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Killer_Moons t1_jcjy5mq wrote

Important context from article:

*All space missions depend on a power source, to support systems for communications, life-support and science experiments.

Experts suggest nuclear power could dramatically increase the length of lunar missions.

The UK Space Agency has announced £2.9m of new funding for the project, which will deliver an initial demonstration of a UK lunar modular nuclear reactor.

This comes after a £249,000 study funded by the UK Space Agency in 2022.

The science minister George Freeman said: “Space exploration is the ultimate laboratory for so many of the transformational technologies we need on Earth: from materials to robotics, nutrition, cleantech and much more.

“As we prepare to see humans return to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, we are backing exciting research like this lunar modular reactor with Rolls-Royce to pioneer new power sources for a lunar base.*

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Hunky_not_Chunky t1_jckriy4 wrote

I’m no scientist but in space if our bodies can lose heat by convection and we need special water suits to help how will nuclear reactors work? Will we need a bunch of water?

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ACCount82 t1_jckt8e2 wrote

The issue with cooling in open space is that there's nothing you can dump your waste heat into.

Things like ISS use special radiators to radiate away waste heat - while small things that can generate a lot of heat for their size, like space suits, use water evaporation to mount a compact heat removal system.

On the surface of the Moon, you have the entire Moon that you could dump your waste heat into.

Of course, actually dumping the heat into the ground is an engineering and construction challenge - so early Moon and Mars reactors might opt for radiators, like the ones ISS currently uses. They would need a lot of them, but it's still doable for small reactors.

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PHATsakk43 t1_jckucl6 wrote

These reactors will not use water but work with liquid metal coolant.

The heat sinks are giant radiative arrays. Similar designs were proposed for spacecraft during the SNAP program in the 1960s and 1970s.

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