Moon Power?

Question

For those who have reservations about Nuclear Power, would it be acceptable and appropriate if they built Nuclear Reactors on the moon to solve the looming global energy crisis? Of course the bill to ship and build them will be astronomical (sorry!) but would it be worth it in the long run?

Answer 1

OK,

Supposing that, as postulated, the Moon is a similar mineral structure to the Earth, It is inevitable that the moon will have Uranium deposits. So the bare essential is present for Nuclear Fission (although quite a few flights would be required to set up the enrichment process).

The best way of transporting energy across the void of space is via light energy (electromagnetic spectrum). If a laser or maser (microwave laser) transmitting station was placed at one of the poles of the moon and a receiving station at one of Earth's poles, then a high degree of transmission could be possible (although diffraction, reflection and absorption would occur) then you have energy "losses" in exchanging light into heat, then heat into kinetic and then kinetic into electric.

In short it would not be worth the cost of doing unless all fossil fuels ran out and the risk of spent nuclear fuel deemed too high.

However, given advances in remote control of robots and the potential for a viable nuclear fusion reactor alongside Mag-Lev accelerators, what appears to be Sci-Fi today can never be ruled out as a possibility in the future - although Star Trek-style transporters can pretty much be ruled out

Answer 2

It depends on how much of the equipment could be mined and built locally on the moon by robots. If we work on building an infrastructure, it would certainly be a possibility for future generations. Very little is actually known about the chemical makeup of the moon, so there might actually be even better sources of energy than nuclear power. Getting the energy back to earth would be a matter of shooting a high-frequency laser beam. It wouldn't be very efficient, but it's energy that we wouldn't otherwise have. If the value of the energy is higher than the cost of producing it, I say go for it!

Answer 3

moon power is with us already the tides are dictated by the moons gravitational pull and tidal energy has been harnessed not very successfuly for the last 20 years or so.nuclear power is expensive and wasteful on this planet never mind shipping it to the moon and will not realy be viable ecconomiccally till cold fusion has been mastered.but once cold fussion has been mastered we will have a safe clean fuel reactor in every home why bother with the moon just pick up a reactor at wallmart

Answer 4

I HATE it when people refer to solar/wind/tidal power as 'free energy'.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely changed from one form to another. Free energy doesn't exist, it's got to come from somewhere!

For example - if you covered a large area with solar panels, then you couldn't use a heat exchanger to get heat from within the ground, as there wouldn't be any heat there, 'cos the sunlight is blocked by the panels and therefore can't heat the earth.

Everything has a knock-on effect. If you put up enough wind turbines, you could alter the weather, as it would disrupt the wind by removing kinetic energy from it. I know, it would take a hell of a lot of windmills, but you get the point.

Answer 5

Well, yes, that would be fine, except from the fuel would be so immense it'd be worse than all the power plants
and also, there is no way to get the power back to earth.
It wouldn't really, plus there are burning forests and stuff, cars, trucks, bombs
If it got hit by a random meteor some day, we'd all be screwed...

Answer 6

It would be better to use reflective mirrors to focus the sunlight to the "night" side of the earth. The sunlight could be used to increase the output of solar collectors on earth for power generation right here. First, though, it would be even better to use these solar collectors in the daytime. We are losing a major opportunity by not taking advantage of the sun's free power.

Answer 7

No, it would not be acceptable.
The Earth is ours to screw up as we see fit, but all the rest is not ours.
I know it is technically feasible to do it, and in fact, getting the materials up there would not be excessively expensive, but we have no right to pollute other worlds.
In any case, as long as nuclear power stations are not built by Yanks (3 mile island), or Russians (Chernobyl) they tend to be quite safe

Answer 8

no because it would need hundreds of workers which would need supplies of oxygen and water and food which would mean daily flights to the moon and in less than 10 years all the oil in the world would be gone! so it would be impossible to have that nuclear power plant on the moon.

Good Idea but doesn't work sadly.

Answer 9

Can you imagine those cables carrying the power to earth, who is going to lay them, where and how.
Can you imagine the rats walking back up the cables and contaminating the moon, like with the New World.

Answer 10

Sure... Apart from screwing up Planet Earth, let's screw the moon over, too!!! Doesn't really matter what we do now; we've already broken the world too much to be fixed.