Russia is reportedly planning to establish a nuclear power plant on the moon within the next decade.
This ambitious project aims to supply energy for its lunar space programme and a joint research station with China, as global powers intensify their efforts in lunar exploration.
Historically, Russia has held a prominent position in space, notably with Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey in 1961.
However, its dominance has waned in recent decades, with the nation now trailing behind the United States and, increasingly, China.
The country’s lunar aspirations faced a significant setback in August 2023 when its uncrewed Luna-25 mission crashed during a landing attempt.
Furthermore, the landscape of space launches, once a Russian speciality, has been revolutionised by figures such as Elon Musk, adding to the competitive pressure.
Umm… Cooling?
There are spacecrafts that currently require cooling for electronics or for nuclear reactors or wtv. You can’t use convection (a fluid, such as the atmosphere, contacting what you want to cool), but you can cool using radiation. Just emit extra energy as radiation and you can keep whatever cool
We’re talking about the output of the nuclear reactor. Not heat generated by a few computer. There are no radiator design that can deal with that kind of heat.
Sci-fi shows either just hand wave it away by just putting massive radiators on things and hope you don’t think about the scale or they just straight up ignore it.
Not much of a problem if you go for the south side. Maintenance, on the other hand…
Cooling requires heat transfer, and whatever thin atmosphere the moon has won’t be able to do that.
But not all heat transfer requires an atmosphere
Heat doesn’t transfer through empty space; it transfers through “stuff”. There needs to be cooler “stuff” for heat to transfer to.
Ok, what about the sun? Are you a “firmament enjoyer”?
Regolith heat sink?
South side, or dark side? Kenny or jarjar?
Dark side, south side. The part that rarely gets any sun.
The “dark side” of the moon is just the one that constantly faces away from the Earth. It gets just as much sunlight as the rest of the surface.
There are certain craters or other formations near the south pole of the moon that are arranged in such a way that some parts of the surface are in permanent shadow. These are interesting because we expect to find very low temperatures in these permanent shadows, and if they’ve been around for several million years, any number of volatile compounds.
Anyhow, I think this is the “dark side” the person referred to.
It seems like somewhat of a waste to me to use these as heatsinks, when you could just use a lot of radiators. But what do I know?
You realize that the moon is totally locked to Earth right, not the Sun. The back of the moon faces the Sun half the time.
Yes, so wouldn’t my question about cooling be valid, unless they plan on running the reactor only half of the time?