Clive Cookson

Lunar Settlements May Need Nuclear Power Where Sunlight Fails

Financial Times science editor Clive Cookson argues that nuclear power could be essential to a permanent lunar settlement because the moon’s most promising resource sites may receive little or no sunlight, and lunar nights can last two Earth weeks. Those same sites would expose reactors to radiation, impacts, extreme heat and abrasive dust, making reliable power a major engineering challenge. Cookson sets the case for nuclear energy against an uncertain commercial prospect: projected revenues for a lunar economy do not establish that a viable market—or a permanent outpost—will follow.