Russia says it is considering putting a nuclear power plant on the moon with China

jordanlund , 3 months ago

Removed, duplicate.

Original here:

lemmy.world/post/12815074

DarkThoughts , 3 months ago

Why repost this?

PrincessLeiasCat , 3 months ago

This is interesting because my job is oddly specific enough to involve talking about things like this for real.

It’s not a terrible idea, especially if you’re in an area with a long lunar night (a few weeks) where temps are around -130C. That being said, daylight is roughly the same temp but on the positive side.

I don’t understand why they need a reactor though? Can’t they use radioactive plutonium like is already being done on Mars?

And solar panels/Lithium ion batteries aren’t your only other option for power, either. Fuel cells with all kinds of different chemistries are being looked at as promising.

Anyway, just my immediate thoughts after skimming the article.

JaymesRS , 3 months ago

Oh yeah‽ Well, I’m considering building a fusion reactor around the sun.

jordanlund , 3 months ago

It’s kind of a chicken and egg problem though, isn’t it?

They need the power to build significant structures, but you have to build the reactor to generate the power.

sylver_dragon , 3 months ago

He said all the technical questions concerning the project had been solved apart from finding a solution on how to cool the nuclear reactor.

So, they’ve solved everything, except one of the biggest problems with sending systems into space. Not to minimize all the other incredibly difficult parts of spaceflight, but cooling is one of the biggest problems there is. And cooling a nuclear reactor is difficult enough on Earth where you can just pump a bunch of water around the reactor and then dump said water back out into the ecosystem. In space, there is nothing to convect or conduct the heat away. So, you either have to find a way to radiate away excess heat, which is really hard to do fast enough; or, you have to boil off a gas and dump that into space. Which just changes the material you have to worry about running out of. It’s not that the problem can’t be solved, but that’s still a pretty high bar to get over.

Eczpurt , 3 months ago

Running the reactor exclusively at night would be pretty funny… The air temperature might be able to cool it enough. Apparently night time on the moon gets far below -100C, that has to have some cooling merit no?

Some solar to offset the day time losses? Idk I’m no scientist. Either way insanely ambitious project.

Jumuta , 3 months ago

yeah, i like your air cooling idea.

i also think they can just ignore wastewater purification because you can just dump all the water into the moon trees, and have them filter them out. then the groundwater can be retrieved for future use

xmunk , 3 months ago

Modern nuclear power generation is extremely safe and environmentally friendly - I have no idea why you’d need a stable power supply on the moon but nuclear is an excellent option if you did.

vintageballs , 3 months ago

Environmentally friendly.

Apart from the waste products that have to be stored away for millions of years.

Dasus , 3 months ago

That is true, but the efficiency of nuclear power has also gotten better, so there’s a fair bit less waste.

Fast neutron reactors can increase efficiency of nuclear energy and shrink the environmental footprint of radioactive waste. Several countries are looking to these innovative reactors to help ensure a sustainable energy future.

Fast reactors use neutrons that are not slowed down by a moderator, such as water, to sustain the fission chain reaction. While only a fraction of natural uranium is used as fuel in existing thermal reactors, fast reactors can use almost all uranium contained in the fuel to extract up to 70 times more energy, reducing the need for new uranium resources.

Fast reactors also operate in what is known as a closed nuclear fuel cycle. A closed fuel cycle is when spent fuel — nuclear fuel after it has been irradiated — is recycled and reused. Such an energy system could potentially be sustainable for thousands of years. This contrasts with an open fuel cycle, where nuclear fuel is used once and the spent fuel is declared as waste for eventual underground disposal in geological repositories.

Fast reactors can also produce or ‘breed’ more fuel than they consume and burn off some of the waste contained in spent fuel, such as minor actinides, which thermal reactors cannot do efficiently. Burning them off significantly reduces the volume, toxicity and lifespan of the longest-living radioactive waste.

iaea.org/…/shrinking-nuclear-waste-and-increasing…

I would still prefer renewables, but we have to admit that hesitance on technology that is clearly more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels is very advantageous to the fossil fuel industry.

Ofc there’s money in nuclear energy as well, so it’s not like anyone of the industries is unbiased. Nuclear and fossil are fuel based though, whereas renewables that run on solar, wind, water don’t require fuel, which makes for less opportunities for pseudomonopolies to exploit people economically. Which is good.

But still. Nuclear > fossil fuels. By a metric fuckton. We shouldn’t hesitate on that; no time to.

xmunk , 3 months ago

It depends on the fuel used, older reactors would produce waste that lasts beyond conceivable lifetimes but there’s hope. Nuclear research has been stunted for decades by environmental concerns after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island but alternative designs like the MSR produce easy to process waste that can be fully processed in a decade without having the possibility to go critical.

Nuclear energy is an excellent option but it goes against American priorities, it is affordable in the long term but extremely expensive to build so private companies are extremely hesitant to invest - it’s something that would need government oversight and would decrease reliance on fossil fuels faster than other renewables so, along with those options, it’s often dismissed as socialism.

There is a lot of neat information and interesting science out there if you’re ever curious.