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Current Events
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Cutting-Edge Technology
The UK tech giant, Rolls-Royce, has unveiled a conceptual atomic power plant that could potentially power a future station on the moon.
The mini reactor, which measures about 3.3 feet (1 meter) wide and 10 feet (3 m) long, is not yet capable of producing any electricity, and it will take about 6 years and a few million dollars to get it ready for its space journey, if all goes according to plan.
The UK Space Agency awarded Rolls-Royce ₤2.9 million ($3.7 million U.S. at current exchange rates) in March of this year to fund the development of the potentially groundbreaking lunar technology, a mockup of which was revealed at the UK Space Conference in Belfast last month.
“This funding has enabled critical research and development of technologies that bring us closer to making the Micro-Reactor a reality,” said Abi Clayton, director of future programs at Rolls-Royce, in a statement released Friday (Dec. 1). “Our Space Micro-Reactor Concept Model allows us to illustrate how this technology will bring tremendous benefits for both space and Earth.”
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The reactor will rely on nuclear fission, the same process that enables Earth-based nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Many moon missions, including the rovers recently launched by China and India, have used solar power as a source of energy, but that approach has obvious limitations, as the moon is plunged into darkness for 2 weeks every month. Russia’s 1970s Lunokhod rovers also relied on solar power, while NASA’s Apollo missions used hydrogen fuel cells to power the pioneering human lunar landings.
A simpler, less powerful source of nuclear power used in spaceflight are radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). Those nuclear batteries rely on the natural process of radioactive decay, in which a less stable nucleus changes into a more stable one over time, releasing energy in the process. RTGs last a long time but do not produce enough power to keep a crewed mission going. The process of nuclear fission, on the other hand, splits a large atomic nucleus into smaller pieces. The reaction generates far more energy than simple decay but requires an external source of energy to kick-start it.
The new moon reactor will have a modular design, Rolls-Royce said, and have many potential uses on Earth.
“Micro-Reactor technology will offer the capability to support commercial and defense use cases as well as providing a solution to decarbonize industry and supply clean, safe and reliable energy,” Clayton said in the statement.
Rolls-Royce engineers are currently exploring methods that will enable the heat generated by the reactor through nuclear fission to be converted into electrical power. In traditional atomic power plants on Earth,
