Welcome back to Cool Stuff Ride Home, where we bring you some of the more interesting,

intriguing, and cool stories from around the world. I'm Reggie Rizzou, and on today's episode,

we're going to focus on the moon. We learn more about its past and what we could be doing with the moon in the future.

That's all coming up on Cool Stuff.

I'm actually going to start with the future for the moon,

as the United States announced plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.

And yes, I'm not talking sci-fi movie here or anything like that,

a real nuclear reactor on the moon.

It was in late July when Sean Duffy,

a former Fox News host and current U.S. Transportation Secretary and now interim NASA administrator,

issued a bold directive to get a 100-kilwatt nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030.

Now, you may be wondering, there's nobody there. Why are we putting a reactor on the moon? What is this for?

Well, according to Duffy, quote, we're in a reactor on the moon? What is this for? Well,

according to Duffy, quote, we're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon,

and to have a base on the moon, we need energy, end quote. Now, a 100 kilowatt reactor may

sound like a lot, but in Earth terms, it's enough to power about 30 households continuously.

For context, a single wind turbine on

Earth can generate 2 to 3 megawatts, that's 20 to 30 times more. But on the moon, that kind of

reliable round-the-clock power is going to be everything. And you may wonder, why don't me go solar?

Well, it's a great question.

A day on the moon lasts 28 Earth days, with two weeks of sunshine followed by two weeks of darkness.

Batteries and solar powers can't hack it alone.

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