Five studies were undertaken to explore the low enriched uranium nuclear thermal propulsion (LEU NTP) design space at the 25.000 Ibf thrust class. This paper presents the progression of the five studies, outlines what was varied in each study, and covers key results. This work explored design points with and without isotopic enrichment of the cermet/cermetalloy matrix materials. A majorfinding was designs with a MoW matrix material and no isotopic purification can have appealing performance and meet criticality requirements. Other findings include: Clad thickness is a major performance driver for LEU NTP cermet systems, using TZM and NblZr~a as the tie-tube material instead of zircalloy results in a notable performance penalty, and UN-MoW cases are less sensitive to neutronic penalties than UO_2-MoW cases.
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