What if we a construct Nuclear reactor in moon which provides energy for colonization in Moon in future. Like a nuclear reactor in Earth which provides electricity, NASA is going to construct a nuclear fission reactor on Moon to generate electricity for human settlement and other scientific research works.The tests prove that the agencies could build a “safe, reliable, and efficient” system by 2020, the year NASA plans to return humans to the moon - Artemis mission.
This fission reactor works by splitting the atoms, as it is a fission reactor which produces a enormous amount of heat energy which later then converted into electrical energy. In the 1960s a series of compact, experimental space nuclear reactors were developed by NASA under the Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power program. But public safety concerns and an international treaty banning nuclear power in space stopped development.
Unlike solar power, these kind of nuclear reactor provides constant supply of energy a necessity for human life-support systems, recharging rovers, and mining for resources. The limitations of using solar power is, it require the use of energy storage devices like batteries or fuel cells, adding unwanted mass to the system, and the Moon is dark for up to 14 days at a time and has deep craters that can obscure the sun. Mars is farther away from the sun than either the Earth or the moon, so less solar power can be harvested there.
NASA started the mission called Fission Surface Power in 2006, the main goal of this mission is examining small reactors designed for use on other planets. While nuclear power remains controversial, the researchers say that the reactor would be designed to be completely safe and would be buried a safe distance from the astronauts to shield them from any radiation it would generate. The recent tests examined technologies that would see a nuclear reactor coupled with a Stirling engine capable of producing 40 kilowatts of energy–enough to power a future lunar or Mars outpost.
“We are not building a system that needs hundreds of gigawatts of power like those that produce electricity for our cities,” says Don Palac, the project manager at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The system needs to be cheap, safe, and robust and “our recent tests demonstrated that we can successfully build that,” says Palac.
The reactor uses the liquid metal to transfer the heat energy from the reactor to Stirling engine, the Stirling engine uses the gas pressure to convert the heat energy into electrical energy. for the test purpose, the researchers uses the non nucleated source of heat energy and liquid metal is sodium potassium mixture, which is used to transfer the heat energy into Stirling engine.
The researchers also developed a lightweight radiator panel to cool the system and dissipate the heat from the reactor. The prototype panel is approximately six feet by nine feet–one-twentieth the size required for a full-scale system. Heat from a water-cooling system is circulated to the radiator where it dissipates. This system was tested at a vacuum chamber, which replicates the lack of atmosphere and the extreme temperatures on the moon–from over 100 degrees Celsius during the day to below 100 degrees Celsius at night.
Later, the Stirling generator was tested in radiation environment, because the space environment is full of radiations. This test was conducted at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. The main objective of this test is to monitor the motor, whether it can degraded in that radiation atmosphere. The alternator was subjected to 20 times the amount of radiation it would expect to see in its lifetime and survived without any significant problems.
The researchers are also working on the power transmission and electronics of the system. “A lunar base needs lots of power for things like computers, life support, and to heat up rocks to get out resources like oxygen and hydrogen,” says Ross Radel, a senior member of the technical staff and part of the advanced nuclear concepts group at Sandia. His group is working on the systems dynamic analysis, a computer model that predicts how the reactor will perform during testing. “Nuclear is a stepping stone to move further out into manned space exploration,” says Radel.
Mason says that nuclear fission is one of a number of concepts being tested as a power source for human missions to the moon and Mars, and if selected, he says the technology could be deployed by 2020.
This fission reactor works by splitting the atoms, as it is a fission reactor which produces a enormous amount of heat energy which later then converted into electrical energy. In the 1960s a series of compact, experimental space nuclear reactors were developed by NASA under the Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power program. But public safety concerns and an international treaty banning nuclear power in space stopped development.
Unlike solar power, these kind of nuclear reactor provides constant supply of energy a necessity for human life-support systems, recharging rovers, and mining for resources. The limitations of using solar power is, it require the use of energy storage devices like batteries or fuel cells, adding unwanted mass to the system, and the Moon is dark for up to 14 days at a time and has deep craters that can obscure the sun. Mars is farther away from the sun than either the Earth or the moon, so less solar power can be harvested there.
NASA started the mission called Fission Surface Power in 2006, the main goal of this mission is examining small reactors designed for use on other planets. While nuclear power remains controversial, the researchers say that the reactor would be designed to be completely safe and would be buried a safe distance from the astronauts to shield them from any radiation it would generate. The recent tests examined technologies that would see a nuclear reactor coupled with a Stirling engine capable of producing 40 kilowatts of energy–enough to power a future lunar or Mars outpost.
“We are not building a system that needs hundreds of gigawatts of power like those that produce electricity for our cities,” says Don Palac, the project manager at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The system needs to be cheap, safe, and robust and “our recent tests demonstrated that we can successfully build that,” says Palac.
The reactor uses the liquid metal to transfer the heat energy from the reactor to Stirling engine, the Stirling engine uses the gas pressure to convert the heat energy into electrical energy. for the test purpose, the researchers uses the non nucleated source of heat energy and liquid metal is sodium potassium mixture, which is used to transfer the heat energy into Stirling engine.
The researchers also developed a lightweight radiator panel to cool the system and dissipate the heat from the reactor. The prototype panel is approximately six feet by nine feet–one-twentieth the size required for a full-scale system. Heat from a water-cooling system is circulated to the radiator where it dissipates. This system was tested at a vacuum chamber, which replicates the lack of atmosphere and the extreme temperatures on the moon–from over 100 degrees Celsius during the day to below 100 degrees Celsius at night.
Later, the Stirling generator was tested in radiation environment, because the space environment is full of radiations. This test was conducted at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. The main objective of this test is to monitor the motor, whether it can degraded in that radiation atmosphere. The alternator was subjected to 20 times the amount of radiation it would expect to see in its lifetime and survived without any significant problems.
The researchers are also working on the power transmission and electronics of the system. “A lunar base needs lots of power for things like computers, life support, and to heat up rocks to get out resources like oxygen and hydrogen,” says Ross Radel, a senior member of the technical staff and part of the advanced nuclear concepts group at Sandia. His group is working on the systems dynamic analysis, a computer model that predicts how the reactor will perform during testing. “Nuclear is a stepping stone to move further out into manned space exploration,” says Radel.
Mason says that nuclear fission is one of a number of concepts being tested as a power source for human missions to the moon and Mars, and if selected, he says the technology could be deployed by 2020.
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