Generating all subsets of a finite set with disjoint unions

If X is an n-element set, we call a family G ⊂ P X a k-generator for X if every x ⊂ X can be expressed as a union of at most k disjoint sets in G . Frein, Lévêque and Sebő conjectured that for n > 2 k , the smallest k-generators for X are obtained by taking a partition of X into classes of sizes as equal as possible, and taking the union of the power-sets of the classes. We prove this conjecture for all sufficiently large n when k = 2 , and for n a sufficiently large multiple of k when k ⩾ 3 .