Patrick R. McClure

TL;DR: The development of NASA's Kilopower fission reactor is taking large strides toward flight development with several successful tests completed during its technology demonstration trials as discussed by the authors, which can provide 1-10 kW of electrical power to a spacecraft or lander, which could be used for additional science instruments, the ability to power electric propulsion systems, or support human exploration on another planet.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a scalable conceptual design for a compact fast-spectrum nuclear reactor and identified scaling issues for compact heat pipe cooled reactors in general, and developed two detailed concepts, the first concept with more conventional materials and a power of about 2 MWe and a the second concept with less conventional materials with a power level of about 5 MWe.

TL;DR: The new methodology suggests a formalism to quantify an adequate level of validation (predictive maturity) with respect to existing data, so that required new testing can be minimized, saving cost by demonstrating that further testing will not enhance the quality of the predictive tools.

TL;DR: The Kilopower Project was initiated by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate/Game Changing Development Program in fiscal year 2015 to demonstrate subsystem-level technology readiness of small-scale systems as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: The Kilopower nuclear ground testing (Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology) was completed at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS) on March 21, 2018 as discussed by the authors.