Russia Wants to Build a Nuclear Power Plant on the Moon — and It's Just Getting Started

Russia is betting big on space — and it's going nuclear to get there.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, the country is preparing to build its own nuclear power station on the Moon, laying the groundwork for a new era of deep-space tech development. This isn’t sci-fi. It’s a long-term strategy aimed at turning Earth’s satellite into a testbed for the technologies that could eventually take humans to Venus, Mars, and beyond.

The near-term mission? Powering a Russian lunar station. But the long-term vision is much bolder: using the Moon as an R&D platform for the next generation of autonomous systems, interplanetary logistics, and energy solutions that don’t rely on Earth.

“This will be the proving ground,” says Manturov. “We’ll use the Moon to refine the tools we’ll need to reach the rest of the Solar System.”

Russia is also doubling down on independence in orbit. The country is moving forward with plans for its own national space station and recently patented a new system for drone deployment from orbit — a homegrown tech milestone.

And it’s not going it alone. China is among Russia’s top partners in the lunar program, signaling the rise of a new geopolitical axis in space exploration.

Bottom line: if the 20th century’s space race was about flags, the 21st century’s is about infrastructure. And Russia wants to be the first to plant a reactor on the Moon.