I was thinking of how a nuke shuttle might be used in actuality besides exploration of the deep solar system. The quantity of material that would be moved from the Mars-Jupiter Asteroid Belt in a commercial enterprise would be significant tonnage but nuke shuttles wouldn't pay their own way. Another propulsion technique, one with a much higher ISP, is required. Plasma or ion propulsion is what I looked at when I wrote my analysis almost a 1/4 century ago.
If there were a manned base on or orbiting Mars, a nuke shuttle might be convenient to reduce transit time for the crews, but not necessary.
Aside from those two uses, I don't see commercial viability for the nuke shuttle.
I wasn't aware that China was trying to build a shuttle with nuclear thermal propulsion. They seem to go back and forth with talk about shuttles,space stations, moon landings, etc. Sometimes omitting one and emphasizing the other. Maybe they want a "swiss army knife" that can haul payloads anywhere in cis-lunar space. They could be in for a major dissapointment.