Abstract: To insure the safety of space reactor power system with no single point failures, the reactor heat pipes must work below its heat transfer limits, thus when some pipes fail, the reactor could still be adequately cooled by neighbor heat pipes. Methods to analyze the reactor heat pipe’s heat transfer limits were presented, and that for the prevailing capillary limit analysis was improved. The calculation was made on the lithium heat pipe in core of heat pipes segmented thermoelectric module converter (HP-STMC) space reactor power system (SRPS), potassium heat pipe as radiator of HP-STMC-SRPS, and sodium heat pipe in core of scalable AMTEC integrated reactor space power system (SAIRS). It is shown that the prevailing capillary limits of the reactor lithium heat pipe and sodium heat pipe is 25.21 kW and 14.69 kW, providing a design margin >19.4% and >23.6%, respectively. The sonic limit of the reactor radiator potassium heat pipe is 7.88 kW, providing a design margin >43.2%. As the result of calculation, it is concluded that the main heat transfer limit of HP-STMC SRPS lithium heat pipe and SARIS sodium heat pipe is prevailing capillary limit, but the sonic limit for HP-STMC SRPS radiator potassium heat pipe.