(Tribune News Service) — President Vladimir Putin urged his government to find funds for a plan to develop a nuclear-powered spacecraft, part of Russia’s push to bolster its space program despite U.S.-led sanctions.

A nuclear power unit for work in space “should be funded on time,” Putin told a cabinet meeting late Thursday. “This topic is important.”

Russia has “competencies that other countries do not possess, but we need to pay special attention in order to develop them,” Putin said.

To date, there has been no in-space demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion. Russia has been working to create a nuclear-powered transport module for use in space for more than a decade. Last year, the U.S. Defense Department and NASA selected Lockheed Martin Corp. to design and develop the first nuclear thermal rocket engine to be tested in space, part of a program called DRACO.

Read more: Lockheed Martin Picked to Build Nuclear Propelled Spacecraft

There is precedent for using nuclear power in space missions and in other remote areas on Earth. The U.S. has used plutonium-238, which has a favorable half-life, as a power source for computers, scientific instruments and other hardware on space missions, according to NASA, while Russia has used other radioactive material to power remote lighthouses and nuclear submarines.

The head of Russia’s space agency said earlier this month that it’s working on plans with China on ways to deliver and install a nuclear power plant on the moon by 2035. The power plant would need to be built by robots, Yury Borisov, general director of Roscosmos, said, according to the Interfax news service.

The greater challenge may lie within Russia’s space program. Roscosmos’s attempt to land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole ended in failure in August when its Luna-25 craft crashed into the moon.

The mission was meant to mark Moscow’s return to the moon for the first time since the end of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago, but instead became the latest in a series of setbacks for the country’s space program.

Putin has denied U.S. allegations the Kremlin is discussing the possibility of putting nuclear arms in space. “We have always been categorically against and are now against the deployment of nuclear weapons in space,” Putin said last month.

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