NASA plans a lunar nuclear power plant
The Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is teaming up with NASA to put a “durable, high-power, Sun-independent” fission reactor on the Moon within the next ten years. The two agencies are currently seeking proposals from outside partners to get this lofty project started, with a submission deadline of 19 February 2022. This hypothetical reactor would help turn the Moon into an extraterrestrial base for human space exploration, including future manned missions to Mars. “Plentiful energy will be key to future space exploration,” said Jim
Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’S Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington DC, said. “I expect fission surface power systems to greatly benefit our plans for power architectures for the Moon and Mars and even drive innovation for uses here on Earth.”
The call for proposals comes with some basic guidelines. The proposed reactor must be a uranium-powered fission reactor – an apparatus that can split heavy atomic nuclei into lighter nuclei, releasing energy as a by-product. The reactor must weigh no more than 6,000 kilograms and fit into a four-by-six-metre rocket.
The nuclear reactor will be assembled on Earth, then launched to the Moon, where it must provide 40 kilowatts of continuous electric power for ten years. The reactor must also have temperature controls to keep the device cool. The request for proposals comes while NASA begins ramping up its Artemis program, which aims to create a sustainable human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade. The program, which plans to return human astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, is estimated to cost around $93 billion (around £70 billion).