Funded by the Chinese Central Government in 2019, a team of Chinese researchers today announced the completion of a prototype of a powerful nuclear reactor for the Chinese space program, whose power generation capacity is 100 times greater than that of its American counterpart, which NASA plans to install on the Moon by 2030.

Although the technical details and launch date were not disclosed, the engineering design of the prototype was recently completed and some important components of the reactor were manufactured, according to the atomic-energy newspaper.

For China, this ambitious project faces unprecedented challenges. The only publicly known nuclear device that China has sent into space is a small radioactive battery, "Youtu 2," the first vehicle to land on the far side of the Moon in 2019. It can generate only a small amount of energy to help the rover on the Moon.

According to Chinese researchers, conventional fuels and solar panels will not be sufficient to meet human needs for space exploration, which are expected to expand significantly, and China is seriously considering securing future energy needs on the Moon, where human settlements on the Moon or Mars will be part of the future plan.

According to recent estimates by various research centres, the use of atomic energy for long-distance space flights will save financial resources and reduce the time of interplanetary exploratory flights. The journey to Mars using a nuclear engine will be three times shorter than those using conventional chemical fuel jet engines. The limits of the Solar System will be accessible not in 10 years, but only in 3 years.

In addition, nuclear power installations can be used not only as a source of electricity on space debris scans, sensors, landing vehicles and mission explorers that have left Earth's orbit, but also as thermal energy to support human life and production activities on extraterrestrial bases.