China's New Space Nuclear Reactor Might Be 100 Times More Powerful Than NASA's - Interesting Engineering

China's space program has completed a prototype design for a powerful nuclear reactor, a report from the South China Morning Post reveals.

The country's space program is building the device to keep up with other space agencies that have also drawn plans to go nuclear, such as NASA, which recently made a call for private firms to develop a nuclear fission system to power missions on the Moon within 10 years.

China's space program, which has already built some of the components for its full reactor, wants to power future missions to the Moon and Mars with nuclear energy. China's reactor will be able to generate one megawatt of electric power, making it 100 times more powerful than the device NASA wants to send to the Moon by 2030.

Though little is known in the way of specifications when it comes to the secretive nuclear reactor project, the South China Morning Post states that two scientists who took part in the project confirmed to them this week that the prototype for the reactor was completed, as well as some critical components of the finished reactor.