Supporters say the program could enhance national security by strengthening DoD’s energy sources. Critics, meanwhile, have argued that ANPI’s benefits are illusory, and come with too much cost and risk.
The Trump administration’s National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power unveiled today says the Pentagon and NASA will run “design competitions” that are “parallel and mutually reinforcing” to achieve space-based nuclear power.
Answering the Pentagon’s call to bolster defense industrial base.
The Janus Program is a joint effort between the Army and the Department of Energy that aims to stand up commercial nuclear microreactors at domestic military bases over the next few years.
The move widens Intuitive Machines' past focus on the Moon to the space market closer to Earth.
“Realistically, it's gonna take us a few months to do all this. But we are planning to put a draft RFP out within a few weeks, so we're gonna move very quickly,” an Army official said.
“We really don’t have … the in-house capabilities to answer all the questions,” the Pentagon’s deputy director for advanced computing, Roy Campbell, told Breaking Defense. “We’re really going to have to ‘phone out’ to all these assets” that the private sector plans to build.
Lucian Niemeyer and Brian McCormack, two former Trump administration officials, make their case for why nuclear power is good for national security.
Would we ever send a tank, ship, or aircraft into harm’s way without the ability to maneuver?
Nuclear propulsion for space-bound rockets wasn’t science fiction even in the 1960s, and 60 years later multiple programs are rediscovering this promising technology.
Administration officials were quick to stress that US pursuit of space-based nuclear power sources has absolutely nothing to do with building nuclear weapons in space.
The plan will include options to lease new breakers or build new nuclear-powered ships as Russia and China leap ahead of US capabilities in the Arctic.
While Tesla won’t be building heavy tanks, the Army Futures & Concepts Center says moving lighter, wheeled vehicles from fossil fuel to electric drive could streamline supply lines – and save lives.
If the Pentagon does build the mobile reactors, it will deploy them far from the front lines – and even if they’re hit, their revolutionary TRISO fuel pellets will stay intact at temperatures that can melt steel.
The Coast Guard wants to operate more consistently in the Arctic, but has a fraction of the icebreakers that Moscow can deploy.