NASA is accelerating plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, and they claim it could happen by 2030.

In a directive - a written or oral instruction issued by the US government - to NASA staff earlier this month, Sean Duffy, US transport secretary and the new interim administrator of the space agency, said it should be ready to launch a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor in five years.

Plans to get a reactor on the lunar surface are not new. The NASA website states the space agency is working on the Fission Surface Power Project to create a system capable of generating at least 40 kilowatts of power - but that is less than half of what Mr Duffy has now proposed.

He also stressed the importance of America's space agency deploying the technology before China and Russia .

"To prop

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