Rolls-Royce to build moon based nuclear reactor

Posted on Saturday, Mar 25, 2023 by Chris Hayner

Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever

From the “well that headline is way too awesome not to talk about” department… basically the sentence that I just said.

The UK Space Agency announced this week that Rolls-Royce won a $3.5 million dollar contract to build micro-nuclear reactors, intended for moon base power generation, with a delivery date of 2029. Some people might know that Rolls doesn’t just produce cars- they make some of the worlds best turbine and jet engines too, and have done since WW2.

Something some people named Chris didn’t know until literally right now is that they also have experience building nuclear reactors for submarines, and have done THAT since the 1950’s. The nuclear reactors in question will be of the “small modular reactor” variety, or SMR, so don’t think of like, the Springfield power plant here. SMRs appear to be the linchpin that will make moon bases possible, although I am sincerely hoping that a nuclear powered Rolls-Royce Phantom ends up eventually being available as a side project.

(and before anybody “Well Ackshewally’s” me about this, yes I know the car RR is different than the RR that is building the reactors. Please just hush and let me have this one.)