A 1,000°C Lunar Microreactor Could Power the Next Era of Moon Bases

As humanity continues to move towards a permanent settlement on the Moon, we still have at least one big hurdle to face - the lunar night, which lasts for roughly fourteen days straight and can drop temperatures to a bone-chilling -223°C. In order to survive those conditions, we need a power source that doesn’t come and go with the Sun, or rely on non-existent stock of coal, gas or wind. In other words, we need nuclear power, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Julius Mercz of the Technical University of Munich and his co-authors, describes a new type of nuclear reactor that wouldn’t just power a habitat’s environmental systems, but also enable its materials extraction technologies as well.