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OSTP memo guides space nuclear plan
A White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum released on Tuesday guides NASA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense on their roles in deploying near-term space nuclear power.
This follows a series of NASA announcements last month—driven by the executive order “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” issued by Trump in December—including an ambitious timeline for establishing a moon base, which would rely on fission surface power (FSP) to survive the long lunar night at the moon’s south pole, and plans for a nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) rocket to be launched in 2028.
Miaomiao Jin, Jilang Miao
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 1 | April 2025 | Pages S828-S835
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2364455
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The concentration of radiation-induced point defects in general materials under irradiation is commonly described by the point defect kinetics equations based on rate theory. However, the parametric uncertainty in describing the rate constants of competing physical processes, such as recombination and loss to sinks, can lead to a large uncertainty in predicting the time-evolving point defect concentrations. Here, based on perturbation theory, we derive up to the third-order correction to the solution of point defect kinetics equations. This new set of equations enables a full description of continuously changing rate constants and can accurately predict the solution up to 50% deviation in these rate constants. These analyses can also be applied to reveal the sensitivity of the solution to input parameters and aggregated uncertainty from multiple rate constants.