From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: Power on the Moon Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3391 Posted: Tue Sep 21 04:18:08 1982 Received: Wed Sep 22 01:50:29 1982 From: Robert Elton MaasOn the moon there'd be vast areas of uninhabited terrain relatively near to the nuclear reactor. For example, the reactor could be put south of the work area instead of in its center, and then the area south of the reactor could be uninhabited. The solution to cooling the reactor would then be to pipe liquid sodium thru miles of tubing along the surface. During the day the sodium wouldn't be much effective, but at night it'd be great. You'd thus need a large tank of reserve sodium to act as a heat storage device, absorbing excess heat during the day and then distributing it to the radiator at night. (I picked sodium because it's been used on Earth and if we sent a reactor using sodium as the primary coolant we could avoid the need for a heat exchanger to transfer heat to a secondary coolant (water) like we do on Earth.) Would the idea work?