That's cool
UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
171–180 of 185 posts
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s really mind boggling how much money Meta spent on this thing.
Any time someone complains about the government buying $600 toilet seats as an example of how the government wastes money, just point them to the MetaVerse.
$600 for a virtual toilet seat.
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#173Is it me, or is the UK government launching an unusually large number of boondoggles lately? Nuclear reactors on the moon. Attempts to become a major player in battery technology. It feels to my jaundiced eye like the UK is trying just a little too hard to remind the world that they still matter. Some Brexit insecurity might explain this, perhaps, but that was over five years ago.
This is the usual amount - they just dont normally force the journalists to write about every grant that gets handed out.
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#174There's a problem with nuclear power on the Moon. How do you get rid of the heat? Here on Earth, we just use water, of which we have plenty. But on Moon water is extremely scarce. It would make the sci-fi novel Dune look like an oasis. When we'll have some type of an economy on the Moon, it's very likely that water will be more expensive than gold. One thing is absolutely certain: we will not be able to afford to vap…
My mind was blown when I first heard that heat dissipation would likely be the key shaping factor in space battles. I think this was the video https://youtu.be/9Xs3mGhQGxM
The pew pew of space lasers are just to heat up the enemy ship and then they blow up of their own accord
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#175First my pocket computer hugely outperforms my 90’s desktop, space rockets get privatized and much cheaper, there’s probably an actual AI online, and now we’re putting a nuclear reactor on the moon. Awesome! (I hope)
Hey sweet, my existence is pointless!
You have to be extraordinarily cynical to not be at least a little excited
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Small nuclear reactors are not proven though and are quite a risky idea since nuclear benefits significantly from scale. If your goal is to produce something that's useful in a short time span, it's better to use proven tech.
The moon is being bombed routinely with space debris so technically is an interesting engineering problem. The same meteorites that create craters in the moon would fall over a nuclear plant so I assume that would need to be put in the face of the moon that is closer to Earth. Otherwise this would mean having several local areas of the moon contaminated and forbidden forever in a few years. Not wind, animals or water…
Given the complete lack of shielding that we get from the magnetosphere and atmosphere I am guessing that a few kg of scattered enriched uranium is going to be background noise on the moon. The target is small, the moon is (relatively) big and we can bury the reactor; a meteor strike on the reactor is probably less of a concern than a similar strike on any habitat to which the reactor it meant to provide power.
A recent Chinese probe has shown that lunar regolith is radioactive just from cosmic ray bombardment, so as a general rule I am guessing that future lunar operations will treat the entire lunar environment the same way we treat places like Chernobyl. Shield everything, watch your dosage and exposure, and do everything possible to prevent inhalation/ingestion of particles from the external environment.
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
The largest terrestrial consumer of oil is road transport (cars and trucks). https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming... You can't put a nuclear reactor in a car. You can charge an electric car's battery using nuclear electricity, of course. But if you're just charging a terrestrial battery then nuclear power's attractive attributes for the Moon (like continuing to produce during a 14 day period o…
You can't put a nuclear reactor in a car. You can charge an electric car's battery using nuclear electricity, of course. But if you're just charging a terrestrial battery then nuclear power's attractive attributes for the Moon (like continuing to produce during a 14 day period of darkness) are less salient. Electricity sources like wind and solar power are likely to charge up the car's battery at lower cost. You don'…
Yeah car and road-centric culture holds a lot of this stuff back. In any urban area an efficient metro underground/elevated/tram metro system could take up a huge percentage of journeys.
If high-speed electrified rail links exist between cities, they can become much more attractive than long car trips.
On-demand transit can fill a lot of gaps in rural areas (e.g. on-demand bus routing)
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess they aren't planning to build the moon-base at the poles, which could provide access to continuous solar power nearby. The rest of the moon has long (+/- 14 day) lunar nights, and getting enough batteries or whatever to the moon to last that long is likely to be impractical/expensive.
Because it's too cold there? Probably too much water ice on the poles to be interesting. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/science/moon-ice-water.ht... oops https://web.archive.org/web/20201101003308/https://www.nytim...
It's certainly very cold deep in the polar craters, which are in permanent darkness. But in the sunlit areas it's relatively mild. There's far less variation than in equatorial regions, which have to deal with huge variance between day and night temperatures.
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that case the original commenter was wrong calling it a Navy reactor.
My comment link has a link to[1]: which is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists saying "The Navy shuts down and dismantles a nuclear reactor in Antarctica", "Sometime soon the US Navy will have to find some place to quietly dispose of [...] by-product of 10 years of operating a small military power reactor in Antarctica", "The Navy considered nuclear power particularly suitable for the inland bases, where oil fuel w…
> The US Navy made a nuclear reactor
Still wrong, made != owned
Re: UK backs Rolls-Royce project to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a funny attempted dunk on US Navy nuclear considering they operate a fleet of nuclear powered submarines and warships.
It isn't an attempted dunk on US Navy nuclear, it's an attempt to say that humans failed to run a nuclear reactor in Antarctica, why think one will be any easier on the moon? The crew is way more expensive, spare parts are not available, tools are not available, there's no bulldozers or other way to move 12,000 tons of contaminated rocks away from the area like they had to do in the Antarctic, plus solar is so much b…
> the moon has no atmosphere to get in the way of it.
The lunar night is 14 days long