Lynn McGuire <[email protected]> writes:

“NASA Accelerates Moon Base Plans With 100-Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor to >Outpace China”

https://thelibertydaily.com/nasa-accelerates-moon-base-plans-100-kilowatt-nuclear/

right-wing rag.

Pie in the sky from the unqualified "interim director" (former lumberjack
and television presenter). I used to live in his district. Thinly populated and fairly conservative.

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Not an easy task, it may require significant resources just to
provide the very large radiators (and the correponding heat
transfer mechanisms/fluids); not clear that they can be produced
in-situ.

“Solar power won’t cut it on the moon.

Solar power satellites augmenting surface panels
would be one way to fix that issue, and probably
a lot cheaper than flying a heavy reactor to the moon.

Finally, some common sense.

Not really.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Scott Lurndal <[email protected]> wrote:

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Not an easy task, it may require significant resources just to
provide the very large radiators (and the correponding heat
transfer mechanisms/fluids); not clear that they can be produced
in-situ.

My suspicion is that they'll wind up with RTGs like were proposed in the sixties. They are effective and the heat differential is high enough
that heat loss by radiation will do the job.

I do not think that building a program out of nothing after having lost
so many experts in so short a time is a good plan, but I'm willing to
see how it pans out.

That said.... solar is hard to beat once you leave the atmosphere, but
it's true that the night on the moon is very long.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

[email protected] (Scott Dorsey) writes:

Scott Lurndal <[email protected]> wrote:

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Not an easy task, it may require significant resources just to
provide the very large radiators (and the correponding heat
transfer mechanisms/fluids); not clear that they can be produced
in-situ.

My suspicion is that they'll wind up with RTGs like were proposed in the >sixties. They are effective and the heat differential is high enough
that heat loss by radiation will do the job.

I'm a bit sceptical - RTG output is generally less than 200w.
PU-238 has an power density of about 1/2 watt per gram; there
is also significant mass required for shielding. The US
produced no more than 50g in the last fifty years.

Scaling them up may be more difficult that one might
imagine.

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

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2025-08-14, Scott Lurndal <[email protected]> wrote:

“NASA Accelerates Moon Base Plans With 100-Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor to >>Outpace China”

https://thelibertydaily.com/nasa-accelerates-moon-base-plans-100-kilowatt-nuclear/

right-wing rag.

I read it on German tech news site heise.de, so it must have come
from a NASA press release and the leanings of the news aggregator
don't matter.

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Knowing nothing about small nuclear reactors, I looked at submarine
reactors for comparison.[1] Those deliver around 150 _mega_watts
of power. Oops.

Then I, too, started wondering how to dump waste heat on the moon.
You use a radiator? To make a radiator as efficient as possible,
you want it to be as hot as possible. But to make your heat engine
as efficient as possible, you want to dump the waste heat at the
lowest possible temperature. Now that calls for an interesting
engineering compromise.

But 100 kW is really small.


[1] In Kim Stanley Robinson's _Red Mars_, a small nuclear reactor
was referred to as a "Rickover"--after US admiral Hyman G.
Rickover, who was instrumental in developing and deploying
nuclear propulsion in the US Navy. I think I understood that
reference only later when Wikipedia came along.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber [email protected]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:36:07 GMT, [email protected] (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

Lynn McGuire <[email protected]> writes:

“NASA Accelerates Moon Base Plans With 100-Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor to >>Outpace China�?
>>https://thelibertydaily.com/nasa-accelerates-moon-base-plans-100-kilowatt-nuclear/

right-wing rag.

Pie in the sky from the unqualified "interim director" (former lumberjack
and television presenter). I used to live in his district. Thinly populated >and fairly conservative.

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Not an easy task, it may require significant resources just to
provide the very large radiators (and the correponding heat
transfer mechanisms/fluids); not clear that they can be produced
in-situ.

This sounds like something that might be possible after, say, 20 years
of steady industrial development on the Moon. And if not 20, perhaps
50.

IOW, something an established Moon colony could manage.

Then again, as another has noted, the output is far less than that of
a nuclear-powered submarine's reactor. So maybe it would be small
enough to fit into a suitable launch vehicle. If only in pieces, some
on-site assembly being required.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 20:33:17 -0400, Cryptoengineer
<[email protected]> wrote:

On 8/16/2025 11:50 AM, Paul S Person wrote:

On Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:36:07 GMT, [email protected] (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

Lynn McGuire <[email protected]> writes:

“NASA Accelerates Moon Base Plans With 100-Kilowatt Nuclear Reactor to >>>> Outpace China�?

https://thelibertydaily.com/nasa-accelerates-moon-base-plans-100-kilowatt-nuclear/

right-wing rag.

Pie in the sky from the unqualified "interim director" (former lumberjack >>> and television presenter). I used to live in his district. Thinly populated
and fairly conservative.

They'll need to design a brand new reactor which can dissipate all
the waste heat involved in power production with no atmosphere
and no nearby river or ocean.

Not an easy task, it may require significant resources just to
provide the very large radiators (and the correponding heat
transfer mechanisms/fluids); not clear that they can be produced
in-situ.

This sounds like something that might be possible after, say, 20 years
of steady industrial development on the Moon. And if not 20, perhaps
50.

IOW, something an established Moon colony could manage.

Then again, as another has noted, the output is far less than that of
a nuclear-powered submarine's reactor. So maybe it would be small
enough to fit into a suitable launch vehicle. If only in pieces, some
on-site assembly being required.

A submarine nuclear reactor has the ocean to dump heat in.

Which misses the point: it produces a lot more electricity than
proposed here, yet surely is not as large as a land-based nuclear
power station.

In a vacuum its a lot harder. Take a look at the ISS.

It runs at 84-120 kW, comparable to the proposed reactor,
and uses 254 sq m of radiators

Even is we have to double it since half the view of a
radiator panel is the hot lunar surface, that's still
not an unimaginable amount of area.

So, you are agreeing with me: it could be packed and sent to the Moon
in peices, to be assembled there.

Well, a puny one anyway.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)