Credit: NASA. The plutonium was supposed to fuel the System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP-27 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), designed to power a set of experiments on the lunar surface. Everyone's talking about the Moon. A Lunar Nuclear Reactor. Likewise, NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4.2 billion / GW is implausible.

Researchers at NASA and the Department of Energy recently tested key technologies for developing a nuclear fission reactor that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars. Main image: Artist's concept of new fission power system on the lunar surface. The latest estimate for the AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia is US$12.7 billion / GW.NuScale wants us to believe that it will build SMRs at less than one-third of that cost, even though every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large …