Nasa mustn’t take the risk of a lunar meltdown lightly
“Didn’t I promise you the moon?” That’s what a harried-looking Uncle Sam is seen telling protestors in a cartoon published in a US newspaper on 20 May 1969, two months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. In Frankie Morse’s drawing, Uncle Sam stands under our only natural satellite, emblazoned with “US Space Feats” on its dark side. Placards on planet earth yelled ‘end the war,’ with street crowds drawing attention to disarmament, pollution, human needs, inflation, law-and-order, urban crises and so on.
Things seem to have come full circle.
Fifty-six years on, as the US plans to set up a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030, the cartoon’s message has a familiar ring. With some variations and updates, that litany of complaints has held constant, just as charges of skewed priorities remain resonant. But this century’s race for the moon has a new driver: As the world heats up and worsens our lives, what if we need other habitable places? No wonder the lunar-reactor plan has made the world sit up.
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America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is in charge of that power project. According to documents obtained by Politico, Nasa administrator Sean Duffy has sped up US plans for reliable energy sources on the moon: specifically, a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor.
The basic idea, it seems, is to beat China and Russia in the space race underway, which is partly aimed at making the moon habitable. “Since March 2024, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the moon by the mid-2030s,” Duffy said in his directive. “The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone,” he added, which would inhibit the US from “establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first.”
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The Artemis accords signed by the US with over 50 other nations—India included—duly pledge adherence to international law.
So, would a lunar no-go zone be legal? Or some version thereof? Can the moon be carved up under national flags? The Outer Space Treaty, ratified by the US and others in 1967, bars extra-terrestrial assertions of national sovereignty. Also, while it explicitly bans nuclear weapons in space, it is silent on dual-use technology. True, nuclear power would plug the gaps in solar energy made inevitable by a lunar night that lasts 14 earth-days.
Nasa is also right that it would boost its capacity for space exploration. Given the discovery of lunar ice, for which India’s Chandrayaan-I mission deserves credit, water may not need to be hauled from earth to run a small fission reactor up there. A human base enabled by this could plausibly be used as a launchpad to explore Mars, moving to which is more than just an Elon Musk fantasy.
Living so remotely is not an easy nut to crack. Can India chip in? Several Isro-devised tests done aboard the International Space Station by Shubhanshu Shukla were aimed at growing edible stuff in orbital conditions.
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Human frisson over lunar fission must not eclipse the challenges posed by this Nasa project. All nuclear reactors must be kept under close watch, given the risk of a meltdown that releases radiation. While the moon is too remote to endanger people on earth, this must not reduce our concern for safety. Standards must never slip. Disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown the difficulty of rear-guard action even with resources close-by. The lunar imprint left by this leap for humankind mustn’t end up as a memorial to human folly.
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