly easy as the DoE controls the material. Also it's not like this is the first time NASA has used nuclear power cells in the past with space probes when nuclear power was the only viable option for example Pioneer 11

Re: Misdirection

[UnknowingFool]

yeah, that's another problem with using fossil fuels.

Most waste problems are regulatory not technical

[Anonymous Coward]

1) the US is not allowed to reprocess its fuel. So, we are legally obligated to treat useful fuel as waste.

2) The next generation of reactors can use even more "waste" as fuel, but due to unscientific regulations and fears the ROI of building a plant is higher than as natural gas plant.

3) If nuclear was held to the same standards as other industrial hazards it would be much cheaper. Do you know what the largest source of commercial radiation to the public is? Flying - yet we don't regulate it or even measure it. Do you know what the largest overall man made exposure is? Medical. People accept nuclear medicine because of the benefits, but fail to count the benefits of nuclear power.

4) Nuclear waste is contained. How great would it be if all your waste was easy to collect into nice small stable packages? You can do that with nuclear. Nuclear contamination is one of the easiest hazards to monitor for which lends itself to being easily managed.

bandarq online

[Anonymous Coward]

Mau bonus 0.5% Per-Minggu? Ayo join di www.qqkartu.com -

Re:Thorium, dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

"Charcoal works, has been demonstrated many times, and has a bunch of people who understand fireplace design."

It's not what you typed, but it's what I heard as I read it.

Of all places, is not NASA one of those where we dare to try new things?

Arrogant, incompetent and overpaid ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We really need a real space station and a real moonbase. Decades of spending billions and we don't have crap except a bunch of affluent people getting richer.

Our dreams of space have become corrupt nightmares.

Heat radiation is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Operating a nuclear power station in space comes with some interesting engineering challenges.

The biggest is heat rejection. The vast majority of a nuclear powered spaceship will be radiator, with the rest being mostly shielding (if a human crew is on board) and only a tiny bit is the nuclear reactor itself.

You can't just dump heat into the atmosphere as water and take on fresh cooling water. You have to radiate the heat into space and that is an efficient (temperate of the cold reservoir is low) but very slow process.

The situation is not much better on mars which has only a thin atmosphere and no cooling water.....

Re:Heat radiation is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars has ice, which we would like to convert to water. Heat is also a valuable resource, so even rejected heat will not be wasted.

In any case, it is a manageable problem for the size of reactors under consideration. Burying them should be sufficient, assuming a reasonable design.

Hello, cover for armament in space...

[Anonymous Coward]

Space Corps. in 2018. The timing is not coincidental. They want to get their nuclear retaliation option up in space so terrestrially bound militaries will become completely their bitch.

I am sure Russia, China, India and the EU are all rushing to do the same. Maybe Japan too, although I question if they have the resources to pull it off now.

WW3 is going to be a lot more devastating and possibly one-sided than people think, but only because most people didn't believe it would involve orbital retaliation and infrastructure.

Re:Hello, cover for armament in space...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Space nukes are crap for Earth bombing, though.

Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is going to go to Mars ever. There is no money to pay for it. The various proposals are just a mishmash of unfundable of half-baked "dorm room" talk. Real shit is crumbling all around us. We are living during the collapse of modern civilization, and we are no more going to Mars than the ancient Romans were.

Look at the tribal wars raging in Afghanastan and Syria and Mexico and Columbia and Venezuela and the Phillipines and Europe. Look at the primative tribesman inhabitting US cities. That is your future, not Mars.

Nuclear Treaties no longer valid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person who noticed controversial info on Ban Nuclear Power in Space?

independence

[DarthVain]

It will never happen. At least not for a very very very long time. We have many places on earth that are not possible to be independent right now that are magnitudes easier and more habitable.

If they really want to play around, they should try it here on earth first as a proof of concept, preferably long term. The whole failed biodome experiment being a good example. Heck, put in the the Arctic or Antarctic and see how it fairs, or even just a very harsh remote region. Probably also be magnitudes cheaper to try that anyway. Heck turn it into a reality show and maybe it'll pay for itself these days...

Re:independence

[ElizabethGreene]

A Mars colony doesn't have to be a closed system like BioDome (failed) or the Soviet equivalent BIOS-3 (successful). Mars has a bunch of natural resources that make it less challenging, or more accurately challenging in a different way, than living in space.

Re: independence

[Anonymous Coward]

Still no breathable air. That's kind of important.

Re:independence

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh do tell Liz, how you plan to use this "bunch of natural resources" on distant, cold, empty deadly hell...

Re:independence

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole failed biodome experiment being a good example

I beg to differ. Pauly Shore and his friend cleaned the place up after the party they threw that wrecked the place, dealt with the crazy scientist with the exploding vegetables, and got the girls. You don't know what you're talking about... You quite literally don't since there's no such thing as the biodome experiment in real life.There was biosphere 2 and a number of other smaller projects that have been quite successful in their own ways, however.

Global dust storms

[sjbe]

A small area of the planet being radioactive. But that's ok, with no life as we know it, not much weather to blow stuff around, and lots of land mass, we've got plenty of chances at another try.

"Not much weather"? You mean except for the global dust storms that could distribute fallout far and wide? With dust that sticks to everything like styrofoam peanuts?

Why to colonize on Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many "tons of lead" are needed for radiation shield of this nuclear reactor?
(remember the tons of lead for the Chernobyl disaster)

Do you want to habitat near to the Mars Poles for extracting massive
water required for this nuclear reactor?

Do you want to drink this radioisotoped water from the nuclear reactor?

How do you obtain uranium fuel rods on Mars?

How do you construct giant metallic radiators for this water-free
nuclear reactor?

Sensibility

[sjbe]

Going to Mars makes no sense anyway, it's just another flag planting exercise.

While flag planting would be a part of it, going to Mars by necessity will have to be more than that. It will have varying amounts of finance, exploration, science, and engineering as drivers. As for whether it makes sense, we're going to disagree about the sensibility of it I think. Nearly all exploration and discovery isn't objectively justifiable prior to the mission. When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic he had no idea what he might find. That's the nature of discovery. Blanket statements that it doesn't make sense are simply not true because you can only know that post-mission.

Mars is the politically stated goal for NASA because anything else requires 5 minutes explanation to idiot politicians who require "announcables".

What is so bad about that? We're feeding their interests in a way that aligns with the goals of exploration. Maybe it's a little disingenuous at times but I think the end justifies the means in this case. It's always like that when you have to go begging for money for a science endeavor.

Re:Sensibility

[Anonymous Coward]

"When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic he had no idea what he might find."
Oh, rubbish. He set out stubbornly knowing exactly what he would find- a Shortcut to the Far East. He convinced the Kingdom of Spain to finance him to get there.
He was wrong of course; there were these Continents in the way. Columbus depended on Maps that showed the World a few thousand miles smaller in circumference than it really was. Note that other Maps available back then based on ancient Greek calculations were more accurate as to circumference, but they too did not show these Continents.
Note also that when these Continents were eventually named, they were not named after Columbus and this was deliberate. They were named for a Mapmaker- Amerigo Vespucci, who first posited that these were Continents and mapped the Eastern Coasts of them, and not just Islands in the way to the Far East as Columbus first thought, and stubbornly continued to think. Vespucci also developed techniques of accurately determining Longitude and of mapping the Southern Stars, which made him one of the first Modern Scientists.
Bringing Columbus up as an excuse to go to Mars is... let us just say uninformed. Columbus was an utterly rotten example of Humanity; a liar, a thief, a murderer and a Slaver. And pretty much more important than all that- Columbus was wrong.

That's a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have a better chance of finding a pirate treasure chest wash up at your feet on the beach than you would finding coal on Mars. Coal is compressed plants. We haven't even been able to find a lone bacterium there yet, much less higher life like plants!

You spelled fusion wrong

[WillAffleckUW]

We've had workable fusion power plants that could fit into a walk-in closet for a few years now.

They mostly are being used in military activities.

Fission is so last decade.

Re:You spelled fusion wrong

[HornWumpus]

Too late.

The 'the most-retarded-/. poster award for the year.' award was already given out upthread.

2 cents, again

[Anonymous Coward]

I think human kind is not ready to explore and colonize other heavenly bodies, if the given situation on earth requires to keep vital technology secret just to keep the status quo on the mothership intact.
as long as the "haves" value their tiny micro haves on this spec of dust as more valuable then "what's potentially out there" then we can forget any safe and meaningful space exploration.
it's like keeping the keel-sword and sail a secret and sending explorers off with a big grin to peri... errr... discover amerikas in a big row boat.

Re:Thorium, dumb

[HornWumpus]

You should have that checked. Being deluded isn't generally a good life plan.

AECL Nuclear Battery

[codesmith.ca]

I'm late to the party with this, but Atomic Energy Canada designed an Nuclear Battery (self contained low maintenance uranium reactor) that would output 2400 kW (thermal) or 600 kW (electric).

Might be a starting point for a colony system.

Nuclear Battery (pdf)

Re:Thorium, dumb

[sheph]

That's not exactly true. Thorium is abundant here (not sure about Mars) and naturally fails safe as it is a solid and never melts down. Plenty of experiments have been done to validate its viability. The real reason it gains no traction is well entrenched industries and their ties to politicians.

Watt is no unit of electrical power

[allo]

and you cannot produce 1 Watt. They probably meant something like 500 Wh or similiar.