Space and Physics
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Back in August, the then-interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced that NASA was going to build a nuclear fission reactor on the Moon by 2030. Despite Duffy, the US Transport Secretary, being replaced by billionaire Jared Isaacman, NASA is still going ahead with the project with the same tight deadline. Last week, Isaacman met with the U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to sign a memorandum of understanding between NASA and the US Department of Energy (DOE).
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.NASA and DOE aim to deploy nuclear reactors on the Moon and in orbit, and that also includes the development of a lunar surface reactor by 2030. This is part of the Trump administration's American Space Superiority plan. Beyond the jingoism, it is not exactly clear how this plan will actually become a reality.
The current state of nuclear reactors for the Moon
There is nothing silly about a plan to have a nuclear reactor on the Moon. Such an energy production system would provide consistent power, supplanting the need for solar panels. Due to the Moon being tidally locked – always showing the same face to us – it experiences 14 days of sunlight and 14 days of night. This makes solar options a bit more limited.
There are regions that are always in sunlight. They are called the Peaks of Eternal Light and are located near the poles, on the rim of craters that never experience night. For this reason, they are very valuable real estate on the Moon, and they are also very limited. Nuclear power is a solid alternative to that.
NASA has been looking at this program for a while. Back in January 2024, the agency wrapped up its first phase of the Fission Surface Power project. In this program, several private companies have demonstrated that it is possible to create nuclear power sources that are safe, clean, and reliable. They got their contracts extended, and a second phase was supposed to start in 2025. The goal was to have one setup sent to the Moon in the early 2030s, test it for a year, and then operate it for nine. A previous reactor design called the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) has also been shown to be robust.
Allowing all the way to December 31, 2030, these groups have five years to produce a reliable space-ready nuclear reactor. The feasibility of this is uncertain. A proposal for a Russian-Chinese reactor on the Moon has not found a solution to the issue of cooling the reactor, something that on Earth is done with water. KRUSTY has the cooling inbuilt, but it is also a much smaller reactor than the requirements put forward by Duffy previously.
With optimism, we could imagine that a good lunar reactor can be found, but it will have to undergo rigorous testing to confirm its safety, a process that will eat into the tight five-year deadline. And then there is the actual delivery of such a reactor to the Moon.
How do we bring it there?
If optimism is the operational keyword for the design and testing of such a reactor in just five years, the launch and the soft-landing on the Moon of such a reactor needs a stronger one. NASA does not have its own soft-lander for the Moon and relies on private companies to provide one. The lander that should already be flying is SpaceX’s Starship, but that has yet to demonstrate reliable space flight, following a series of explosions in 2025. Leaked internal documents suggest that Starship might not be operational as a Moon lander until mid-2028.
The current alternative is from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Its own moon lander, Blue Moon, is expected to be tested this year and become operational by 2030. Private company Intuitive Machines soft landed on the Moon in 2024 and 2025, but the whole lander is much smaller than what an actual reactor would be. To bring a reactor there, you’d need Starship or Blue Moon, and to make the deadline, at this point, nothing else can go wrong. Already, a human moon landing by the end of the decade seems unlikely, let alone landing a nuclear reactor.
Words vs. actions
“Under President Trump’s national space policy, America is committed to returning to the Moon, building the infrastructure to stay, and making the investments required for the next giant leap to Mars and beyond,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “Achieving this future requires harnessing nuclear power. This agreement enables closer collaboration between NASA and the Department of Energy to deliver the capabilities necessary to usher in the Golden Age of space exploration and discovery.”
The Trump administration previously proposed a budget that was set to devastate NASA's multiple science programs. Congress, however, has put forward a NASA budget plan that is closer to the 2024 one, broadly rejecting President Trump’s plan for the agency. That said, a Space.com investigation into cuts to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center revealed that some of the cuts may have already been implemented prematurely (and possibly illegally) during the government shutdown.
The agency has also lost personnel since the second Trump administration came to power, losing precious continuity of expertise. Congress’s budget plan – which will be voted on soon – has seen a clear commitment to the Artemis program and getting humans on the Moon by 2028. Trump wanted to cancel the Space Launch System and Orion Spacecraft, making NASA exclusively reliant on private companies to get to the Moon. As yet, we don't have one of those that won't stop exploding – not an ideal place to put nuclear material.
