Nuclear power plants are some of the most sophisticated and complex energy systems ever designed. Any complex system, no matter how well it is designed and engineered, cannot be deemed failure-proof. Veteran anti-nuclear activist and author Stephanie Cooke has argued:
The reactors themselves were enormously complex machines with an incalculable number of things that could go wrong. When that happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, another fault line in the nuclear world was exposed. One malfunction led to another, and then to a series of others, until the core of the reactor itself began to melt, and even the world's most highly trained nuclear engineers did not know how to respond. The accident revealed serious deficiencies in a system that was meant to protect public health and safety.
The 1979 Three Mile Island accident inspired Perrow's book Normal Accidents, where a nuclear accident occurs, resulting from an unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system. TMI was an example of a normal accident because it was "unexpected, incomprehensible, uncontrollable and unavoidable".
Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a consequence of the system's immense complexity. Such modern high-risk systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he termed a 'normal accident'. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to abandon such technology entirely..
A fundamental issue contributing to a nuclear power system's complexity is its extremely long lifetime. The timeframe from the start of construction of a commercial nuclear power station through the safe disposal of its last radioactive waste, may be 100 to 150 years.
Controversy
The abandoned city of Prypiat, Ukraine, following the Chernobyl disaster. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.
The nuclear power debate is about the controversy which has surrounded the deployment and use of nuclear fission reactors to generate electricity from nuclear fuel for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, when it "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies", in some countries.
Proponents argue that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source which reduces carbon emissions and can increase energy security if its use supplants a dependence on imported fuels. Proponents advance the notion that nuclear power produces virtually no air pollution, in contrast to the chief viable alternative of fossil fuel. Proponents also believe that nuclear power is the only viable course to achieve energy independence for most Western countries. They emphasize that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by using the latest technology in newer reactors, and the operational safety record in the Western world is excellent when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.
Opponents say that nuclear power poses many threats to people and the environment. These threats include health risks and environmental damage from uranium mining, processing and transport, the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation or sabotage, and the unsolved problem of radioactive nuclear waste. They also contend that reactors themselves are enormously complex machines where many things can and do go wrong, and there have been many serious nuclear accidents.Critics do not believe that these risks can be reduced through new technology.They argue that when all the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered, from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning, nuclear power is not a low-carbon electricity source.
Nuclear power may be scary but is it really that unsafe to warrant a discussion about moving it to the Moon? In terms of deaths-per-TWh, (see, e.g., http://www.good.is/posts/interactive-chart-deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source; may not be the best reference but it's too late at night for me to Google for more) nuclear power may in fact by the safest choice by far, even if you factor in the projected premature deaths due to Chernobyl. And while Chernobyl was deadly, imagine a power generating station accident that kills over 170,000 people right away. Would you like to ban an industry that can produce such a megascale disaster? Well, guess what... it happened, in 1975, when a hydroelectric dam failed in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam). Chernobyl is nothing compared to that catastrophe, and it was by no means the only one involving dams. So would it not make more sense to move hydroelectric plants to the Moon instead? :-) More seriously, if you are trying to move such an industry to the Moon, you need to account for the risks involved with that move. What if the rocket carrying radioactive fuel explodes in the atmosphere? And what about the technology used to beam the energy back to the Earth? What if it manages to cook a city instead? What about all the deaths caused by industrial accidents during construction, not to mention operating such a plant in the hostile environment of the Moon?
I think that this is impossible to happen, at least during this century, and there are so many reasons that support this opinion.
To build a nuclear power plant, you need different types of materials, equipment, personnel, living conditions, among many other things. There is no possibility that this amount of different types of materials, equipment and personnel, among other elements can be sent from the Earth.
Even in the hypothetical case that the nuclear power plant can be built on the Moon, you need personnel to operate the plant and physical lines to transmit the electricity generate to the Earth and this is impossible to have, at least during the current century.
Nuclear power may be scary but is it really that unsafe to warrant a discussion about moving it to the Moon? In terms of deaths-per-TWh, (see, e.g., http://www.good.is/posts/interactive-chart-deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source; may not be the best reference but it's too late at night for me to Google for more) nuclear power may in fact by the safest choice by far, even if you factor in the projected premature deaths due to Chernobyl. And while Chernobyl was deadly, imagine a power generating station accident that kills over 170,000 people right away. Would you like to ban an industry that can produce such a megascale disaster? Well, guess what... it happened, in 1975, when a hydroelectric dam failed in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam). Chernobyl is nothing compared to that catastrophe, and it was by no means the only one involving dams. So would it not make more sense to move hydroelectric plants to the Moon instead? :-) More seriously, if you are trying to move such an industry to the Moon, you need to account for the risks involved with that move. What if the rocket carrying radioactive fuel explodes in the atmosphere? And what about the technology used to beam the energy back to the Earth? What if it manages to cook a city instead? What about all the deaths caused by industrial accidents during construction, not to mention operating such a plant in the hostile environment of the Moon?
Researchers at NASA and the Department of Energy tested key technologies for developing a nuclear fission reactor that could power a human outpost on the Moon or Mars. http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/a-lunar-nuclear-reactor/
Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese architecture and engineering firm, has a plan to effectively turn the moon into a giant solar power plant.
It proposes building a massive collection of solar panels (a "Luna Ring") 6,800 miles long by 12 miles wide on the moon's surface. That's certainly a heavy-duty construction job for human beings, so Shimizu plans to get the work done with robots, only involving humans in supervisory roles.
http://www.infowars.com/japan-wants-to-turn-the-moon-into-a-giant-power-plant/
We need a power system that is independent of earth's biosphere and provides an abundant energy at low cost.
Bad idea. We better direct our efforts to harness fusion here on Earth.
We have deployed nuclear reactors on the Moon's surface already, granted, these were solid-state RTGs, but they did work and provided local power for both soviet and american craft.
Rather than going to the trouble of landing a reactor at the bottom of a not-insignificant gravity well, why not spend more effort on a SPSS? You'll still need a microwave link to beam down the energy, and building in GEO is a far simpler activity than the dusty lit/dark surface of the Moon.
(Granted, the delta-v to GEO is higher than a hard-landing on the lunar surface)
Correction: for 'reactors' in the first line please replace with 'power-raising systems' - with my thanks to F. Glodeanu.
RTGs are not nuclear reactors!
A radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, uses the fact that radioactive materials (such as plutonium) generate heat as they decay into non-radioactive materials. The heat used is converted into electricity by an array of thermocouples which then power the spacecraft. http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/power/1-what-are-rtgs.html
All nuclear reactors are devices designed to maintain a chain reaction producing a steady flow of neutrons generated by the fission of heavy nuclei. They are, however, differentiated either by their purpose or by their design features. In terms of purpose, they are either research reactors or power reactors. http://www.euronuclear.org/1-information/energy-uses.htm
It is not necessary or desirable to build nuclear plant on the moon. Nuclear power is, based on actual statistics, one of the safest ways to produce energy and also has one of the least environmental impacts. The reasons are simple:
1. There is no air pollution and no carbon dioxide. Air is not used in the process
2. The amount of fuel and waste produce is small. The fuel in a 1000 MWe reactor core can fit in a two garage.
3. Since the amount of fuel required is smaller than coal, gas, wood or any other burning fuel the mining impact of nuclear is the least of all the major energy opitons.
4. The amount of land usage for a reactor is the least compared to Wind or Solar or bio mass
5. Nuclear energy production is 24/7 except for a refueling outage which takes 3 weeks every two years. Solar and Wind have capacity factor 25 and 35% are are very intermittent.
6. Concerning accidents, even with TMI, Chernobol and Fukushima, the loss of life (none in the case of TMI and none in the case of Fukushima), is still very low and cancer rates are not significantly above the norm.
FinallyAll energy options should be assessed against one another for there pro and cons. There is a serious problem with climate change and nuclear power must be part of the energy mix.
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