Canada plans to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon

Canada is looking to increase human presence on the Moon through energy generation.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) awarded $1 million to the Canadian Space Mining Corporation (CSMC) to develop a low-enriched uranium nuclear reactor, intended for use on the Moon.

According to a VNA reporter in Ottawa, Mr. Kirk Atkinson, Vice President in charge of industrial research at the Department of Energy and Nuclear Engineering at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa (Canada) said that the idea of using nuclear energy in space in general is not new. Therefore, if we go back to the Cold War, the Russians once intended to build nuclear reactors in space.

NASA has been studying this problem for over a decade and has conducted demonstration experiments in the US, where they built a small reactor that worked exactly as expected.

Canada is not the only country competing to build a nuclear reactor that could be used on the Moon.

In August this year, NASA announced that it wanted to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030, five years earlier than China and Russia's joint reactor construction plan.

CSMC founder and CEO Daniel Sax said the international community is working to establish a long-term presence on the Moon and Canada wants to contribute to this international effort as it has done in the past.

Canada has a long, if somewhat modest, history of contributing to space exploration with Canadarms and technology that has been sent to distant asteroids and Mars.

MDA Space, the builder of Canadarms, was also recently awarded $500,000 by CSA to develop algorithms and automated plant management tools for a nuclear power system on the lunar surface.

According to Mr. Sax, Canada is very good at space and nuclear technology, so the country has been working hard to develop the above project, finding ways to take advantage of both of those skills.

The above reactor type is not limited to the Moon, CSMC plans to use similar technology for use in remote and indigenous communities.

The lunar reactor would be built on Earth and then transported to the Moon, Mr. Sax explained. It would operate partly autonomously and partly monitored on Earth.

He is also researching methods of harvesting water from the Moon, is excited about the future of human space exploration and hopes CSMC's micro-modular nuclear reactors can be used in remote communities, not just in Canada but around the world./ .

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/canada-len-ke-hoach-dat-lo-phan-ung-hat-nhan-tren-mat-trang-post1070105.vnp