Plans to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon have been confirmed, and it’s left the ‘US in total shock’.
You read that right - if you don’t want a local eyesore being built in your area, then where else should it go? That’s correct, the Moon.
And while it might sound like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie, it is actually very real. China is now in the works to construct a nuclear plant on the Moon.
It’s hoped that this will support a more permanent research station that the country wants to build alongside Russia.
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A presentation in Shanghai took place for foreign governments and organizations where the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) was revealed.
There, the mission’s Chief Engineer, Pei Zhaoyu, showed exactly how the Moon’s energy supply could also depend on large-scale solar arrays, and pipelines and cables for heating and electricity built on the lunar surface.
It’s hoped that this plant will be constructed by 2035, as China is expecting to land its own astronauts on the lunar surface in the next five years.
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This will put China into direct competition with the US, which is also planning to put humans back on the Moon in the next two years.
Who would have thought the space race to the lunar surface would be repeating itself nearly seven decades later?
The (slightly bizarre-sounding) idea to have the nuclear plant on the Moon was backed up by Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, last year when it said it planned to build a nuclear reactor on the surface by 2035 with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to power the ILRS.
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Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said to Reuters at the conference: “An important question for the ILRS is power supply, and in this Russia has a natural advantage, when it comes to nuclear power plants, especially sending them into space, it leads the world, it is ahead of the United States,” Wu added that they hope “both countries can send a nuclear reactor to the Moon.”
Beijing’s partners in Russia are working on a nuclear-powered cargo spaceship described as a ‘space tugboat’.
Yury Borisov, former head of Roscosmos, said in 2024: “This huge, cyclopean structure would be able, thanks to a nuclear reactor and high-power turbines, to transport large cargo from one orbit to another, collect space debris and engage in many other applications.”