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by cthalupa 2467 days ago
Yes, but significantly less of it by weight. You get significantly more energy per kg of nuclear fuel than you do traditional chemical propellant.
1 comments

Perhaps, but my intuition is it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference, because the reason you can't get off a heavy planet is because of an exponential runaway effect.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/exped...

An experimental nuclear rocket from the 70s nearly doubled our "payment energy". It should greatly reduce the initial and total mass portions of the rocket equation as well. I don't have all of the numbers to punch into the rocket equation to figure out things exactly, but the exhaust velocity and initial/total mass make up significant portions of the equation, and increasing the former while decreasing the latter will make significant impact on the ability to leave a more massive planet.