Well, here's a few counterpoints. > -renewable energy is essentially infinite on the moon. the moon can reach 120c, easily enough to drive steam turbines. ther

Well, here's a few counterpoints. > -renewable energy is essentially infinite on the moon. the moon can reach 120c, easily enough to drive steam turbines. there is plenty of room for both terrestrial and tethered orbital solar sails. If you're designing for set-it-and-forget-it, nuclear on the moon works remarkably well. Solar panels degrade over time, so it's not like there's a permanent solution anyways. Disposal is also taken care of - just leave it there, where there's no water to carry it anywhere, no potential future primitive peoples to worry about, and nothing to contaminate. Solar concentration into steam turbines, on the other hand, takes a lot more surface area, more moving parts, and only works for half the month. Same with solar, barring the moving parts. I'm not sure what you're referring to with solar sails, either - that's a propulsion method, not a power source. > -Nuclear is a one-time thing. one you exhaust the mines on the moon, youre out of power and you've done nothing to embrace renewable energy. While nuclear is theoretically a limited resource, in practice this means that we could power the entire world for hundreds of years without even touching off-planet solutions. So, "non-renewable", but also long enough to comfortably hold us over until we finally crack fusion sometime in the next 200 years. > -3 mile island, fukushima, and chernobyl could likely all have been prevented. all include an exclusion zone of some shape or size. none have experienced meaningful amounts of cleanup. This is just stupid, and standard anti-nuclear FUD. 3 mile island has no exclusion zone, for one - unless you count the reactor building itself. Fukushima Daiichi has seen extraordinary amounts of cleanup, and efforts are still ongoing. Chernobyl has seen minimal attempts to reclaim land in the exclusion zone, though. > -waste is just buried. no attempt at salvage, and nothing can be done to make it safe. the US has 80 sites alone. most will be dangerous indefinitely. That we do this with waste is political, not a practical matter. France reprocesses the vast majority of their high-grade waste into more fuel, and low-grade waste is dangerous for a few centuries at most. Stick it in a block of glass at the bottom of a mine and be done with it. > -plants are run far longer than their lifespan was ever designed. most have posted leaks and accidents of various sizes that could be easily avoided. Plants receive life extensions, just like most other things in the west today. Like bridges, or combat aircraft. This isn't a sign that we should get rid of all old bridges, or A-10s. And yes, if we were building replacements, small incidents would be less likely to occur. But I'm unaware of any incidents resulting in significant release of radioactivity in the US since 3 Mile Island. (and calling that significant is perhaps a bit of a stretch) There have been nuclear power plant accidents, listed here [0], but they're not what you're talking about. For instance, from 2013: "One worker was killed and two others injured when part of a generator fell as it was being moved at the Arkansas Nuclear One." This is not a nuclear power accident. This is a conventional accident that happened to occur at a nuclear power plant. So, I don't think your comment brings anything substantive to the table besides fear, uncertainty, doubt and misinformation. There are valid concerns for using nuclear reactors to power moon bases - I would include "increased risk of schedule slip" and "long term reliance on untested designs", but "just use solar panels" and "nuclear waste is bad" aren't the things that I would have picked. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_t...