While the Americans have just given up a large part of their lunar program, China wants to install a nuclear power plant there. Objective: electrify the moon to build a inhabited base in the 2030s. This is announced by Pei Zhaoyu, chief engineer of the Chang’e-8 mission, at the end of April 2025.
The power station would be an integral part of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a Sino-Russian project launched in 2021, which should allow a permanent robotic presence around 2030 to prepare the permanent arrival of man around 2035. If nuclear seems radical, it is because the moon has 14 days and extreme temperatures. Solar panels? It’s very good during the day, but once nightfall is… the atom is useful to continue to feed the future lunar base. And who says nuclear in space, says of course Russia, heir to Soviet research on the subject. For Wu Weiren, architect of the Chinese lunar program, Moscow even has a head start on Washington.
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A test mission in 2028
The nuclear power plant has not been formally confirmed, but its inclusion in an official presentation at 17 countries, on the occasion of the Chang ‘E-8 mission, is perceived as an implicit green light. Scheduled in 2028, it must allow you to test everything you need for a future lunar base: oxygen extraction of the regolith, the manufacture of bricks from local materials and energy production. A small modular nuclear reactor could be integrated into it as a prototype. In parallel, China sees things big and will take on the instruments of ten partner countries, including Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt on our natural satellite. Enough to make Beijing and Moscow dream of a “lunar community of shared destiny”.
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