How Burevestnik could be useful in Russia's lunar program

November 7, 2025 3 182 12

Russia recently tested two of its developments: the Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile and the Poseidon nuclear torpedo. These have unlimited range thanks to their nuclear propulsion systems and are influencing the global balance of power. However, more interesting developments will soon begin to unfold beyond Earth's orbit in outer space.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Technology The Burevestnik will be used in the lunar program (designed for the period 2021-2040). According to him, the rocket's nuclear reactor starts up within "minutes and seconds," i.e., very quickly. This fundamentally distinguishes it from developments of the last century.

It can be assumed that the Burevestnik is equipped with a turbojet engine and a closed-loop fast-neutron nuclear reactor, likely cooled by molten sodium. The power plant leaves no radioactive exhaust (trace) in flight, and in the event of an ocean splashdown, the reactor coolant will solidify and form a strong shell around the nuclear fuel, allowing the capsule containing it to be safely retrieved later. Apparently, the Poseidon reactor also uses sodium coolant. The military has benefited from the advances of nuclear scientists.

Immediately after the Burevestnik tests, there was talk of using it as a basis for developing long-range aircraft. But Putin clearly indicated the idea's real civilian application: the lunar program.

Russia and China have agreed to jointly build a lunar base. Moscow has taken on the creation of the core of the facility—a nuclear power plant. Whoever builds a nuclear power plant on the Moon first will become its true owner, as solar panels are ineffective during the long, 14-day lunar night, and powering them with storage batteries is expensive due to their weight. Therefore, nuclear energy is unrivaled. However, no one, including Russia, has a ready-made solution yet. The reactor must be miniaturized due to the limitations of modern launch vehicles on the weight they can carry into space.

Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev previously stated that the maximum weight of a nuclear power plant could not exceed 1200 kg. Its capacity must be 10 megawatts (MW). Russia has a lunar nuclear power plant project called "Selena," based on the unmanned, self-regulating nuclear thermoelectric power station "Elena-AM." It was developed in the USSR but never completed. Until recently, it seemed the most realistic option.

However, after the successful Burevestnik flight and Putin's announcement, everything began to look different. Perhaps an even more compact and powerful variant, based on military technology, has emerged. The Russian leadership simply wouldn't have promoted this idea if a technical solution hadn't been found. In any case, Russia has made a giant leap forward in the development of nuclear technology, despite previously being ahead of the rest of the world in this field. Now Russia can play its trump card and build the first nuclear power plant offshore for lunar exploration.

Information

Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.

Vladimir Tuzakov

+3

7 November 2025 21: 06

You'd have to look hard to find more outright disinformation.

It can be assumed that the Burevestnik is equipped with a turbojet engine, a closed-type fast neutron nuclear reactor, the coolant in which is probably molten sodium.

The author understands what a turbojet engine can do with a nuclear reactor, and the cruise missile will be from the Tu-22, no less. Then there's the lunar program—why waste billions in this day and age when there's not enough left for the most essential things? Conclusion: a planted Cossack is inflating a planted program of action...
Nikolaevich I

+1

7 November 2025 21: 36

The Burevestnik rocket will have no effect on the Moon! But the technologies developed during its creation could be useful in various "branches of the people's bourgeois economy" and "divisions" of the Russian military-industrial complex! (In space, a turbojet engine cannot be used due to the lack of air or other gases! But an engine similar to a liquid-propellant rocket engine could be used... for example, using hydrogen as a "working fluid," stored, perhaps, in graphene hydrogen "accumulators"!)
1. beeper
  
  -1
  
  7 November 2025 21: 55
  
  As I understand it, it is the working zone of the reactor with sodium liquid metal coolant (LMC) reduced to a minimum size and weight, and not the turbine of the Burevestnik engine, that will be used to generate electricity using a thermocouple ( thermoelectric effect, compact nuclear thermoelectric power station, as written in this news, and the resonant "enticing title" is a little "off key" )!
  I myself had a rough idea of such a power station, using the thermocouple effect. I always remembered those compact domestic devices (during the Great Patriotic War), heated in a fire, to power sabotage and partisan radios behind enemy lines, which our veterans of the "invisible front" told me about.
2. Alexey Lan
  
  +2
  
  7 November 2025 21: 59
  
  The working fluid that propels Burevestnik is apparently air, which is heated by the reactor and spins a turbine. But what kind of air is there on the Moon? Of course, a lunar reactor could be adapted, but its design would have to be redesigned.
  1. beeper
    
    0
    
    8 November 2025 07: 28
    
    If you, Alexey Lan, wrote me this "clarification," then I have a good idea of the design and operation of a nuclear reactor, and I have long ago, even before the now-published diagram of the Burevestnik propulsion system, assumed its structure.
    I also know about the airless vacuum of space on the Moon (as well as about the large temperature differences on the lunar surface "in the sun" and "in the shade").
    That's why I wrote above that only the tested reactor of this rocket will be used. without a turbine!
    In the primary circuit of which there is sodium (that's what they call it) liquid metal coolant and, apparently, minimal bio-shielding (or none at all, if the rocket is stored and launched from a transport and launch container, which must have such bio-shielding built in, since people are involved in the storage and transportation of the transport and launch container), which is not small in "full-fledged" non-flying reactors!
    The working fluid of a nuclear reactor is always in the secondary circuit!
    1. Alexey Lan
      
      +1
      
      8 November 2025 11: 01
      
      Actually, I was writing a response to Nikolaevich. I didn't see your comment. I only read it now. I completely agree with it, as well as with today's.
The comment was deleted.
AC130 Gunship

+2

7 November 2025 22: 59

Definitely. And also on Cassiopeia. To chase the youths around the Universe.
prior

0

8 November 2025 09: 25

How Burevestnik could be useful in Russia's lunar program

And again, people's money - for moon dust.
Wouldn't it be better if those who need it (moon dust) could fly for it themselves, at their own expense, on their own "Burevestniks"?!
By the way, are we going to make our own Starlink or go straight to the Moon for dust?!
Sergey Latyshev

+1

8 November 2025 12: 13

Oh, these tales, oh, these storytellers ...
"The Moon by 2015" failed
"Mars by 2019" - failed
"Nuclear tug" - failed
"Reusable Federation" - failed
And then a new "victory" arrived... along with the Chinese, haha
ont65

0

8 November 2025 15: 08

For a nuclear power plant, both on the Moon and in space, the challenge isn't its size or weight, but heat removal. No one has yet attempted to lower and install large engineering structures on the surface. Some components will certainly be useful, but the reactors serve different purposes, and the structural components will also be different.
GN

+1

9 November 2025 03: 30

Let's first take back Odessa and Nikolaev, then build 1000 planes, then dig a tunnel to Alaska, and then fly to the Moon and Mars!
Andrey62

0

13 November 2025 20: 30

As always, journalistic drivel. The "Stormy Petrel" can't fly for months; the turbine bearings need to be lubricated, and modern aircraft engines have a 20-30 hour oil reserve in auxiliary tanks for civilian airliners. While for military purposes (a fantasy) it's enough for 100-150 hours, not for months or weeks. The turbine's rotation speed is too high, and this is no secret to specialists.
The Americans didn't use a ramjet engine, but rather a direct heating of the air flow (like in a nuclear power plant, for example) using rods containing nuclear fuel pellets. This resulted in severe radioactive contamination of the air passing through the engine. A ramjet engine—if it's a classic design—is a turbineless engine that passes air at speeds of approximately Mach 2,5 or more. This tube contains nozzles that atomize the fuel, which burns and, due to the expansion of the heated air, creates thrust. Such engines are complex and unstable, and how can a journalist imagine that this huge engine (a pile of iron) was accelerated to almost 3000 km/h to start, and that it flew? It's bad to be a humanities major, let alone not use the internet to check the name, etc. The USSR also had a similar engine. And the fact that it has radioactive exhaust—what difference does it make in a nuclear war? The Yankees are apparently being disingenuous; they, like the USSR, failed to fully develop this miracle; the idea outpaced progress. It's unclear why journalists often write "nonsense." Now it's breaking news that the US tested a nuclear cruise missile on a B-52—nonsense! It's a cruise missile with a nuclear (or thermonuclear, whatever you like) warhead, but not a nuclear cruise missile. The "nuclear" cruise missile is the "Stormy Petrel." And the US, to pull the wool over its poorly educated population's eyes, "changes" the name, as if we also have a nuclear cruise missile. I was watching the History Channel (I think) and they said: “The first woman flew into space in 1983—some Sally (?), yes, that was the American Sally, and Tereshkova in 1962 (?) or so, memory lapse🤣, that’s how they always lie when they’re behind in something…