The race to plug a nuclear reactor into the lunar regolith is no longer a thought experiment. The United States, China and Russia are now treating fission power on the Moon as a strategic objective, tying it to everything from permanent bases to national security and future space economies. Whoever lights up the first reactor will not just win a technological milestone, but also gain leverage over how humanity lives, works and fights in deep space.
Instead of a single program sprinting alone, the contest is shaping up as a three‑way showdown between a commercially driven U.S. effort and a tightly coordinated China and Russia partnership, each with its own timelines and technical bets. I see a clear pattern emerging: the side that can turn paper concepts into hardware on the surface first will shape the rules of lunar infrastructure for decades.
The new nuclear space race takes shape
What is unfolding around the Moon looks less like a replay of Apollo and more like a long-haul infrastructure race, with nuclear power as the anchor asset. In Washington, the argument is that the United States must deploy a small fission plant on the lunar surface before rivals can, framing it as a matter of exploration leadership and strategic deterrence against China and Russia. That sense of urgency is now baked into NASA’s marching orders under President Donald Trump, who has tied lunar nuclear power directly to U.S. dominance in space.
Beijing and Moscow, for their part, are no longer coy about their own ambitions. Officials have laid out plans for an automated nuclear power station on the Moon that would support a joint base and scientific outpost, explicitly positioning it as a counterweight to Western projects and to European Space Agency member states that might otherwise align with Washington. The partnership between China and Russia is designed to pool launch capacity, reactor expertise and lunar lander technology, turning their combined program into the main geopolitical rival to U.S. plans.
Why the Moon needs fission, not just solar panels
The push for nuclear power on the Moon is not just about prestige, it is about physics and logistics. Lunar nights last roughly two weeks, plunging solar arrays into darkness and forcing any base to rely on massive batteries or intermittent operations. U.S. planners argue that Nuclear power on the Moon is critical to the United States’ space exploration and national security goals because a compact reactor can deliver steady electricity through those long nights, enabling continuous life support, communications and industrial activity.
Chinese strategists are making a similar calculation, but with a different endgame. In April 2025, public plans from Beijing described how In April China reportedly unveiled a concept for a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2035 that would support a permanent base and potentially resource extraction. That vision treats fission not as a backup to solar, but as the backbone of a long-term presence, powering habitats, rovers and processing plants in places where sunlight is scarce but ice and minerals are abundant.
NASA’s Fission Surface Power blueprint
Inside NASA, the centerpiece of the U.S. strategy is a program known as Fission Surface Power, or FSP, which aims to field a compact, modular reactor that can be delivered to the lunar surface in a single launch. Agency officials have been refining requirements with industry, using a second draft Announcement for Partnership Proposal to gather technical and business feedback from companies that want to build the system. In that process, NASA has highlighted how NASA seeks industry feedback on fission surface power, with figures like Dooren cited in internal notes and an Editor’s Note clarifying the scope of the request.
The agency has also corrected and sharpened its own schedule, updating public documents to clarify its target date for placing a nuclear reactor on the Moon. That revision, issued in Aug 2025, underscored that the goal is not just to land a one-off demonstration, but to ensure the United States retains its dominance in space by building a scalable power architecture that can support multiple Artemis missions and commercial users. The FSP documents frame the reactor as a foundational utility, akin to a power grid for a future lunar economy.
Commercial partners and the U.S. industrial bet
Rather than building everything in-house, NASA is leaning heavily on private contractors to turn its FSP concept into hardware. The agency has signaled that companies like Lockheed Martin are central to this approach, with concept art showing a compact reactor, radiator panels and power conditioning units integrated into a single lander. Reporting on the program notes that Lockheed Martin has put forward an FSP design that reflects new details about NASA’s requirements, including power output, lifetime and the ability to operate autonomously in the harsh lunar environment.
Industry groups are already jockeying for position around this opportunity. By the time a formal request for proposals is issued, several teams are expected to have mature designs that pair reactor cores with lunar landers, power distribution systems and surface deployment mechanisms. One analysis of the field notes that After Politico broke early details in Aug, Duffy confirmed that multiple consortia, including those partnered with Maxar and Boeing, were already aligning their bids around NASA’s FSP framework. That dynamic turns the U.S. lunar reactor into a test case for how far commercial space can stretch into what used to be purely government territory.
China and Russia’s joint lunar power station
On the other side of the geopolitical ledger, Beijing and Moscow are knitting together a shared nuclear infrastructure plan for the Moon. Their public statements describe an automated nuclear power station that would be delivered robotically, then used to energize a joint research base and potentially a larger International Lunar Research Station concept. The project is framed as a flagship of the Russia‑China collaboration, with Fri and Nov references appearing in technical discussions and Nuclear Cafe commentary that highlight how the two countries see the Moon as a proving ground for their broader strategic partnership.
Russian planners have gone further by sketching out delivery windows for their hardware. A detailed analysis of Moscow’s program describes a Russian Lunar Nuclear Power Plant Expected To Be Delivered By 2030–2032, with China providing key Energy and Infrastructure support for the station as well. That timeline, if met, would put the joint reactor on the surface in roughly the same window that NASA is targeting for its own FSP deployment, turning the early 2030s into a decisive period for who actually flips the switch first.
China’s national strategy: from video pledges to base plans
China is also broadcasting its lunar nuclear ambitions directly to domestic and international audiences. In a widely circulated video, officials framed the contest as a race in which the United States and China are competing to build a permanent base on the Moon, with China now saying it wants to put a nuclear reactor there as part of that effort. The clip, posted in Apr, underscored that China sees nuclear power not as a niche experiment but as a central pillar of its long-term lunar presence.
That messaging dovetails with more formal planning documents that describe how China intends to use a Moon-based nuclear plant to support both scientific research and potential resource utilization. In those plans, the reactor is not just a power source, it is a strategic asset that can keep Chinese habitats and rovers operating in polar regions where water ice is trapped in permanent shadow. By pairing that capability with its own heavy-lift rockets and landers, Beijing is signaling that it wants to be able to operate independently of any U.S.-led infrastructure.
Security fears and the Duffy directive
In Washington, the security implications of losing this race are now spelled out in unusually blunt language. In a directive that has shaped NASA’s current posture, Duffy warned that if China or Russia were to reach the Moon first with a nuclear reactor, either country could potentially deny access or control key resources, especially if the United States is not there first. That warning, cited in an Aug explainer, has become a touchstone for hawks who see lunar nuclear power as a test of whether the post‑Cold War order extends into cislunar space.
Those concerns are echoed in broader policy debates that tie lunar reactors to national defense and economic resilience. Advocates argue that if the United States fails to deploy a reactor before China and Russia, it risks ceding not just scientific prestige but also the ability to set norms around nuclear safety, resource rights and military uses of space-based power. In that framing, the Moon becomes a forward operating location where control over energy infrastructure could translate into leverage over communications, navigation and even future cislunar logistics routes.
Timelines, milestones and the 2030 crunch
All of this rhetoric only matters if it is backed by credible schedules, and here the picture is starting to sharpen. NASA officials have indicated that a second draft AFPP for Fission Surface Power has already been released, with a final solicitation anticipated in early 2026, according to News and Events updates that list Points of Contact such as Name: Matthew Evans and Title: Agreements Officer. Those same documents suggest that the agency is still aiming to have a working reactor on the lunar surface by around 2030, aligning with broader Artemis mission timelines.
China’s public plans, by contrast, describe a nuclear plant on the Moon by 2035, while Russian documents point to a delivery window between 2030 and 2032 for their joint station. That means the early 2030s are shaping up as the decisive period when multiple reactors could arrive in quick succession, each backed by different legal interpretations of space law and resource rights. Analysts tracking the field have started referring to this as the “2030 crunch,” a moment when overlapping deployments could either force new international agreements or harden rival blocs around competing lunar zones.
From policy talk to lunar economy
Behind the geopolitical drama is a more prosaic but equally important question: what all this power will actually be used for. NASA’s own planning documents emphasize that a fission surface power system is meant to support a robust lunar economy, not just a single government base. One summary notes that Building on its previous work, NASA will work with industry to design a system that can provide power for habitats, in-situ resource utilization plants and commercial operations, supporting a robust lunar economy that includes private mining, construction and tourism ventures.
That vision dovetails with the broader argument that the United States should put nuclear reactors on the Moon before other countries act, not just to plant a flag but to create the conditions for American companies to thrive. Advocates in Washington have stressed that the United States needs to move from policy talk to funded hardware if it wants to actually make this a reality, warning that delays could leave U.S. firms dependent on foreign infrastructure in the very environment where they are supposed to lead. In that sense, the Moon reactor showdown is not just about who gets there first, but about who builds the grid that everyone else will have to plug into.
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