In early August, Sean P. Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, asked NASA to accelerate U.S. efforts to install a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030. The BBC reported that in 2022 NASA issued three $5 million contracts to companies to design a reactor. And in May this year, China and Russia announced they plan to build an automated nuclear power station on the Moon by 2035.
Sending radioactive reactor fuel into the Earth’s atmosphere aboard NASA’s faulty rockets raises the risk of catastrophic accidents. Military advantage, the mining of rare minerals, and experimental testing of long-term human habitation in outer space ⸺ aimed at hopes of jetting off to Mars ⸺ appear to be the only reasons for the enormously expensive risk-taking.
Erika Nesvold, an astrophysicist and author of “Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space,” (MIT Press 2023) told the Washington Post, “Racing [China and Russia] to the moon could lead to conflicts over access to lunar resources, environmental losses, and labor exploitation that would especially stem from the involvement of profit-motivated private [mining] companies.”
⸺ IEER, Aug. 22; BBC, The Hill, Aug. 5, 202
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