Microreactors are factory-built transportable power systems with targeted outputs in the 1–50-megawatt range. Multiple U.S. microreactor designs are under development with support from the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. Under NASA’s Fission Surface Power (FSP) project, three teams led by Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, and X-Energy have been developing 40-kilowatt lunar microreactor designs for deployment in the mid-2030s as part of the Artemis Base Camp. This timeline puts the US in a race against Russia and China as they plan to install a Russia-designed microreactor at the China-led International Lunar Research Station between 2033-2035.  

Adding urgency to the FSP effort, an Executive Order signed December 18 now directs NASA to deploy a 100-kilowatt microreactor on the Moon by 2030, under a new National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power. The accelerated US plan will select one or more of the existing FSP teams for phase-two contracts, to upgrade the 40-kilowatt designs into flight-ready 100-kilowatt microreactor systems weighing under 15 metric tons.

While designed to be transportable, significant engineering work is needed to support a safe lunar landing at a geotechnically suitable site, and for final reactor assembly and activation. The compressed schedule for Artemis necessitates a challenging learn-as-we-go approach to constructing nuclear-capable infrastructure on an airless world with fractional gravity, little-understood geotechnical properties, and a host of unique environmental risks such as micrometeoroids, lunar dust, solar radiation, thermal swings, and near-surface electrically charged plasma.

The Apollo missions and NASA’s Apollo-era Surveyor program did much to increase our understanding of lunar surface (and some subsurface) conditions, but far less than would typically be required for a terrestrial construction project. NASA and its international and commercial partners now have under five years to select and prepare a site for the construction of metric tons of Artemis Base Camp infrastructure using limited post-Apollo data from remote sensing satellites and a handful of uncrewed lander and rover missions.

And back on Earth, years before a microreactor is tucked into a heavy-lift payload fairing, there is a critical shortage of nuclear-ready processing facilities, causing a uranium and plutonium bottleneck at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. This is a problem that must be addressed to keep Artemis on-schedule while also supporting the growing number of non-Artemis RTG-powered payloads and nuclear propulsion systems moving toward launch.

The good news is that what once was a daunting physics and science problem is now a solvable engineering challenge. As a design/engineering firm with decades of nuclear facility experience, expertise in uranium, plutonium, and specialty isotope handling, and a focus on high-performance space industry structures, Merrick & Co. understands why and how these requirements must be tackled on Earth, the Moon, and Mars. With Artemis gaining attention as a national priority, led by a new NASA administrator committed to its success, there are high hopes that funding will follow.