Julius Mercz of the Technical University of Munich and co-authors design a lunar reactor whose 1,000-degree heat would drive moon-dust electrolysis directly. Sending heat to the hottest job first avoids a lossy detour through electricity, and every temperature in the chain is still a design target in an arXiv preprint.
Publishers:universetoday.com
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption
- Insufficient
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence40
The pump-free microreactor is marketed for industrial heat up to about 1,100C. The data-generation work now underway at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories covers performance above 900C, which is the part a regulator can check.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence38
Milestone payments and vendor-owned prototypes push execution risk onto the developer, and the arithmetic says private capital pays for most of the reactors.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption31
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives68
- Confidence58
Standard Nuclear will fabricate fuel for the Kaleidos microreactor through the early 2030s. The interesting part is what the deal implies about where microreactor programs actually stall.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption34
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives74
- Confidence44
The Kaleidos microreactor left El Segundo for Idaho National Laboratory on August 12, bound for a five-phase test campaign that ends with 150 hours of unattended full-power operation.
Reality
- Evidence34
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives72
- Confidence40