David Hardy's vision of the Moonbase (Pinterest)
As Elon Musk said, the high-profile nuclear accidents are breaking the advancing nuclear technology. One of the most unique ideas for making nuclear power safe is to send the reactors to the Moon. If nuclear reactors are on the surface or they can orbit the Moon in a polar trajectory, that thing can make nuclear power almost safe
When we are thinking about the possibility of making safe nuclear fission reactors, there are no emissions and waste problems we might forget one thing. We might use technology that is created originally for the NERVA rocket.
And the energy can deliver to the Earth by using the laser ray. If the power satellite orbits the Moon by using a polar trajectory. That means that the satellite can deliver energy all the time to Earth. Moon itself can be an excellent place for nuclear power plant because it's locked, and the powerplant can always deliver energy to Earth.
Nuclear power has one benefit, it is independent of sunlight. There is of course possible to make three or four solar power plants to the Moon. Those powerplants can be only the solar panels, what are covering large areas. Then the system can deliver the energy to Earth by using lasers or radio waves.
The idea is that nuclear-powered power satellites are put to orbit the Moon. Those kinds of systems are expensive, but they can make it possible to make almost safe nuclear systems. The lightweight nuclear reactors can work as the entirety. Even one of those reactors is not very powerful, the group of those lightweight reactors can give extremely high- power.
The system can be based on NERVA reactors, which are modified for the energy product. That kind of system is using a closed cooling circuit. That kind of lightweight nuclear unit can send to Moon by using regular rockets.
The idea is that the nuclear reactor will send to the Moon or the Moon's polar orbiter. And then the system will send the energy to the Earth by using laser- or some other electromagnetic radiation. In that case, the system can deliver energy safely, because if there is some kind of problems, the nuclear waste will drop to the Moon. If the system bases the power satellites, the satellite can be the modified spacecraft, which will deliver energy to Earth.
There has been introduced an idea for boosting the power of the energy satellites by putting them to orbit the Sun closer than Earth. The trajectory of Venus could be a good place for solar power satellites. Those satellites might be extremely large. And they can send the energy first to the relay satellites, which are orbiting the Earth-Moon combination. That relay satellite will store and stabilize the energy, that is delivered to the electric supply.
()https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/22/elon-musk-its-possible-to-make-extremely-safe-nuclear-plants.html
()https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
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