There are no good neighbors for the commercial space nuclear power business.
Lots of challenges face commercial space nuclear missions—but experts at an industry seminar on Thursday only called one a “show stopper”—insurance.
The rub: Entrepreneurs believe they can safely launch radioactive material into orbit without creating an accident of atomic proportions, but insurance companies are still balking at the word “nuclear,” according to company leaders and experts at the Nuclear Launch Seminar in Washington, DC, hosted by the Association of Commercial Space Professionals and the Nuclear Energy Institute.
“Insurance is a fundamentally conservative and reactionary industry,” said Stewart Forbes, an energy attorney with Hogan Lovells. “People still think Chernobyl or Fukushima or Three Mile Island, but that’s not the world we live in anymore.”
Nuclear reactors would remain inert, with controls engaged to keep them from going critical, until they enter orbit. The real—but small—risk would be a reactor that somehow re-enters Earth’s atmosphere after activation.
Setting a model: Insurers don’t know how to price the risk of such a new endeavor, experts said. That means government agencies will have to indemnify the first generations of space nuclear launches and produce datasets that commercial insurers can use to shape their estimates.
The two strongest options are:
- The Department of Energy develops and owns the nuclear devices being launched
- NASA states that nuclear power is absolutely necessary to its Moon base program, making space nuclear a national security priority
“This does not require new statutes…It requires the agencies to interpret existing laws a certain way and get them to work with each other in the right way,” said Harsh Desai, chief commercialization officer at Zeno Power.
What’s next: Versions of the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, still working their way through Congress, push the agency to clarify an indemnification process for space nuclear.
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