Evaluation of Electrically Heated Nuclear Reactor Development Units for the Advancement of Propulsion and Power Technologies

The national interest in sustainable nuclear power has seen a recent and significant resurgence, with targeted investments creating an enriched environment for the development of more modular and situational nuclear systems. Despite this, logistical and regulatory hurdles risk throttling reactor development efforts, with the potential of disproportionally affecting those technologies at the micro reactor scale. To permit rapid thermal testing of integrated reactor systems earlier in the development cycle, electric heating can be employed to simulate fission heating. The Nuclear Systems Team within Marshall Space Flight Center’s (MSFC) Propulsion Research and Technology Branch has expertise performing such non-nuclear testing to evaluate reactor components, inspect material compatibilities, and characterize thermal system performances. Tests of this type have been critically valuable to advancing space nuclear propulsion in their ability to validate fuel element materials and geometries in a simulated yet thermally representative nuclear thermal propulsion reactor environment. Similarly, this approach has been implemented by the team to the advancement of reactors with applicability to space nuclear propulsion. At Antares Industries, nuclear and system engineers are developing a special-purpose multi-Kilowatt scale micro-reactor for use in first response, and space, and other environments. Reactor architectures of this output scale readily lend themselves to the implementation of electrical demonstration units (EDU). Consequently, Antares and MSFC personnel have collaborated to develop a subscale EDU representative of the Antares R1 reactor system. Herein is a discussion of the design, buildup, and testing of the Antares EDU, alongside potential future work discussions of the advancement of micro-reactor non-nuclear development testing.