Russia plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade to supply its lunar space programme and a joint Russian-Chinese research station, as major powers rush to explore the earth's only natural satellite.
Reactors on earth are huge and built to run at 100% all the time because that’s the most economical way to do it. That is not a physics requirement, it’s just the most profitable for the current economic environment. You can design a reactor that can throttle output if you need to and many small modular reactors currently in the licensing approval process include this ability.
Nevermind the fact that a “large” RTG only puts out about 100 watts of electricity and it’s nuclear fuel must be bred in reactors beforehand. There is only enough RTG fuel for maybe 20 large units on the planet right now.
You can design a reactor that can throttle output if you need to
yeah i’ve been thinking about these reactors a lot. problem is, to make a reactor regulatable like that, the material must be fissable. I.e. you can’t use PU-238 (which has a half-life of 87 years and is typically used in RTGs today), instead you’d use U-235 or sth (which is used in big nuclear reactors today). Problem is, that material is fissable (i.e. it undergoes chain reaction and runs at or just below criticality) and that is why you can build bombs out of it. Then, to bring such a reactor into space, you’d have to lift it off with a rocket, and there’s your problem: You’d have to transport (large amounts of) fissable material with a rocket across earth into the sky. And that’s how you provoke international nuclear conflict.
Reactor fuel and bomb fuel are very different things. Current reactors use U-235 enriched to between ~2-5% with some of the new SMR designs using fuel enriched to ~20%. Bombs use ~90% enrichment. You can’t make a bomb with less than that enrichment. The physics just don’t work. No one is going to think that your rocket carrying a reactor bound for the moon is secretly a bomb headed to a city.
Also the total amount of fuel you would need for something like a 100MW reactor would be on the order of 100kg. Maybe up to 500kg depending on design. A tiny fraction of a rockets payload. You could easily let international inspectors look at it before launch to ease any fears.
Reactors on earth are huge and built to run at 100% all the time because that’s the most economical way to do it. That is not a physics requirement, it’s just the most profitable for the current economic environment. You can design a reactor that can throttle output if you need to and many small modular reactors currently in the licensing approval process include this ability.
Nevermind the fact that a “large” RTG only puts out about 100 watts of electricity and it’s nuclear fuel must be bred in reactors beforehand. There is only enough RTG fuel for maybe 20 large units on the planet right now.
yeah i’ve been thinking about these reactors a lot. problem is, to make a reactor regulatable like that, the material must be fissable. I.e. you can’t use PU-238 (which has a half-life of 87 years and is typically used in RTGs today), instead you’d use U-235 or sth (which is used in big nuclear reactors today). Problem is, that material is fissable (i.e. it undergoes chain reaction and runs at or just below criticality) and that is why you can build bombs out of it. Then, to bring such a reactor into space, you’d have to lift it off with a rocket, and there’s your problem: You’d have to transport (large amounts of) fissable material with a rocket across earth into the sky. And that’s how you provoke international nuclear conflict.
Reactor fuel and bomb fuel are very different things. Current reactors use U-235 enriched to between ~2-5% with some of the new SMR designs using fuel enriched to ~20%. Bombs use ~90% enrichment. You can’t make a bomb with less than that enrichment. The physics just don’t work. No one is going to think that your rocket carrying a reactor bound for the moon is secretly a bomb headed to a city.
Also the total amount of fuel you would need for something like a 100MW reactor would be on the order of 100kg. Maybe up to 500kg depending on design. A tiny fraction of a rockets payload. You could easily let international inspectors look at it before launch to ease any fears.