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WE DON’T NEED NUCLEAR REACTORS ON THE MOON  
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Joseph Cirincione
August 6, 2025
MSNBC
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_ Transportation Secretary and acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy's
plan to fast-track nuclear reactors on the moon is a dangerous
distraction. _

, NASA, E. Siegel

 

If Transportation Secretary and acting NASA Administrator
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Duffy wanted to do his part to help provide a distraction
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the Trump administration’s Jeffrey Epstein files scandal
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his announcement of a plan to put nuclear reactors on the moon was a
partial success. In the 24 hours after his announcement on Monday, he
was briefly trending on social media, just behind Ghislaine Maxwell
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If he intended this to be a serious proposal for human occupation of
the moon, he failed. For the near future, nuclear reactors on the moon
are impractical, expensive and dangerous.

Duffy may not understand this. He has no experience in space or
nuclear technology. He is a former Fox News host who became interim
director in June when President Donald Trump pulled the nomination
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Elon Musk’s choice, billionaire Jared Isaacman, after Trump’s
breakup with Musk.

For the near future, nuclear reactors on the moon are impractical,
expensive and dangerous.

Space exploration has used nuclear materials for power for many
decades. This is overwhelmingly in the form of radioisotope
thermoelectric generators. These use plutonium-238, which gives off
heat used to generate electric power for small probes, including some
of the rovers on Mars. This typically involves 20 or 30 pounds of
material. In fact, several of the Apollo missions left some behind
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the moon were powered by such radioactive means.

But a nuclear reactor is another matter altogether. This would involve
potentially hundreds of pounds of low-enriched uranium in
yet-undeveloped small reactors delivered by space launchers that
don’t exist.

NASA officials have been planning for small modular reactors for the
moon and Mars for years.

As CNBC explained in 2020
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“The facility will be fully manufactured and assembled on Earth,
then tested for safety and to make sure it operates correctly.
Afterwards, it will be integrated with a lunar lander, and a launch
vehicle will transport it to an orbit around the moon. A lander will
lower it to the surface, and once it arrives, it will be ready for
operation with no additional assembly or construction required.”

NASA has made some progress. But now Duffy wants to accelerate the
plans to leap from the 10-kilowatt reactor (quite small by power
standards) to the 100kW reactor — and launch it by 2030. This would
be five years ahead of the announced plans of Russia and China for
similar missions.

There is a little chance that he can do it. This new timeline is
actually four years later than the 2026 target of a “flight system,
lander and reactor” that NASA set just five years ago
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None of these exist today.

The cost of doing all this isn’t mentioned in any of his news
releases. But it’s likely to be billions of dollars more in
contracts to corporations such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and newly
formed energy companies. Where will the money come from? Perhaps from
the freed-up budgets of some of the 41 space missions NASA canceled
in May
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part of Trump’s vicious 47% cut in NASA’s budget — including
several spacecraft already paid for, launched and making discoveries.

“These spacecraft are designed to track the major forces shaping our
planet, from rainfall and wildfires to hurricanes and
urbanization,” writes Asa Stahl
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science editor at the Planetary Society. “People all over the world
use this information to help keep crops alive and stave off natural
disasters.” They now take a back seat to crewed moon missions.

What could go wrong? The most obvious disaster scenario is an
explosion upon launch. NASA takes great care to plot the launch
trajectories of missions using nuclear materials so that if there is
an accident, the small quantities of radioactive material would
scatter over less-populated areas. Launching a nuclear reactor is
significantly more dangerous.

It isn’t obvious that nuclear power on the moon is necessary at all.

In 1977, the Soviet Union launched a satellite with a nuclear reactor
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low-Earth orbit. Within weeks, the satellite failed. The safety backup
plan to eject the reactor into outer space also failed. The satellite,
with over 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, plunged into the
Earth’s atmosphere, burning up and scattering radioactive debris
over a 400-mile path in Canada. The cleanup took eight months.

Nor is it clear that private corporations would be as careful. There
are already major complaints
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the debris falling from the many failed SpaceX launches. Radioactive
debris would be much more serious.

Another lunar nuclear nightmare would be an explosion on the moon’s
surface. If, say, a meteorite hit the reactor’s cooling system, heat
could build up, triggering an explosion that could contaminate a large
area of the moon and cut off any base from its power supply.

Fortunately, it isn’t obvious that nuclear power on the moon is
necessary at all. It is at least as likely that we could develop
improved batteries to store solar energy. These could power small
bases during the two-week-long lunar nights. Many of the rovers and
probes that use thermoelectric sources for heat and energy rely
primarily on solar panels for their power.

In the 1950s, nuclear power proponents promised in congressional
hearings that nuclear power would soon make electricity so cheap that
we wouldn’t have to meter it. We would soon have nuclear-powered
airplanes and cars and small reactors for every home. Seventy years
later, none of these predicted benefits have appeared.

Nuclear proponents are undeterred. Propelled by the prospect of huge
profits from government contracts, they are just as enthusiastic
today. Small, safe, launch-ready nuclear reactors, it seems, will
always be just around the corner.

Duffy’s ploy worked for about one news cycle, generating headlines
and visions of a new nuclear space race, but it did little to change
technological realities. Atomic-powered space colonies are likely to
remain a nuclear pie in the sky for the foreseeable future.

_[xxxxxx MODERATOR: RELATED ARTICLE -- _

_What a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon Really Means for Nasa’s Future
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Ethan Siegel
Starts With A Bang / Big Think
There are real concerns with long-term power generation on the Moon;
nuclear could be the answer. But for NASA, will the cost be too
high?]_

_JOSEPH CIRINCIONE is vice-chair of the Center for International
Policy Board of Directors_

* Donald Trump
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* NASA
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* nuclear power
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* moon
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