Russia and China plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon
Russia and China plan to install a nuclear power plant on the Moon
Russia and China are studying the possibility of installing a nuclear power plant on the Moon between 2033 and 2035.
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Why would china need help from russia
Because Russia has still a pretty good way of sending rockets to space. The bigger question would be, why you want to do this? And 2nd how would you cool this with no water on the moon
Some types of nuclear power don't work like what you are probably imagining.
Its more of a hockey puck of hot plutonium and a thermocouple, rather than a nuclear power plant on earth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Doubt it. RTGs are great for a deep space probe, but too limited to support a base.
Probably more like:
Good point. Regardless, it will not be like a nuclear plant on earth.
Insightful, thanks !
The article specifically mentions that they don't know how to solve the cooling problem yet. That's what's cool about these types of projects though, they force innovation that can potentially be used elsewhere.
The cooling plan is cooking pancakes. Two birds with one stone.
Big radiators?
Filled with water from where?
There are a lot of seas on the Moon after all.
Earth, I assume. Could also be solid metal or filled with liquid sodium or something if it needs to circulate.
Sounds pretty costly to bring all that up
But yeah, solid metal as heat transfer could work. Still how to drive a turbine?Could you skip the turbine and slap a bunch of peltier elements on the reactor?
Probably not super efficient, what with the vacuum of space being bad at absorbing hear, and if I recall right peltier produces more power the larger heat gradient.
Isn’t there water in the lunar regolith?
As I see it, three possibilities rise above the others:
- Russia is dusting off and refining plans that the Soviet Union made decades ago, and will claim it as a “huge innovation” or something like that, despite being a concept from the 70s or 80s that just never got off the ground for one reason or another. This could conceivably be done well under the right circumstances, but based on the incredible amount of manufacturing and production issues Russia is having as a direct result of Ukraine War sanctions, it might be that they can’t actually do anything without China’s help, because the highly specialized western equipment they’d normally use is no longer being sold to them, so they need a replacement supplier.
- Russia’s last moon mission went tits up fairly publicly, so Roscosmos is probably thinking they can avoid getting egg on their face if they can persuade China to unify their lunar base ambitions with their own. Note that this ignores the fact that China almost certainly wants to build a moon base entirely on their own, both as a matter of national pride, as well as the fact that they want to fully own any knowledge and expertise gained from such a mission.
- Putin is trying to entice CCP leadership to more closely align themselves with Russia in a geopolitical sense, as a more unified adversary to the west, which these days they both see as an implacable foe that they want to defeat. To me, this is the angle that would make the most sense in terms of convincing CCP leadership… but at the same time, remember that China is absolutely measuring Putin’s back for a knife at this point, because Russia’s got a shitload of natural resources up in Siberia that the Chinese would LOVE to exploit.
Uranium and materials probably. The only rockets that Russia can build are the ones that blow up.