In late August, NASA asked its partners to prepare to build a nuclear reactor capable of withstanding space travel and operating without maintenance near the moon's south pole. A plan that until now might have seemed like the stuff of science fiction, the US space agency wants to have ready for implementation by December 2030.
“The rush,” notes the New York Times, is no coincidence. Russia aims to have its lunar nuclear reactor up and running by 2036, as part of its partnership primarily with China. NASA has already accelerated its timeline, seeking to outpace its geopolitical rivals.
The race is essentially about the future of space exploration. The US and China are seeking to be the first to establish a permanent base on the Moon, search for resources such as water ice, and use the Moon as a launch pad for missions deeper into the Solar System.
Controlling access to the Moon's resources is seen as essential to this strategy. Both superpowers see a nuclear reactor as a key element of this ambition. They plan to activate their reactors only after they reach the Moon.
But scientists warn that governments are acting too quickly, at a time when space exploration has already suffered serious setbacks. In the past six years, several Chinese, American and Russian rockets have failed and exploded, while a Russian lunar lander crashed. At the same time, space debris regularly falls to Earth.
A nuclear reactor failure could have a domino effect. Falling debris could spread radioactive material, as happened in Canada in the late 1970s. Similarly, an explosion or meltdown on the surface of the Moon could render entire areas unusable.
"There will always be a space race, and if you add nuclear power to that, it could take a potentially much more dangerous turn," warns Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
An analysis of technical specifications, procurement documents, and academic research, as well as conversations with industry insiders, government officials, and critics of the plans, reveals how China, Russia, and the United States are advancing this nuclear ambition. At the same time, they illuminate a crucial aspect of Russian-Chinese cooperation in space, an alliance that Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have personally promoted.
Nuclear power appears to be the only key mission in the lunar program that China has entrusted to its Russian partner. And that's because no country has more experience in this field than Russia.
Moscow has launched more than 30 nuclear reactors into orbit, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, integrated into Cold War-era satellites. It also remains one of the world's leading powers in civilian nuclear energy.
Russia also controls the largest available supply of a nuclear fuel considered among the safest for space missions: unenriched uranium. In the United States, this fuel is in limited supply. “Russia has practically no competitors in the field of space nuclear power,” Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute, which is involved in the design of the Russian lunar reactor, told the Russian news agency TASS.
NASA, on the other hand, is trying to catch up. The US agency launched a reactor in 1965, but it was deactivated after an unrelated spacecraft failure. Since then, the United States has spent more than $20 billion on space nuclear power programs without deploying another operational reactor.
The race to build the first lunar reactor is not just about exploration, but also about showing power. President Donald Trump has made American supremacy in space his "America First" agenda. Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have made similar statements. ©LAPSI.al
