From advice to action on space nuclear powerby Jeff Foust
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| “It's almost like they read their report and decided to implement it,” said GIlbert. |
That report was either extraordinarily influential or extraordinarily lucky in its timing. In late July, NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, signed a policy directive putting into motion a new space nuclear power program at the agency, calling for the development a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030.
The new directive appeared to mirror many of the recommendations of that report, including not just the schedule but the use of public-private partnerships and the power level of the systems. The directive was more specific in some areas, setting an upper limit on the mass of the reactor at 15 tons and requiring the use of a power conversion technology called a closed Brayton cycle.
“It was very clearly informed by Bhavya Lal’s and Roger Myers’s report,” said Alex Gilbert, vice president of regulation at Zeno Power, a company developing commercial radioisotope power systems, referring to the authors of the report. “It's almost like they read their report and decided to implement it.”
Exactly what role the report played in the directive remains unclear, but Duffy has, since signing it, emphasized the importance of a fission surface power system for NASA’s Artemis program.
“We are in a race with China to the Moon, and to have a base on the moon we need energy,” he said at an event at the Department of Transportation in early August. “We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying if can we do it. We are now going to move beyond studying and we’ve given direction to start deploying our technology to actually make this a reality.”
Industry seems willing to give it a shot. “I think that at this point we can say it's technically achievable,” Gilbert said, citing progress made on past projects, like NASA’s Kilopower program to develop a smaller nuclear reactor on the Moon.
It is not without its challenges. Gilbert said there are questions on issues like the availability of high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU), the preferred fuel for a space nuclear reactor, although he was optimistic efforts by the Department of Energy would resolve that by the end of the decade.
| Recent developments, like proposals by China and Russia for a nuclear reactor on the Moon, may be “driving some sense of urgency and desire to prove the American capabilities in this area,” said Timmons. |
“I think we're at a point now where we've made a lot of advancements in material development, manufacturing maturity, understanding these higher temperature materials,” said Kerry Timmons, who leads strategy and business development at Lockheed Martin for its space nuclear programs. That included the company’s work on DRACO, a joint NASA-DARPA program to demonstrate nuclear thermal propulsion that ended earlier this year after DARPA withdrew.
The technical challenges of a nuclear reactor in space are potentially outweighed by those of policy and funding. She noted that such effort sin the past stretched out for years, making them vulnerable to shifting priorities, an issue raised in the INL report. Recent developments, like proposals by China and Russia for a nuclear reactor on the Moon, may be “driving some sense of urgency and desire to prove the American capabilities in this area.”
A rapid nuclear reactor development effort faces other obstacles. “I don't know that we have all of the people we need, but I think this is the time to start,” Timmons said, noting that Lockheed Martin has partnered with other companies with greater expertise in nuclear power systems to support past projects.
Gilbert said that the new effort should be able to leverage other advances in nuclear power technology, like work on small modular reactors for terrestrial applications. “Until about five years ago, the United States did not have a competitive nuclear industry,” he said. “We did not have a lot of innovation going on. That has changed decisively.”
The new project will also stress-test regulatory structures put in place several years ago intended to streamline the approval of space nuclear power systems. “From my perspective, it's understood, but not fully exercised yet,” Timmons said. “There is a process, and we just would look at that up front to make sure that it met the same timelines as the development of the spacecraft.”
In late August, NASA released a draft solicitation, formally known as an Announcement for Partnership Proposals (AFPP), outlining its plans for the Fission Surface Power program. It retained the key elements in the directive, including the goal of a 100-kilowatt reactor on the Moon by 2030.
NASA plans to use an AFPP rather than a traditional request for proposals since NASA plans to award funded Space Act Agreements for the program. Borrowing from other NASA services programs, like commercial crew and cargo, NASA would not purchase the nuclear reactor from a company. Instead, it would buy power from the reactor. That company would also be free to sell power to other customers.
| “The market should include or leverage customers other than NASA,” NASA’s draft solicitation states. |
Companies, besides explaining their technical approach to developing the reactor, would also have provide NASA with a business case. The agency requests in the draft AFPP that companies provide a financing plan explaining how “cash from operations, financing, and NASA covers the expenses of the total end-to-end deployment” of the system.
The agency also requested a “Commercial Lunar Power Business Plan” explaining how bidders would make money with the reactor beyond simply serving NASA. “The market should include or leverage customers other than NASA,” the document states.
NASA’s preference for fully commercial approaches extends to getting the reactor to the Moon. The draft AFPP said that companies could propose that NASA handle the delivery of the reactor on the lunar surface, but that those who instead propose “a wholly commercial approach to the end-to-end deployment, all other things being equal, will receive higher rated proposal evaluations than otherwise.”
The agency may have pushed too hard on that last point. Last Friday, NASA issued a request for information about a potential change to the FSP plan. “The cost of launch and lander services is likely to be substantial,” the agency stated, citing feedback on the draft AFPP and at an industry day earlier in the month. “A significant cost share between NASA and participants for those services will be difficult, if not impossible, to justify the business case for cost share investment.”
NASA said it is considering instead handling the delivery of the reactor to the Moon, using cargo versions of Human Landing System (HLS) reactors from Blue Origin and SpaceX. “Will removing the financial burden of acquiring launch and landing services be beneficial to your business case?” NASA asked industry.
The agency said it also wants feedback on any additional milestones it should include in the Space Act Agreement. Those milestones would cover “operational evaluation and service life verification” of the reactor after deployment, which NASA said could build confidence in the performance of the system to help companies win business from other customers.
NASA is moving quickly on this: the request for information asked for responses by this Wednesday, just five calendar days later. NASA stated in the draft AFPP that it expected to release the final version no later than October 3, with a goal of making awards—at least one, and potentially more—by next March.
A question mark, though, is funding. The draft AFPP did not include any estimated funding levels for the program, but noted those would be included in the final version. The two scenarios in the INL report have estimated costs $1 billion and $3 billion.
NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would gut spending on nuclear power systems, particularly nuclear propulsion. “These efforts are costly investments, would take many years to develop, and have not been identified as the propulsion mode for deep space missions,” the agency’s detailed budget document stated.
The NASA directive suggests that the program could tap into a new “Mars Technology” budget line that the agency included in its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal requesting $350 million for it in 2026 and $500 million annually in 2027 and beyond. That proposal had provided, at the time of its release in May, no details on how the funding would be used.
Lal, one of the authors of the INL report, said in a webinar last month that NASA’s approach was risky, but benefits from the perceived “strategic urgency” for space nuclear power. “This urgency is what finally make space nuclear real because it turns what used to be a discretionary technology into a strategic imperative,” she said.
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