The Kilopower project is a near-term technology effort to develop preliminary concepts and technologies that could be used for an affordable fission nuclear power system to enable long-duration stays on planetary surfaces. After successful completion of the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment in March 2018, the Kilopower project team is developing mission concepts and performing additional risk reduction activities to prepare for a possible future flight demonstration. Such a demonstration could pave the way for future Kilopower systems that power human outposts on the Moon and Mars, enabling mission operations in harsh environments and missions that rely on In-situ Resource Utilization to produce local propellants and other materials.
The Kilopower project is part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program, which is managed by NASA’s Langley Research Center. The Flight Opportunities program funded the parabolic and suborbital flights that matured the Kilopower technology’s titanium water heat pipes by exposing it to space-relevant environments through the use of commercial reusable suborbital launch vehicles. The project will remain a part of the GCD program with the goal of transitioning to the Technology Demonstration Mission program in Fiscal Year 2020.
Testing occurred from November 2017 to March 2018 at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center in the Device Assembly Facility at the NNSS.
2-May-2018: Demonstration Proves Nuclear Fission System Can Provide Space Exploration Power
NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have successfully demonstrated a new nuclear reactor power system that could enable long-duration crewed missions to the Moon, Mars and destinations beyond.
NASA announced the results of the demonstration, called the Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment, during a news conference at its Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The Kilopower experiment was conducted at the NNSA’s Nevada National Security Site from November 2017 through March.
“Safe, efficient and plentiful energy will be the key to future robotic and human exploration,” said Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. “I expect the Kilopower project to be an essential part of lunar and Mars power architectures as they evolve.”
Kilopower is a small, lightweight fission power system capable of providing up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power - enough to run several average households - continuously for at least 10 years. Four Kilopower units would provide enough power to establish an outpost.
According to Marc Gibson, lead Kilopower engineer at Glenn, the pioneering power system is ideal for the Moon, where power generation from sunlight is difficult because lunar nights are equivalent to 14 days on Earth.
“Kilopower gives us the ability to do much higher power missions, and to explore the shadowed craters of the Moon,” said Gibson. “When we start sending astronauts for long stays on the Moon and to other planets, that’s going to require a new class of power that we’ve never needed before.”
The prototype power system uses a solid, cast uranium-235 reactor core, about the size of a paper towel roll. Passive sodium heat pipes transfer reactor heat to high-efficiency Stirling engines, which convert the heat to electricity.
According to David Poston, the chief reactor designer at NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the purpose of the recent experiment in Nevada was two-fold: to demonstrate that the system can create electricity with fission power, and to show the system is stable and safe no matter what environment it encounters.
“We threw everything we could at this reactor, in terms of nominal and off-normal operating scenarios and KRUSTY passed with flying colors,” said Poston.
The Kilopower team conducted the experiment in four phases. The first two phases, conducted without power, confirmed that each component of the system behaved as expected. During the third phase, the team increased power to heat the core incrementally before moving on to the final phase. The experiment culminated with a 28-hour, full-power test that simulated a mission, including reactor startup, ramp to full power, steady operation and shutdown.
Throughout the experiment, the team simulated power reduction, failed engines and failed heat pipes, showing that the system could continue to operate and successfully handle multiple failures.
“We put the system through its paces,” said Gibson. “We understand the reactor very well, and this test proved that the system works the way we designed it to work. No matter what environment we expose it to, the reactor performs very well.”
The Kilopower project is developing mission concepts and performing additional risk reduction activities to prepare for a possible future flight demonstration. The project will remain a part of the STMD’s Game Changing Development program with the goal of transitioning to the Technology Demonstration Mission program in Fiscal Year 2020.
Such a demonstration could pave the way for future Kilopower systems that power human outposts on the Moon and Mars, including missions that rely on In-situ Resource Utilization to produce local propellants and other materials.
21-Dec-2017: China rolls out world’s first solar highway
China has opened the world’s first solar highway designed to generate energy as well as handle traffic. The 5,875 square metres of highway in Jinan runs for one kilometre, including two lanes and an emergency strip.
The ground-breaking highway is made up of three layers: Transparent concrete on top, Photovoltaic solar panels in the middle and Insulation beneath. The highway, in the capital of the northeastern Shandong province, can handle 10 times more pressure than a normal asphalt road.
It can generate 1 million KWH of electricity in one year, used to power street lights and a road snow-melting system. The solar energy generated will also supply power to charging stations for electric vehicles if needed in the future.
While other counties like France and the Netherlands have solar roads, China claims to have the largest and most efficient stretch. This cements China’s position in 2016 as the world’s top solar energy producer. (Australia gained tenth place in the BP rankings that year.) France boasted the world’s first solar panel road in late 2016, but that only covered half the area of the Chinese version. While the Netherlands built a solar bike path in 2014.
19-May-2017: Ecological concerns over combustible ice
Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality after Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the sea floor off their coastlines.
Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas. Technically known as methane hydrate, it can be lit on fire in its frozen state and is believed to comprise one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels.
Methane hydrate has been found beneath seafloors and buried inside Arctic permafrost and beneath Antarctic ice. Estimates of worldwide reserves range from 280 trillion cubic metres up to 2,800 trillion cubic metres, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That means methane hydrate reserves could meet global gas demands for 80 to 800 years at current consumption rates. Yet efforts to successfully extract the fuel at a profit have eluded private and state-owned energy companies for decades.
Methane hydrate is an attractive energy source due to its high energy density: one cubic meter of combustible ice contains about 164 cubic meters of regular natural gas. This high energy density is due to the fact that methane is trapped within the hydrate crystal structure and greatly compressed.
There are environmental concerns. If methane hydrate leaks during the extraction process, it can increase greenhouse gas emissions. The fuel also could displace renewables such as solar and wind power.