- LRK -
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http://www.cleveland.com/
Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center leads effort to design tiny
nuclear plant for moon outpost
By John Mangels, The Plain Dealer
October 10, 2009, 9:00PM
There are no electrical outlets on the moon. No power cables either, no transmission towers, no grid, no generating plants.
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Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland are leading work on a possible solution: an ultra-compact nuclear power plant that can run for eight years or longer without maintenance, and can make more than enough electricity to meet the daily needs of the average
American house.
The whole rig could fold up to fit in a tractor-trailer with room to spare. The heart of the system is a reactor no bigger than an office trash bin.
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The lunar outpost's design is still evolving, and NASA's overall human space exploration program is in flux as the White House and Congress wrestle with the cost of building new spacecraft to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.
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Here's the Glenn-led team's basic plan: The small reactor would be buried about 6 feet deep in the lunar soil and shielded with a plug made of boron carbide, a material that blocks radiation as effectively as lead but is much lighter. Splitting uranium atoms in the reactor's core would release energy in the form of heat, as much as 1,200 degrees. A couple of gallons of
liquid metal – probably sodium or a sodium/potassium mix – piped around the core would transfer that heat energy to four Stirling engines mounted on a metal truss above the reactor.
The Stirling engines convert the reactor's heat into mechanical energy, driving an alternator that makes electricity. Together, the engines should put out 40 kilowatts.
Waste heat would be absorbed by coolant and pumped through a series of radiator panels that unfurl from the truss like giant bat wings. The fully extended panels would be 100 feet long, but when folded they're less than 5.
The whole system would weigh 11,000 pounds, about as much as a fully armored Humvee. NASA's Altair lunar lander conceivably could haul two at a time to the surface.
"The idea is to deliver [the nuclear power plant] in this nice, compact, stowed configuration, and once you install the reactor in the hole, you can deploy the radiators," said Mason. "You can do it
remotely from Earth, or from the habitat on the moon. It's meant to be a very simple setup."
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The radiation level of the reactor's individual uranium dioxide fuel pins is low enough that they can be safely hand-held, Palac said. If the rocket carrying the reactor exploded, its nuclear fuel would be dispersed, he said, and the remnants, although they would require cleanup, would not exceed normal background radiation levels.
Palac said he hopes people will react to the project like his wife's aunt, a member of several environmental groups. He'd been worried about her response to his research, and described it obliquely as developing fission surface power for the moon..
"She said, 'Oh, you mean nuclear,'" Palac recalled. "She said, 'You know, nuclear power has tremendous potential to be a solution to our global energy crisis, and how wonderful you're taking it to outer space, where I'm sure it's even more useful.' I was blown away by that."
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Now if we can just get our act together and get back to the Moon while I am still around to see it happen, I would be most pleased. :-)
Thanks for looking up with me.
Larry Kellogg
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lrkellogg
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
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