{"id":17536,"date":"2021-06-15T22:49:36","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T14:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/space-nuclear-power-is-nearing-critical-mass-as-the-final-frontiers-next-frontier\/"},"modified":"2021-06-15T22:49:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T14:49:36","slug":"space-nuclear-power-is-nearing-critical-mass-as-the-final-frontiers-next-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/space-nuclear-power-is-nearing-critical-mass-as-the-final-frontiers-next-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Space nuclear power is nearing critical mass as the final frontier\u2019s next frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_625769\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-625769\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-625769\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/draco-630x321.jpg\" alt=\"DRACO nuclear thermal propulsion rocket\" width=\"630\" height=\"321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/draco-630x321.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/draco-1260x643.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/draco-768x392.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/draco.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-625769\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows a spacecraft firing up its nuclear thermal propulsion system. (DARPA Illlustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The idea of putting nukes in space may sound like a national security nightmare, but the right kind of nukes are likely to be a must-have for long-term space exploration.<\/p>\n<p>At least that\u2019s the way a panel of experts at the intersection of the space industry and the nuclear industry described the state of things this week during the American Nuclear Society\u2019s virtual annual meeting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn order to do significant activity in space, you need power. And in order to get that power \u2026 it\u2019s complicated,\u201d said Paolo Venneri, CEO of a Seattle-based nuclear power venture called USNC-Tech.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you build a hydrogen fuel production plant on the moon, or a methane production plant on Mars, the power to run those plants has to come from somewhere. And studies suggest that solar power alone won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sun, it\u2019s great, but only within a certain region of the solar system,\u201d Venneri said. \u201cAnd so if you want to have sustained high-power applications, you need a nuclear power system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>George Sowers, a space industry veteran who\u2019s now an engineering professor at the Colorado School of Mines, has run the numbers on the power requirements for a lunar operation that would mine polar ice to produce fuel as well as drinkable water and breathable air for future astronauts. He figures it would take a 2-megawatt nuclear power plant to convert the H<sub>2<\/sub>O into hydrogen and oxygen.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Problem of Power in Space. NASA's New Kilopower Reactor\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m2IiI4UVZP8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Nuclear power is also being studied for in-space propulsion: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin is one of the companies working on a Pentagon project aimed at demonstrating a nuclear thermal propulsion system beyond low Earth orbit in 2025. (Nuclear thermal propulsion systems generate heat to drive rocket propellant, while nuclear electric propulsion systems generate electricity for ion thrusters.)<\/p>\n<p>The project is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and is known as the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO. Blue Origin\u2019s commercial partners in DRACO are General Atomics, which will design the nuclear reactor; and Lockheed Martin, which will work with Blue Origin on the spacecraft concept.<\/p>\n<p>During DRACO\u2019s initial 18-month design phase, General Atomics is due to get $22.2 million, while Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin have been awarded $2.5 million and $2.9 million respectively. DARPA will issue separate solicitations for future phases.<\/p>\n<p>DARPA is interested in nuclear thermal propulsion because it promises to be as much as five times more efficient than traditional chemical propulsion, with a thrust-to-weight ratio that\u2019s 10,000 times greater than electric propulsion systems.<\/p>\n<p>Venneri said USNC-Tech is helping out Blue Origin and General Atomics on DRACO. \u201cWe\u2019re also working with Blue Origin on a few other things, but that\u2019s a TBD [to be determined] in terms of information,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>USNC-Tech is also partnering on nuclear thermal propulsion research with Aerojet Rocketdyne, which has facilities in Redmond, Wash. Venneri said his company is involved in yet another collaboration with Seattle-based First Mode to develop a new type of chargeable atomic battery for space missions. Just in the past few months, USNC-Tech has received NASA grants totaling $250,000 for studies focusing on atomic batteries and an ultra-high-temperature facility for testing materials that could be used in space for nuclear reactors.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Earth To Mars In 100 Days? The Power Of Nuclear Rockets\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q_Zoxpv9b3w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a sense, space nuclear power has been around for decades: Plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, have provided electrical power for NASA missions ranging from the Apollo moon landings and the Voyager deep-space probes to the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Putting a full-fledged nuclear reactor on a spacecraft, or on the surface of the moon or Mars, would kick things up a notch. Back in 2004, NASA laid out a plan to put a small-scale reactor on a probe that would have studied Jupiter and its moons \u2014 but the mission was canceled the following year, due to technical challenges as well as budget limitations.<\/p>\n<p>NASA and the Department of Energy\u2019s National Nuclear Security Administration successfully completed ground tests of a next-generation nuclear reactor nicknamed KRUSTY in 2018 for NASA\u2019s Kilopower space reactor program.<\/p>\n<p>The program\u2019s goal is to put a 10-kilowatt demonstration reactor on the lunar surface by as soon as 2027. But Dave Poston \u2014 who designed the Kilopower reactor at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is the chief technology officer for a Los Alamos spin-off called Space Nuclear Power Corp. \u2014 said progress has been slow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothing has really happened for the past three years,\u201d he said. NASA says it\u2019s still working on a request for proposals for a moon-based nuclear power system.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Powering a Habitat on Mars with Kilopower\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bdMzFQOABcQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When it comes to nukes in space, safety is a big issue: Under the current regulatory system, each launch of a plutonium-powered generator has to be given presidential approval. Next-generation atomic batteries that use uranium instead of plutonium may not face limits that strict. Nevertheless, any projects that call for launching nuclear material into space will get close scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>Even within the nuclear industry, there\u2019s a debate over the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) vs. low-enrichment uranium (LEU) in space. Safety concerns are among the reasons why NASA\u2019s nuclear plans have gotten bogged down.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not going to debate HEU vs. LEU here,\u201d said Ron Faibish, senior director of business development for General Atomics\u2019 Nuclear Technologies and Materials Division. \u201cI think every system has its merits. I\u2019m just going to say it\u2019s a design issue, and you can design for safety.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A space policy directive that was issued during the final days of the Trump administration could help smooth the way for nuclear power to become an accepted part of America\u2019s space effort. But Rick Tumlinson, a longtime advocate of space commercialization who\u2019s the founding partner of a space-centric venture capital firm called SpaceFund, said there\u2019s no room for missteps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a very confused area, because it\u2019s new, and so that\u2019s going to have to be worked out very carefully,\u201d Tumlinson said. \u201cThe other challenge is that there are a couple of countries very interested in space that don\u2019t have to worry about public sentiment when it comes to launching nukes. And I could see them getting a jump, while we\u2019re all wrestling around who regulates this and who does that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Will nuclear power become a factor in America\u2019s rising space rivalry with China? That really does sound like a national security nightmare.<\/p>\n<p><em>Contributing editor Alan Boyle served as the moderator for the \u201cPer Nuclear Ad Astra\u201d panel discussion during this week\u2019s annual meeting of the American Nuclear Society.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows a spacecraft firing up its nuclear thermal propulsion system. (DARPA Illlustration) The idea of putting nukes in space may sound like a national security nightmare, but the right kind of nukes are likely to be a must-have for long-term space exploration. At least that\u2019s the way a panel of experts at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,2605,4533,4442,4583],"class_list":["post-17536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-general-atomics","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-power","tag-ultra-safe-nuclear"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}