The Kilopower concept (Image: NASA)
Posted on 01/19/2018 6:27:23 PM PST by BenLurkin
01/18/2018
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy successfully performed their initial tests on a miniature nuclear power system, and will try a more developed test in March.
Reuters reports: Months-long testing began in November at the energy department’s Nevada National Security Site, with an eye toward providing energy for future astronaut and robotic missions in space and on the surface of Mars, the moon or other solar system destinations.
You may remember that human astronauts walked on the moon only a handful of times back in the 1960s and 1970s, and never for longer than three consecutive days. Longer missions planned for Mars, like the one depicted in Andy Weir’s The Martian, would require a power system—one that can handle the planet’s frigid nights, dust storms, and a more distant sun.
Those are the problems NASA’s Kilopower project hopes to solve with a compact nuclear fission reactor that uses a uranium-235 reactor core “roughly the size of a paper towel roll,” reports Reuters. The reactor would provide 10 kilowatts of power, “enough to run two average households... continuously for at least ten years,” according to a NASA release. Four units would be required to operate an outpost, it continues.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Careful...Hillary will be up there trying to sell off the Plutonium......
Let’s ignore the risks of strapping a nuclear reactor to the end of a rocket. I am wondering how you would cool the reactor and even if this problem is 100% solved, you still need backup batteries in case of a SCRAM. Then what happens when your batteries are depleted and your reactor is nonfunctional?
Solid U-235 block core, auto regulates without control rods only moving parts are sterling engine for electricity generation.
KEWL!
It’s -89 now, just wait until all the SUVs and coal plants go online, it will be a tropical paradise in no time.
Can’t wait for the household version.
Sort of like a terminator power cell.
They should be using that money for global warming and making muslims feel good about killing and enslaving the people who invented zero then approprating it
AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
For God’s sake....NASA isn’t under Obozo’s rules anymore!! WHY do some people continue to say NASA’s prime mission is still muzzie outreach??? IT ISN’T ANYMORE!! STOP saying that!!
(Sorry for the thread hijack.)
A serious question and this?
Maybe we can grow Fungi there, some Lichens can tolerate very low temperatures and engage in photosynthesis
Wait till its on sale at Costco. They make their money on the expensive thorium refill cartridges - their a custom fit and the generics don’t work right half the time. Zappp!
Yeah, and don’t even try to call Customer Support. You get some dude from Mumbai named Shalikevromabokashbubba who says “You may call me ‘Bob’” and who’ll ask you if the thing is plugged in.
It’s time to come home to Florida.
Yeah, but at Costco you have to but a gross at one time.
grown in greenhouses and/or sealed up underground caverns.
possible but would you want to risk your life on it? at this point too many critical points of failure. any tech needed would need several backup units and also sets of critical spare parts until they get metallurgy ability and 3d printing established for other parts.
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