Nuclear Electric Propulsion History Part 1: The Soviet Astronuclear Program

Hello, and welcome back to Beyond NERVA, where we’re getting back into issues directly related to nuclear power in space, rather than how that power is used (as we’ve examined in our last three blog posts on electric propulsion)! However, the new Electric Propulsion page is up on the website, including a summary of all the information that we’ve covered in the last three blog posts, which you can find here [Insert Link]! Also, each type of thruster has its own page as well for easier reference, which are all linked on that summary page! Make sure to check it out!

In this blog series, we’re going to look at nuclear electric power system reactor cores themselves. While we’ve looked at a number of designs for nuclear thermal reactor cores (insert link for NTR-S page), there are a number of differences in those reactor cores compared to ones that are designed purely for electricity production. Perhaps the biggest one is operating temperature, and therefor core lifetime, but because the coolant doesn’t have to be hydrogen, and because the amount of heat produced doesn’t have to be increased as much as possible (there will be a LOT more discussion on this concept in the next series on power conversion systems), the reactor can be run at cooler temperatures, preventing a large amount of thermally related headaches, which makes far more more materials available for the reactor core, and generally simplifying matters.

Nuclear electric power systems are also unique in that they’re the only type of fission powered electrical supply system that’s ever flown. We’ve mentioned those systems briefly before, but we’ll look at some of them more in depth today, and in the next post as well. While there have been many reactor designs proposed over the years, we’re going to focus on the programs developed by the USSR during the Cold War, since they have the longest operational history of any sort of fission-powered heat source in space.

The United States were the first to fly a nuclear reactor in space, the SNAPSHOT mission in 1963; but, sadly, another American reactor was never placed on a spacecraft. The Soviet program was far longer running, flying reactors almost continuously from 1970-1988, often two spacecraft at once. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War, the Soviet astronuclear program ended, and Russia hasn’t flown another nuclear reactor since then. There was a time, though, in the 1990s, that a mission was on the books (but never funded to a sufficient level to have ever flown) to use US-purchased, Russian-built nuclear reactors for an American crewed moon base!

 

History of Soviet In-Space Fission Power Systems

From the beginning, the Soviet in-space nuclear power designers focused on two different design concepts for their power systems: single-cell thermal fuel elements and multi-cell thermal fuel elements. The biggest difference between the two is how many fuel elements are in each thermal fuel element system: the single cell design uses a single fuel element, while the multi-cell option uses multiple fuel elements, separated by passive spacers, moderation blocks, or thermionic power conversion systems. Both designs were extensively researched, and eventually flown, but the initial research focused on the multi-cell approach with the Romashka, (sometimes translated as “Chamomile,” other times as “Daisy”) reactor. This design type led to the BES-5 (Bouk, or “Beech,” flight reactor), whereas the single cell variation led to the TEU-5 TOPOL (TOPAZ-1), which flew twice, and ENISY (TOPAZ-2) reactor, and was later purchased by the US. We won’t be looking in-depth at the ENISY reactor in this post, despite its close relation to the TOPOL, because later in the blog series we’ll be focusing on it far more, the time the Americans bought two of them (and took out an option on another four) and how it could have powered an American lunar base in the 1990s, had the funding been available.

As is our wont here, let’s begin at the beginning, with one of Korolev’s pet projects and the first in-space reactor design of the USSR: Romashka.

 

Romashka: The Reactor that Started it All

 

Romashka 2
Romashka mockup

The Romashka (daisy or chamomile in English) was a Soviet adaptation of an American idea first developed in the US at Los Alamos Labs in the mid 1950s: in-core thermionic energy conversion. We’ll be looking at thermionics much more in-depth in the next post on power conversion systems, but the short version is that it combines a heat pipe (which we looked at in the Kilopower posts) with the tendency for an incandescent light to develop a static charge on its’ bulb. More on the conversion system itself in the next post; but, for now, it’s worth noting that this is a way to actually stick your power conversion system in the core of your reactor; and, as far as I’ve seen, it’s the only one.

Design on this reactor started in 1957, following a trip by Soviet scientists to Los Alamos (where thermionic energy conversion had been proposed, but not yet tested). The design offered the potential to have no moving parts, no pumps, and only needed conductive cooling from the reactor body for thermal management; all very attractive properties for a reactor that would not be able to be maintained for its lifetime. Work was begun at the Institute of Atomic Energy, I.V. Kurchatov in Moscow, but by the end of the program there were many design bureaus involved in the conceptual design, manufacturing, and testing of this reactor.

A series of disc-shaped uranium carbide (UC2) fuel elements were used in this reactor (90% 235U), with holes drilled through the center, and roughly halfway from the central hole of the disc to the edge of the fuel element. Both of these holes were used to thread the thermionic power conversion system through the core of the reactor. Spacing of the fuel elements was provided by a mixture of beryllium oxide and graphite, which was also used to slightly moderate the neutron spectrum – but the neutron spectrum in the reactor remained in the fast spectrum. Surrounding the reactor core itself, both radially and at the ends of the core, were beryllium reflectors. Boron and boron nitride control rods placed in the radial reflector and base axial reflector were used to maintain reactor control through the use of a hydraulic system, however a large negative thermal reactivity coefficient in the reactor core was also meant to largely control the reactor in the case of normal operations. Finally, the reactor was surrounded by a finned steel casing that provided all heat rejection through passive radiation – no pumps required! The nominal operating temperature of the reactor was meant to be between 1200 C and 1800 C at the center of the core, and about 800 C at the edges of the core at the ends of the cylinder.

Romashka 3
Core undergoing assembly, 1966

Construction and warm-critical tests were completed by April, 1966, and testing began in Moscow. There are some indications that materials incompatibilities in the first Romashka built led to the need to rebuild it with different materials, but it’s unclear what would have been changed (the only other reference, besides on a CIA document, to this is that the thermionic fuel element materials were changed in the reactor, so that may be what occurred – more on that in the direct power conversion post). This reactor underwent about 15,000 hours of testing, and in that time period it produced about 6,100 kWh of electricity at a relatively constant rate of 40 kW of thermal and 500-800 W of electrical power (1.5%-2% energy conversion efficiency). Initial testing (about 1200 hours) only rejected heat into a vacuum chamber using the fins’ radiative cooling capability; and testing of other reactor behavior particulars was carried out, including core self-regulation capability. Later tests (about 14,000 hours) were done using natural convection in a helium environment. During these tests, thermal deformation of the core and the reflector led to a reduction in reactivity, which was compensated for with the control system. By the end of the test cycle, electrical power production had dropped by 25%, and overall reactivity had dropped by 30%. Maximum sustained power production was about 450 W, and 88 amps, if all thermionic converters were activated, and pulsed power of up to 800 W was observed at the beginning of the actively controlled tests.

ustanovka-romashka_1
Reactor being installed in test containment vessel, 1966

Korolev planned to pair this reactor with a plasma pulsed power thruster (based on the time period, possibly a pulsed inductive thruster, or PIT, which we looked at briefly in the second blog post on electric propulsion systems). However, two things conspired to end the Romashka system: Korolev’s death in 1966 meant the loss of its’ most powerful proponent; and the development of the more powerful, more efficient Bouk reactor became advanced enough to make that design available for space travel in the same time frame.

While there were plans to adapt Romashka into a small power plant for remote outposts (the core was known as “Gamma”), the testing program ended in 1966, to be supplanted by the BES-5 “Beech”. The legacy of the Romashka reactor lives on, however, as the first successful design of a thermionic energy conversion system for in-core use, a test-bed for the development and testing of thermionic energy conversion materials (more on that in the first power conversion system post); and it remains the father and grandfather of all Russian in-space reactors to ever fly.

 

Bouk: The Most Flown Nuclear Reactor in History

Buk Cutaway
BES-5 Bouk cutaway diagram, image Rosatom

The Bouk (“Beech”) reactor, also known as the “Buk,” or BES-5 reactor, is arguably the most successful astronuclear design in history. Begun in 1960 by the Krasnya Zvesda Scientific and Propulsion Association, this reactor promised greater power output than the Romashka, at the cost of additional complexity, and requiring coolant to operate. From 1963 to 1969, testing of the fuel elements and reactor core was carried out without using the thermoelectric fuel elements (TFE), which were still under development. From 1968 to 1970, three reactor cores with full TFEs were tested at Baikal; and, with successful testing completed, the reactor design was prepared for launch, integrated into the Upravlenniye Sputnik Aktivny (US-A; in the West, RORSAT, for Radar Ocean Reconnaisance SATellite) spacecraft, designed to use radar for naval surveillance.

DOE Sketch based on KOSMOS 954
LLNL sketch of BES-5 based on KOSMOS-954 wreckage, DOE image via Sven Grahn

Rather than having stacked discs of UC2, the BES-5 used 79 fuel rods made out of uranium (90% enriched, total U mass 30 kg) molybdenum alloy metal, encased in high-temperature steel. NaK was used as a coolant for the reactor, pumped using the energy from 19 of the fuel assemblies to run an electromagnetic fuel pump. Producing over 100 kW of thermal energy, after electric conversion using in-core germanium-silicon thermoelectric power conversion elements (which use the difference in charge potential between two different metals along a boundary to create an electrical charge when a temperature gradient is applied across the join; again, more in a later post), a maximum of 5 kW of electrical energy was available for the spacecraft’s instrumentation. The fact that this core used thermoelectric conversion rather than thermionic is a good indicator that the common use of the term, TOPAZ, for this reactor is incorrect. Reactor control was provided by six beryllium reflector drums that would be slowly lowered through holes in the radial reflector over the reactor’s life to increase the local neutron flux to account for the buildup of neutron poisons.

BES-5 Ascent Stage
BES-5 ascent stage cutaway, with core on left and chemical propulsion system on right, Rosatom

One unique aspect to the BES-5 is that the reactor was able to decommission itself at end of life (although this wasn’t always successful) by moving the reactor to a higher orbit and then ejecting the end reflector and fuel assemblies (which were subcritical at time of assembly, and required the Be control rods to be inserted to reach delayed criticality), as well as dumping the NaK coolant overboard. This ensured that the reactor core would not re-enter the atmosphere (although there were two notable exceptions to this, and one late unexpected success). As an additional safety measure following the failure of KOSMOS-954 (more on that below), the reactor was redesigned so that the fuel elements would burn up upon re-entry, diluting the radioactive material to the point that no significant increase in radiation would occur. Over the reactor’s long operational history (31 BES-5 reactors were launched), the lifetime of the reactors was constantly extended, beginning with a lifetime of just 110 minutes (used for radar broadcast testing) to up to 135 days of operational life.

RORSAT_by_Ronald_C._Wittmann,_1982
US-A satellite (with the radiator and ascent stage, but oddly no core), painting by Ronald Wittman 1982

The first BES-5 to be launched was serial number 37 on the KOSMOS-367 satellite on October 3, 1970 (there’s some confusion on this score, with another source claiming it was KOSMOS-469, launched on 25 December 1971). After a very short (110 minute) operational life, the spacecraft was moved into a graveyard orbit and the reactor ejected due to overheating in the reactor core. Three more spacecraft (KOSMOS-402, -469, and 516) were launched over the next two years, with the -469 spacecraft possibly being the first to have the 8.2 GHz side looking radar system that the power plant was selected for. Over time, the US-A spacecraft were launched in parallel, co-planar orbits, usually deployed in pairs with closely attending Russian US-P electronics intelligence satellites (for more on the operational use of the US-A, check out Sven Grahn’s excellent blog on the operational history of the US-A).

Morning Light logo
CNSC/DOE Operation Morning Light logo

The US-A program wasn’t without its failures, sadly, and one led to one of the biggest radiological cleanup missions in the history of nuclear power. On September 18, 1977, a Tsyklon-2 rocket launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Khazakhstan carrying the KOSMOS-954 US-A spacecraft on an orbital inclination of 65 degrees. By December, the spacecraft’s orbital maneuvering had become erratic, and Soviet officials contacted US officials that they had lost control of the satellite before they were able to move the reactor core into its’ designated graveyard orbit. On January 24, 1968, the satellite re-entered over Canada, spreading debris over a 600 km long section of the country. Operation Morning Light, the resulting CNES and US DOE program, was able to clear all the debris over several months, in a program that involved hundreds of people from the CNES, DOE, the NEST teams that were then available, and US Military Airlift Command. No fatalities or radiation poisoning cases were reported as a result of KOSMOS-954’s unplanned re-entry, although the remote nature of the re-entry was probably as much of a help as a challenge in this regard. A second KOSMOS spacecraft, KOSMOS-1402, also had its fuel elements re-enter the atmosphere following a failure of the spacecraft to ascend into its graveyard orbit, this time over the North Atlantic. The core re-entered the atmosphere on 23 January 1983, breaking up over the North Atlantic, north of England. No fragments of this reactor were ever recovered, and no significant increase in radioactivity as a result of this unplanned re-entry were detected.

These two incidents caused significant delays in the US-A program, and subsequent redesigns in the reactor as well. However, launches of this system continued until March 14, 1988, with the KOSMOS-1932 mission, which was moved into a graveyard orbit on 20 May, 1988, after a mission time of 66 days. The fate of its’ immediate predecessor, KOSMOS-1900, showed that the additional safety mechanisms for the US-A spacecraft’s reactor were successful: despite an apparent loss of control of the spacecraft, an increasingly eccentric orbit, and the buildup of aerodynamic forces, the reactor core was able to be boosted to a stable graveyard orbit, with the maneuver being completed on 17 October 1988. The main body of the spacecraft re-entered over the Indian Ocean 16 days earlier.

One interesting note on the controversy surrounding these reactor cores’ re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere is that the US planned on doing the exact same thing with the SNAP-10A reactors. The design was supposed to orbit for long enough (on the order of hundreds of year) for the short-lived fission products to decay away, and then the entire reactor would self-disassemble through a combination of mechanical, explosive, and aerodynamic systems; and, as a result, burn up in the upper atmosphere. While the amount of radioactivity that would be added to the atmosphere would be negligible, these accidents showed that this disposal method would not be acceptable; further complicating the American astronuclear program, as well as the one in the USSR. The SNAPSHOT reactor is still in orbit, and is expected to remain there for 2800 years, but considering the fallout of these accidents, retrieval or boosting to a graveyard orbit may be a future mission necessity for this reactor.

The US-A spacecraft demonstrated in-space nuclear fission power, and serial fission power plant production, for over two decades. Despite two major failures resulting in re-entry of the reactor core, the US-A program managed successful operation of the BES-5 reactor for 29 missions, and minimal impact from the two failures. The rest of the BES-5 cores remain parked in graveyard orbits, where they will remain for many hundreds of years until the radioactivity has dropped to natural background radiation.

There is one long-lasting legacy of the BES-5 program on in-orbit space travel, however: the ejected NaK coolant. The coolant remains a cratering hazard for spacecraft in certain orbits, but is not thought to be an object multiplication hazard. It is doubtful that the same core ejection system would be used in a newly designed astronuclear reactor, but this legacy lives on as another example of humanity’s ignorance at the time of a Kessler Syndrome situation.

While this program was not 100% successful, whether from a mission success point of view or from the point of view of it having no ongoing impact from the operations that were carried out, over 25 years of operation of a series of BES-5 reactors remains to this day the most extensive and successful of any astronuclear fission powered design, and it meets or exceeds even the service histories of any RTG design that has been deployed by any country.

 

TOPOL: The Most Powerful Reactor Ever Flown

TOPOL Cutaway
TEU-5 cutaway diagram

The TEU-5 TOPOL (TOPAZ-1) program is the second type of Soviet reactor to fly; and, although it only flew twice, it can be argued to have been even more successful than the BES-5 reactor design. The TEU-5 was the return of the in-core thermionic power conversion system that was first utilized in Romashka; and, just as the Bouk was a step above the Romashka, the Topol was a step beyond that. Thermionic conversion remained more attractive than thermoelectric in terms of wider range of operating capabilities, increased temperature potential, and more forgiving materials requirements, but thermoelectric conversion was able to be readied for flight first. Because of this, and because of the inertia that any flight-tested and more-refined (from a programmatic and serial production sense) program has over one that has yet to fly, the BES-5 flew for over a decade before the TEU-5 would take to orbit.

Despite the different structure, and much higher power, of the TEU-5, the design was able to fulfill the same role of ocean radar reconnaissance; but, initially, it was meant to be a powerful on-orbit TV transmission station. The major advantage of the TEU-5 over the BES-5 is that, due to its higher power level, it wasn’t forced to be in a very low orbit, which increased atmospheric drag, caused the dry mass of the craft to be severely reduced in order to allow for more propellant to be on board, and created a lot of complexity in terms of reactor decommissioning and disposal. Following the KOSMOS-954 and -1402 accidents, the low-flying profile of the US-A satellite was no longer available for astronuclear reactors, and so the orbital altitude increased. TEU-5 offered the capability to get useful image resolution at this higher altitude due to its higher power, and improvements to the (never flown, but ground tested) radar systems.

TOPAZ Core configuration, Bennett
Disgram of multi-cell TFE concept, Bennett 1989

The TOPOL program was begun in the 1960s, under the Russian acronym for Thermionic Experimental Converter in the Active Zone, which translates directly into Topaz in English, but ground testing didn’t begin until 1970. This was a multi-cell thermionic fuel element design similar in basic concept to Romashka, however it was a far more complex design. Instead of a single stack of disc-shaped fuel elements, a “garland” of fuel elements were formed into a thermionic fuel element. The fissile fuel element was surrounded by a thimble of tungsten or molybdenum, which formed the cathode of the thermionic converter, while the anode of the converter was a thin niobium tube; as with most thermionic converters the gap between cathode and anode was filled with cesium vapor. The anode was cooled with pumped NaK, although some sources indicate that lithium was also considered as a coolant for higher-powered versions of the reactor.

BES-5 core cross section
TEU-5 core cross-section, DOE

The differences between the BES-5 and TEU-5 were far more than the power conversion system. Instead of being a fast reactor, the Topaz was designed for the thermal neutron spectrum, and as such used zirconium hydride for in-core moderation (also creating a thermal limitation for the materials in the core; however, hydrogen loss mitigation measures were taken throughout the development process). Rather than using the metal fuels that its predecessor had, or the carbides of the Romashka, the Topol used a far more familiar material to nuclear power plant operators: uranium oxide (UO2), enriched to 90% 235U. This, along with reactor core geometry changes, allowed the amount of uranium needed for the core to drop from 30 kg in the BES-5 to 11.5 kg. NaK remained the coolant, due to its low melting temperature, good thermal conductivity, and neutronic transparency. The cathode temperature in the TEU-5 was in the range of 1500-1800C, which resulted in an electrical power output of up to 10 kW.

Cesium reservoir and regulator
ENISY cesium reservoir, which is very similar to the TEU-5 system, image courtesy DOE

One of the most technically challenging parts of this reactor’s design was in the cesium management system. The metal would only be a gas inside the core, and electromagnetic pumps were used to move the liquid through a series of filters, heaters, and pipes. The purity of the cesium had a large impact on the efficiency of the thermionic elements, so a number of filters were installed, including for gaseous fission waste products, to be evacuated into space.

The first flight of the TEU-5 was on the KOSMOS-1818 satellite, launched on February 1st, 1987, onto a significantly different orbital trajectory than the rest of the US-A series of spacecraft, despite the fact that superficially it appeared to be quite similar. This was because it was the test-bed of a new type of US-A spacecraft, the US-AM, taking advantage of not only the more powerful nuclear reactor but also employing numerous other technologies. The USSR eventually announced that the spacecraft’s name was the Plasma-A, and was a technology demonstrator for a number of new systems. These included six SPT-70 Hall thrusters for maneuvering and reaction control, and a suite of electromagnetic and sun-finding sensors. Some sources indicate that part of the mission for the spacecraft was the development of a magnetospherically-based navigation system for the USSR. An additional advantage to the higher orbit of this spacecraft was that it eliminated the need for the ascent stage for the reactor core and fuel elements, saving spacecraft mass to complete its’ mission. It had an operational life of 187 days, before the reactor was placed in its graveyard orbit, and the remainder of the spacecraft was allowed to re-enter the atmosphere as its orbit decayed.

The second Plasma-A (KOSMOS-1867) launch was on July 10th, 1987. While the initial flight profile was remarkably similar to the original Plasma-A satellite, the later portions of the mission showed a much larger variation in orbital period, possibly indicating more extensive testing of the thrusters. It was operational for just over a year before it, too, was decommissioned.

Neither of the TEU-5 launches carried radar equipment aboard; but, considering the cancellation of the program also coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union, it’s possible that the increased power output of the TEU-5 would have allowed acceptable radar resolution from this higher orbit (the US-A spacecraft’s orbit was determined by the distance and power requirements of its radar system, and due to the higher aerodynamic drag also significantly limited the lifetime of each spacecraft).

After decommissioning, similar problems with NaK coolant from the reactor core were experienced with the TEU-5 reactors. There is one additional complication from the decommissioning of these larger reactor cores, however, which led to some confusion during the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) to study solar behavior. Due to the higher operational altitude during the time that the reactor was being operated at full power, and the behavior of the materials that the reactor was made out of, what is often a minor curiosity in reactor physics caused some confusion among some astrophysical and heliophysical researchers: when some materials are bombarded by sufficiently high gamma flux, they will eject electron-positron pairs, which were then trapped in the magnetosphere of the Earth. While these radiation fluxes are minuscule, and unable to adversely affect living tissue, for scientists carefully studying solar behavior during the solar maximum the difference in the number of positrons was not only noticeable, but statistically significant. Both the SMM satellite and one other (Ginga, a Japanese X-ray telescope launched in 1987, which reentered in 1991) have been confirmed to have some instrument interference due to either the gamma wave flux or the resulting positron emissions from the two flown TEU-5 reactors. While this is a problem that only affected a very small number of missions, should astronuclear reactors become more commonly used in orbit, these types of emissions will need to be taken into account for future astrophysical missions.

The Topol program as a whole would survive the collapse of the Soviet Union, but just as with the BES-5, the TEU-5 never flew again after the Berlin Wall came down. KOSMOS-1867 was the last TEU-5 reactor, and the last US-AM satellite, to fly.

 

ENISY, The Final Soviet Reactor

The single-element thermionic reactor concept never went away. In fact, it remained in side-by-side development with the TOPOL reactor, and shared many of the basic characteristics, but was not ready in as timely a fashion as TOPOL was. The program was begun in 1967, with a total of 26 units built.

ENISY was seen to Soviet planners to be the logical extension of the TEU-5 program, and in many ways the reactor designs are linked. While the TEU-5 was designed for high-powered radar reconnaissance, the ENISY reactor was designed to be a communications and TV broadcast satellite. The amount of data that’s able to be transmitted is directly proportional to the amount of power available, and remains one of the most attractive advantages that astronuclear power plants offer to deep space probes (along with propulsion).

We’ll look at this design more in a later post, but it’s important to mention here since it is, in many ways, a direct evolution of the TEU-5. One nice thing about this reactor is that, due to the geometry of the reactor, its non-nuclear components were able to be tested as a unit without fissile fuel. Instead, induction heating units of the same size as the fuel elements could be slid into the location that the fuel rods would be for preflight testing without issues of neutron activation and material degradation due to the radiation flux.

ENISY for NEPSTP
ENISY reactor installation for NEP Space Test Program, DOE

This capability was demonstrated at the 8th US Symposium on Nuclear Energy in Albuquerque, NM, and led to the US purchasing two already-tested units from Russia (numbers V-71 and I-21U), with a buy option taken out on an additional four units, if needed. This purchase included technical information in the fuel elements, and offers of assistance from Russia to help in the fabrication of the fuel elements, but no actual fuel was sold. This reactor design would form the core of the American crewed lunar base concept in the 1990s as part of the Constellation program, as well as the core of a proposed technology demonstration mission deep space probe, but those programs never reached fruition.

We’ll look at this design in our usual depth in a couple blog posts. For now, it’s worth noting that this design reached flight-ready status; but, due to the financial situation of Russia after the collapse of the USSR, the increased availability of high-powered photovoltaic communications satellites, and the lack of funding for an American astronuclear flight test program, this reactor never achieved orbit as its predecessors did.

 

The Legacy of the USSR Astronuclear Program

 

The USSR flew more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, 33 times more to be precise. Their program focused on an area of power generation that continues to hold great promise in the future, and in many ways helped define the problem for the rest of the world: in-core direct power conversion (something we’ll talk more about in the power conversion series). Even the failures of the program have taught the world much about the challenges of astronuclear design, and changed the face of what is and isn’t acceptable when it comes to flying a nuclear reactor in Earth orbit. The ENISY reactor went on to be the preferred power plant for American lunar bases for over a decade, and remains the only astronuclear design that’s been flight-certified by multiple countries.

Russia continues to build on the experience and expertise gained during the Romashka, BES-5, TEU-5, and ENISY programs. A recent test of a heat rejection system that offers far higher heat rejection capacity for its mass than any that has flown to date (a liquid droplet radiator, a concept we’ll cover in the thermal management post that will be coming up in a few months), their focus on high-power Hall thrusters, and their design for an on-orbit nuclear electric tug with a far more powerful reactor than any that we looked at today (1 MWe, depending on the power conversion system, likely between 2-5 MWt) shows that this experience has not been shoved into a closet and left to gather dust, but continues to be developed to advance the future of spaceflight.

 

More Coming Soon!

This post focused on the USSR and Russia’s astronuclear power plant expertise and operational history, a subject that very little has been written about in English (outside a number of reports, mostly focusing on the ENISY/TOPAZ-2 reactor), and is a subject that has long fascinated me. However, the USSR wasn’t the only country focusing on the idea, and wasn’t even the first to fly a reactor, just the most successful at making an astronuclear program.

The next post (which might be split into two due to the sheer number of fission power plant designs proposed in the US) is on the American programs from the same time, the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Propulsion, or SNAP, series of reactors (if split, the first post will cover SNAP-2, -10A, SNAPSHOT, -8, and the three reactors that evolved from SNAP-8, with SNAP50/SPUR, SABRE, SP-100, and possibly a couple more, as well as the ENISY/TOPAZ II US-USSR TSET/NEP Space Test Program/lunar base program). While the majority of the SNAP designs that were used were radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the ones that we’ll be focusing on are the fission power plants: the SNAP-2, SNAP-8, SNAP-10A (the first reactor to be launched into orbit), and the SNAP-100/SPUR reactor.

Following that, we’ll wrap up our look at the history of astronuclear electric power plants (the reactors themselves, at least) with a look at the designs proposed for the Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan’s “Star Wars” program), return to a Russian-designed reactor which would have powered an America lunar base, had the funding for the base been available (ENISY), and the designs that rounded out the 20th century’s exploration of this fascinating and promising concept.

 

We’ll do one last post on NEP reactor cores looking at more recent designs from the last twenty years up to the present time, including the JIMO mission and a look at where Kilopower stands today, and then move on to power conversion systems in what’s likely to be another long series. As it stands that one will have a post on direct energy conversion, one on general heat engines and Stirling power conversion systems, one on Rankine cycle power conversion systems, one on Brayton cycle systems (including the ever-popular, never-realized, supercritical CO2 turbines), one on AMTEC and magnetohydrodynamic power conversion systems (possibly with a couple other non-mechanical heat engines as well), and a wrap up of the concepts, looking at which designs work best for which power levels and mission types. After that, it’ll be on to: heat rejection systems, for another multi-part series; a post on NEP ship and mission design; and, finally, one on bimodal NTR/NEP systems, looking at how to get the thrust of an NTR when it’s convenient and the efficiency of an NEP system when it’s most useful.

References

General References

http://www.buran.ru/htm/gud%2026.htm?fbclid=IwAR1jt9fsDZ10fHCSo42KUHjGTux8_uIkg43ClPrE1eg5IdQjXyhS2rSAHGY

http://www.proatom.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=2740

https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/29489/?fbclid=IwAR2zftn2RGOk8aU-3m1zGwNBhYMVY2zYFGUGwiorL6LSEFLNe8y-Pt4w_ag

http://elib.biblioatom.ru/text/atomnaya-energiya_t17-5_1964/go,16/?fbclid=IwAR2QzxdvVT5m3Kc3KPcVUmR5ZFrx_Er5d7RmKNFTzFz4k6-Djw_gPnnV6eA

Romashka

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/neep602/SPRING00/lecture35.pdf

http://nacep.ru/novosti-energetiki/atomnaya-energetika/vysokotemperaturnyj-reaktor-preobrazovatel-romashka.html?fbclid=IwAR2W-9Exgyd63m6NGbVfNixGUzF9FrU2hsZUAMvdb9b75TBHQ6Ukh-EPMIA

http://nacep.ru/novosti-energetiki/atomnaya-energetika/termobatareya-romashka.html

Bouk

RORSAT page, Sven Grahn http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/RORSAT/RORSAT.html

Morning Light

The Life and Death of KOSMOS 954, Guy Weiss, courtesy Sven Grahn http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/RORSAT/cosmos954.pdf

History of the the 1035th Technical Operations Group, 1 January – 31 December 1978, via John Greenwald at The Black Vault http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/accidents/morninglightusaf.pdf

History of the 437 Military Airlift Wing, Manning 1978, courtest John Greenwald at The Black Vault http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/accidents/morninglight-histories.pdf

CIA Report C06607579, courtesy John Greenwald at The Black Vault http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/operationmorninglight-cia1.pdf

Topol-1

Gunther’s Space Page, PLASMA-A https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/plasma-a.htm

 

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