From: utzoo!decvax!cca!OTA@S1-A@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.space
Title: Reactors on the moon
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3280
Posted: Wed Sep 15 12:10:25 1982
Received: Thu Sep 16 01:39:25 1982

From: Ted Anderson 
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 82 12:52:28 EDT
From: dyer at NBS-VMS
Subject: Reactors on the moon


	A moon-based reactor has all kinds of plusses going for it.
You don't have to worry much about the safety features that are
currently plauging the US's public utility reactors -- if there are no
people around to be affected by a leak or meltdown, then who cares?
The moon is an ideal enviroment for containing leaks because of the
lack of atomosphere and prevailing winds to carry the gasses away.

	A lunar reactor could be /very/ minimal compared to
earth-based reactors -- the best shielding might be six or seven miles
worth of horizon, with the core and cooling system installed in a
crater or pit.

	Set up a dozen or so 'throw-away' fast breeders on an
otherwise empty plain.  The reactors would be designed to last only
five to ten years, and would be (comparatively) inexpensive.  Every
once in a while you switch fuel rods and process the plutonium, an
operation that could also take place in an inexpensive lunar-based
plant.  Use the plutonium for mining, for power reactors, or for
shoving asteroids around, a-la Dyson's ORION.  Hopefully not for
bombs.

	After ten years, or a melt-down, you bury the reactor with
rock and moondust and spread radiation warning signs liberally around
the area.  Since the signs will probably stay around as long as the
area stays hot (several million years?), future space-faring nations
will be able to see that the burying-gound is an unhealthy place to
dig.

	Gee, you could even have cheap waste-disposal: just launch
waste cannisters with a mass-driver, so they would intersect the
sun....


-Landon-