Building Nuclear Power on the Moon

Here's the kind of story that will seem unimportant to the mass media, but could have far reaching implications: NASA is trying to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.

I'm already anticipating the protesters with signs reading, "You ruined Earth/Now you're ruing the Moon' or something terribly sad and poignant. If you're stuck in the 70's and you think nuclear power is bad, none of this will appeal to you.

Humans will probably eventually need to leave the Earth to live somewhere else. (We're talking about the distant future, not next week when the polar ice caps melt and the world is underwater because we didn't recycle.) If we are going to explore space and find another home we will need to colonize other planets and the Moon is a good place to start. Building a nuclear power station could give us the power we need to start building living quarters, landing pads, and observatories. The Discovery article reports that the amount of power NASA is trying to provide would power about 8 U.S. homes, so they are obviously working on long term plans that could put people there. It makes me wish I had gotten into astrophysics.

Putting nuclear power on the moon might seem trivial, but humans in the future could remember this as the first step toward putting a permanent residence on another planet.

John McCain - The Nuclear Pioneer

''Great nations don't leave the lifeblood of their economy in the hands of foreign cartels or bet their future on a commodity located in countries where authoritarians repress their people and terrorists find their main support.'' -John McCain

Nuclear power is the redheaded stepchild of the energy crisis. Fear of nuclear power has been fueled by movies and comic books and real-life events that are not well understood. (For example, the name 'Three Mile Island' conjures up images of death and evil radiation, even though it harmed about as many people as Y2K. None.)

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots...[t]hirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change. Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace

Nuclear power is an easily misunderstood thing. On television, if it is not exploding it is giving people super powers. (It's important to note that in the event of a nuclear meltdown an explosion will not occur, the core will simply sink into the Earth.)

Let's look at how dangerous this stuff is. France is currently getting 75% of their energy from nuclear power and no harm seems to be coming of it. On nuclear submarines, sailors sleep with their heads a few feet from a nuclear reactor and suffer no ill effects for it. This stuff is pretty safe.

But, given the current climate of fear concerning nuclear power, which politician can be bold enough to recommend using more nuclear power? Hardly any, except for an independent maverick like John McCain who is proposing 45 new nuclear reactors. This is clean and dependable energy that will reduce our dependency on oil and clean up our environment. I've been waiting for a president who would do something like this. Maybe, now, we can have one.