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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.
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.
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.
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.
They should talk to the Russians, they have much more experience with nuclear reactors in space. Been doing it for decades.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Yes, why not just buy a few from the Russians? It'd save a lot of trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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?
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
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.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Hmm, doing what amounts to a controlled crash (possibly uncontrolled) on Mars with a fission reactor. What could possibly go wrong?
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.
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".
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
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.
they rehired homer to run the nukes.
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.
"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.
"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.
I wonder if Trump is secretly a steam punk?
A coal power spacecraft with gold trims, and hardwood frames.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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"
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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...
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
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Space nukes are crap for Earth bombing, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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. :)
You should have that checked. Being deluded isn't generally a good life plan.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
adorned with fine corinthian leather.
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)
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?).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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?
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.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
and you cannot produce 1 Watt. They probably meant something like 500 Wh or similiar.