Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, August 10th.

Today on Forbes, NASA is already prepping to build Trump a nuclear reactor on the moon.

This past week, NASA administrator Sean Duffy declared the Trump administration's intention

to land a working nuclear fission reactor on the moon by the end of the

decade. Duffy said, quote, we're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon.

Planting reactors is more effective than planting a flag in the lunar dust. Duffy referenced

the idea of a, quote, keepout zone around a reactor that effectively

lays claim to a desirable area, like craters holding frozen water. So does Duffy's five-year

timetable seem too aggressive? Not particularly, when you consider that NASA and its many contractors

have been relying on atomic power for a long time.

Since the 1960s, NASA has powered Apollo missions, space probes, and Martian landers,

using radioisotopic batteries that turn the heat emitted by plutonium 238 and other decaying

isotopes into electricity. The Apollo devices are still on the moon,

and those on Voyager and Pioneer probes were the first man-made objects to leave the solar system.

But those devices only put out 100 watts or less. The nuclear fission reactors like what Duffy

is talking about are far more complicated.

They generate heat by splitting apart uranium 238 and would put out 100 kilowatts.

That's only enough electricity for a couple dozen homes on Earth.

You'd need a lot of them to power a moon base.

But let's backtrack.

Do we need nuclear on the moon? A decade ago, NASA decided the answer was yes.

Nighttime lasts for 14 Earth days in many lunar locations, making solar panels unreliable.

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