Hello, and welcome back to Beyond NERVA! As some of you may have noticed, the website has moved! Yes, we’re now at beyondnerva.com! I’m working on updating the webpage, and am getting the pieces together for a major website redesign (still a ways off, but lots of the pieces are starting to fall into place) to make the site easier to navigate and more user friendly. Make sure to update your bookmarks with this new address! With that brief administrative announcement out of the way, let’s get back to our look at in-space fission power plants.
Today, we’re going to continue our look at the SNAP program, America’s first major attempt to provide electric power in space using nuclear energy, and finishing up our look at the zirconium hydride fueled reactors that defined the early SNAP reactors by looking at the SNAP-8, and its two children – the 5 kW Thermoelectric Reactor and the Advanced Zirconium Hydride Reactor.
SNAP 8 was the first reactor designed with these space stations in mind in mind. While SNAP-10A was a low-power system (at 500 watts when flown, later upgraded to 1 kW), and SNAP-2 was significantly larger (3 kW), there was a potential need for far more power. Crewed space stations take a lot of power (the ISS uses close to 100 kWe, as an example), and neither the SNAP-10 or the SNAP-2 were capable of powering the space stations that NASA was in the beginning stages of planning.
Initially designed to be far higher powered, with 30-60 kilowatts of electrical power, this was an electric supply that could power a truly impressive outpost for humanity in orbit. However, the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA (which was just coming into existence at the time this program was started) didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, as it were. While the reactor was far higher powered than the SNAP 2 reactor that we looked at last time, many of the power system’s components are shared: both use the same fuel (with minor exceptions), both use similar control drum structures for reactor control, both use mercury Rankine cycle power conversion systems, and perhaps most attractively both were able to evolve with lessons learned from the other part of the program.
While SNAP 8 never flew, it was developed to a very high degree of technical understanding, so that if the need for the reactor arose, it would be available. One design modification late in the SNAP 8 program (when the reactor wasn’t even called SNAP 8 anymore, but the Advanced Zirconium Hydride Reactor) had a very rare attribute in astronuclear designs: it was shielded on all sides for use on a space station, providing more than twice the electrical power available to the International Space Station without any of the headaches normally associated with approach and docking with a nuclear powered facility.
Let’s start back in 1959, though, with the SNAP 8, the first nuclear electric propulsion reactor system.
SNAP 8: NASA Gets Involved Directly
The SNAP 2 and SNAP 10A reactors were both collaborations between the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), who were responsible for the research, development, and funding of the reactor core and primary coolant portions of the system, and the US Air Force, who developed the secondary coolant system, the power conversion system, the heat rejection system, the power conditioning unit, and the rest of the components. Each organization had a contractor that they used: the AEC used Atomics International (AI), one of the movers and shakers of the advanced reactor industry, while the US Air Force went to Thompson Ramo Wooldridge (better known by their acronym, TRW) for the SNAP-2 mercury (Hg) Rankine turbine and Westinghouse Electric Corporation for the SNAP-10’s thermoelectric conversion unit.
1959 brought NASA directly into the program on the reactor side of things, when they requested a fission reactor in the 30-60 kWe range for up to one year; one year later the SNAP-8 Reactor Development Program was born. It would use a similar Hg-based Rankine cycle as the SNAP-2 reactor, which was already under development, but the increased power requirements and unique environment that the power conversion system necessitated significant redesign work, which was carried out by Aerojet General as the prime contractor. This led to a 600 kWe rector core, with a 700 C outlet temperature As with the SNAP-2 and SNAP-10 programs, the SNAP 8’s reactor core was funded by the AEC, but in this case the power conversion system was the funding responsibility of NASA.
The fuel itself was similar to that in the SNAP-2 and -10A reactors, but the fuel elements were far longer and thinner than those of the -2 and -10A. Because the fuel element geometry was different, and the power level of the reactor was so much higher than the SNAP-2 reactor, the SNAP-8 program required its own experimental and developmental reactor program to run in parallel to the initial SNAP Experimental and Development reactors, although the materials testing undertaken by the SNAP-2 reactor program, and especially the SCA4 tests, were very helpful in refining the final design of the SNAP-8 reactor.
The power conversion system for this reactor was split in two: identical Hg turbines would be used, with either one or both running at any given time depending on the power needs of the mission. This allows for more flexibility in operation, and also simplifies the design challenges involved in the turbines themselves: it’s easier to design a turbine with a smaller power output range than a larger one. If the reactor was at full power, and both turbines were used, the design was supposed to produce up to 60 kW of electrical power, while the minimum power output of a single turbine would be in the 30 kWe range. Another advantage was that if one was damaged, the reactor would continue to be able to produce power.
Due to the much higher power levels, an extensive core redesign was called for, meaning that different test reactors would need to be used to verify this design. While the fuel elements were very similar, and the overall design philosophy was operating in parallel to the SNAP-2/10A program, there was only so much that the tests done for the USAF system would be able to help the new program. This led to the SNAP-8 development program, which began in 1960, and had its first reactor, the SNAP-8 Experimental Reactor, come online in 1963.
SNAP-8 Experimental Reactor: The First of the Line
The first reactor in this series, the SNAP 8 Experimental Reactor (S8ER), went critical in May 1963, and operated until 1965. it operated for 2522 hours at above 600 kWt, and over 8000 hours at lower power levels. The fuel elements for the reactor were 14 inches in length, and 0.532 inches in diameter, with uranium-zirconium hydride (U-ZrH, the same basic fuel type as the SNAP-2/10A system that we looked at last time) enriched to 93.15% 235U, with 6 X 10^22 atoms of hydrogen per cubic centimeter.
The biggest chemical change in this reactor’s fuel elements compared to the SNAP-2/10A system was the hydrogen barrier inside the metal clad: instead of using gadolinium as a burnable poison (which would absorb neutrons, then decay into a neutron-transparent element as the reactor underwent fission over time), the S8ER used samarium. The reasons for the change are rather esoteric, relating to the neutron spectrum of the reactor, the particular fission products and their ratios, thermal and chemical characteristics of the fuel elements, and other factors. However, the change was so advantageous that eventually the different burnable poison would be used in the SNAP-2/10A system as well.
The fuel elements were still loaded in a triangle array, but makes more of a cylinder than a hexagon like in the -2/10A, with small internal reflectors to fill out the smooth cylinder of the pressure vessel. The base and head plates that hold the fuel elements are very similar to the smaller design, but obviously have more holes to hold the increased number of fuel elements. The NaK-78 coolant (identical to the SNAP-2/10A system) entered in the bottom of the reactor into a space in the pressure vessel (a plenum), flowed through the base plate and up the reactor, then exits the top of the pressure vessel through an upper plenum. A small neutron source used as a startup neutron source (sort of like a spark plug for a reactor) was mounted to the top of the pressure vessel, by the upper coolant plenum. The pressure vessel itself was made out of 316 stainless steel.
Instead of four control drums, the S8ER used six void-backed control drums. These were directly derived from the SNAP-2/10A control system. Two of the drums were used for gross reactivity control – either fully rotated in or out, depending on if the reactor is under power or not. Two were used for finer control, but at least under nominal operation would be pretty much fixed in their location over longer periods of time. As the reactor approached end of life, these drums would rotate in to maintain the reactivity of the system. The final two were used for fine control, to adjust the reactivity for both reactor stability and power demand adjustment. The drums used the same type of bearings as the -2/10A system.
The S8ER first underwent criticality benchmark tests (pre-dry critical testing) from September to December 1962 to establish the reactor’s precise control parameters. Before filling the reactor with the NaK coolant, water immersion experiments for failure-to-orbit safety testing (as an additional set of tests to the SCA-4 testing which also supported SNAP-8) was carried out between January and March of 1963. After a couple months of modifications and refurbishment, dry criticality tests were once again conducted on May 19, 1963, followed in the next month with the reactor reaching wet critical power levels on June 23. Months of low-power testing followed, to establish the precise reactor control element characteristics, thermal transfer characteristics, and a host of other technical details before the reactor was increased in power to full design characteristics.
The reactor was shut down from early August to late October, because some of the water coolant channels used for the containment vessel failed, necessitating the entire structure to be dug up, repaired, and reinstalled, with significant reworking of the facility being required to complete this intensive repair process. Further modifications and upgrades to the facility continued into November, but by November 22, the reactor underwent its first “significant” power level testing. Sadly, this revealed that there were problems with the control drum actuators, requiring the reactor to be shut down again.
After more modifications and repairs, lower power testing resumed to verify the repairs, study reactor transient behavior, and other considerations. The day finally came for the SNAP-8 Experimental Reactor achieved its first full power, at temperature testing on December 11, 1963. Shortly after, the reactor had to be shut down again to repair a NaK leak in one of the primary coolant loop pumps, but the reactor was up and operating again shortly after. Lower power tests were conducted to evaluate the samarium burnable poisons in the fuel elements, measure xenon buildup, and measure hydrogen migration in the core until April 28, interrupted briefly by another NaK pump failure and a number of instrumentation malfunctions in the automatic scram system (which was designed to automatically shut down the reactor in the case of an accident or certain types of reactor behaviors). However, despite these problems, April 28 marked 60 days of continuous operation at 450 kWt and 1300 F (design temperature, but less-than-nominal power levels).
After a shutdown to repair the control drive mechanisms (again), the reactor went into near-continuous operation, either at 450 or 600 kWt of power output and 1300 F outlet temperature until April 15, 1965, when the reactor was shut down for the last time. By September 2 of 1964, the S8ER had operated at design power and temperature levels for 1000 continuous hours, and went on in that same test to exceed the maximum continuous operation time of any SNAP reactor to date on November 5 (1152 hours). January 18 of 1965 it achieved 10,000 hours of total operations, and in February of that year reached 100 days of continuous operation at design power and temperature conditions. Just 8 days later, on February 12, it exceeded the longest continuous operation of any reactor to that point (147 days, beating the Yankee reactor). March 5 marked the one year anniversary of the core outlet temperature being continuously at over 1200 F. By April 15, when the reactor was shut down for the last time it achieved an impressive set of accomplishments:
- 5016.5 continuous operations immediately preceeding the shutdown (most at 450 kWt, all at 1200 F or greater)
- 12,080 hours of total operations
- A total of 5,154,332 kilowatt-hours of thermal energy produced
- 91.09% Time Operated Efficiency (percentage of time that the reactor was critical) from November 22, 1963 (the day of first significant power operations of the reactor), and 97.91% efficiency in the last year of operations.
Once the tests were concluded, the reactor was disassembled, inspected, and fuel elements were examined. These tests took place at the Atomics International Hot Laboratory (also at Santa Susana) starting on July 28, 1965. For about 6 weeks, this was all that the facility focused on; the core was disassembled and cleaned, and the fuel elements were each examined, with many of them being disassembled and run through a significant testing regime to determine everything from fuel burnup to fission product percentages to hydrogen migration. The fuel element tests were the most significant, because to put it mildly there were problems.
Of the 211 fuel elements in the core, only 44 were intact. Many of the fuel elements also underwent dimensional changes, either swelling (with a very small number actually decreasing) across the diameter or the length, becoming oblong, dishing, or other changes in geometry. The clad on most elements was damaged in one way or another, leading to a large amount of hydrogen migrating out of the fuel elements, mostly into the coolant and then out of the reactor. This means that much of the neutron moderation needed for the reactor to operate properly migrated out of the core, reducing the overall available reactivity even as the amount of fission poisons in the form of fission products was increasing. For a flight system, this is a major problem, and one that definitely needs to be addressed. However, this is exactly the sort of problem that an experimental reactor is meant to discover and assess, so in this way as well the reactor was a complete success, if not as smooth a development as the designers would likely have preferred.
It was also discovered that, while the cracks in the clad would indicate that the hydrogen would be migrating out of the cracks in the hydrogen diffusion barrier, far less hydrogen was lost than was expected based on the amount of damage the fuel elements underwent. In fact, the hydrogen migration in these tests was low enough that the core would most likely be able to carry out its 10,000 hour operational lifetime requirement as-is; without knowing what the mechanism that was preventing the hydrogen migration was, though, it would be difficult if not impossible to verify this without extensive additional testing, when changes in the fuel element design could result in a more satisfactory fuel clad lifetime, reduced damage, and greater insurance that the hydrogen migration would not become an issue.
The SNAP-8 Experimental Reactor was an important stepping stone to nuclear development in high-temperature ZrH nuclear fuel development, and greatly changed the direction of the whole SNAP-8 program in some ways. The large number of failures in cladding, the hydrogen migration from the fuel elements, and the phase changes within the crystalline structure of the U-ZrH itself were a huge wake-up call to the reactor developers. With the SNAP-2/10A reactor, these issues were minor at best, but that was a far lower-powered reactor, with very different geometry. The large number of fuel elements, the flow of the coolant through the reactor, and numerous other factors made the S8ER reactor far more complex to deal with on a practical level than most, if any, anticipated. Plating of the elements associated with Hastelloy on the stainless steel elements caused concern about the materials that had been selected causing blockages in flow channels, further exacerbating the problems of local hot spots in the fuel elements that caused many of the problems in the first place. The cladding material could (and would) be changed relatively easily to account for the problems with the metal’s ductility (the ability to undergo significant plastic deformation before rupture, in other words to endure fuel swelling without the metal splitting, cracking, fracturing or other ways that the clad could be breached) under high temperature and radiation fluxes over time. A number of changes were proposed to the reactor’s design, which strongly encouraged – or required – changes in the SNAP-8 Development Reactor that was currently being designed and fabricated. Those changes would alter what the SNAP-8 reactor would become, and what missions it would be proposed for, until the program was finally put to rest.
After the S8ER test, a mockup reactor, the SNAP-8 Development Mockup, was built based on the 1962 version of the design. This mockup never underwent nuclear testing, but was used for extensive non-nuclear testing of the designs components. Basically, every component that could be tested under non-nuclear conditions (but otherwise identical, including temperature, stress loading, vacuum, etc.) was tested and refined with this mockup. The tweaks to the design that this mockup suggested are far more minute than we have time to cover here, but it was an absolutely critical step to preparing the SNAP-8 reactor’s systems for flight test.
SNAP-8 Development Reactor: Facing Challenges with the Design
The final reactor in the series, the SNAP-8 Development Reactor, was a shorter-lived reactor, in part because many of the questions that needed to be answered about the geometry had been answered by the S8ER, and partly because the unanswered materials questions were able to be answered with the SCA4 reactor. This reactor underwent dry critical testing in June 1968, and power testing began at the beginning of the next year. From January 1969 to December 1969, when the reactor was shut down for the final time, the reactor operated at nominal (600 kWt) power for 668 hours, and operated at 1000 kWt for 429 hours.
The SNAP-8 Development Reactor (S8DR) was installed in the same facility as the S8ER, although it operated under different conditions than the S8ER. Instead of having a cover gas, the S8DR was tested in a vacuum, and a flight-type radiation shield was mounted below it to facilitate shielding design and materials choices. Fuel loading began on June 18, 1968, and criticality was achieved on June 22, with 169 out of the 211 fuel elements containing the U-ZrH fuel (the rest of the fuel elements were stainless steel “dummy” elements) installed in the core. Reactivity experiments for the control mechanisms were carried out before the remainder of the dummy fuel elements were replaced with actual fuel in order to better calibrate the system.
Finally, on June 28, all the fuel was loaded and the final calibration experiments were carried out. These tests then led to automatic startup testing of the reactor, beginning on December 13, 1968, as well as transient analysis, flow oscillation, and temperature reactivity coefficient testing on the reactor. From January 10 to 15, 1969, the reactor was started using the proposed automated startup process a total of five times, proving the design concept.
1969 saw the beginning of full-power testing, with the ramp up to full design power occurring on January 17. Beginning at 25% power, the reactor was stepped up to 50% after 8 hours, then another 8 hours in it was brought up to full power. The coolant flow rates in both the primary and secondary loops started at full flow, then were reduced to maintain design operating temperatures, even at the lower power setting. Immediately following these tests on January 23, an additional set of testing was done to verify that the power conversion system would start up as well. The biggest challenge was verification that the initial injection of mercury into the boiler would operate as expected, so a series of mercury injection tests were carried out successfully. While they weren’t precisely at design conditions due to test stand limitations, the tests were close enough that it was possible to verify that the design would work as planned.
The final power test on the S8ER began on November 20, 1969. For the first 11 days, it operated at 300 kWt and 1200 F, when it was then increased in power back to 600 kWt, but the outlet temperature was reduced to 1140F, for an additional 7 days. An increase of outlet temperature back to 1200 F was then dialed in for the final 7 days of the test, and then the reactor was shut down.
This shutdown was an interesting and long process, especially compared to just removing all the reactivity of the control drums by rotating them all fully out. First, the temperature was dropped to 1000 F while the reactor was still at 600 kWt, and then the reactor’s power was reduced to the point that both the outlet and inlet coolant temperatures were 800 F. This was held until December 21 to study the xenon transient behavior, and then the temperatures were further reduced to 400 F to study the decay power level of the reactor. On January 7, the temperature was once again increased to 750 F, and two days later the coolant was removed. The core temperature then dropped steadily before leveling off at 180-200F.
Once again, the reactor was disassembled and examined at the Hot Laboratory, with special attention being paid to the fuel elements. These fuel elements held up much better than the S8ER’s fuel elements, with only 67 of the 211 fuel elements showing cracking. However, quite a few elements, while not cracked, showed significant dimensional changes and higher hydrogen loss rates. Another curiosity was that a thin (less than 0.1 mil thick) metal film, made up of iron, nickel, and chromium, developed fairly quickly on the exterior of the cladding (the exact composition changed based on location, and therefore on local temperature, within the core and along each fuel element).
The fuel elements that had intact cladding and little to no deformation showed very low hydrogen migration, an average of 2.4% (this is consistent with modeling showing that the permeation barrier was damaged early in its life, perhaps during the 1 MWt run). However, those with some damage lost between 6.8% and 13.2 percent of their hydrogen. This damage wasn’t limited to just cracked cladding, though – the swelling of the fuel element was a better indication of the amount of hydrogen lost than the clad itself being split. This is likely due to phase changes in the fuel elements, when the UzrH changes crystalline structure, usually due to high temperatures. This changes how well – and at what bond angle – the hydrogen is kept within the fuel element’s crystalline structure, and can lead to more intense hot spots in the fuel element, causing the problem to become worse. The loss of reactivity scrams from the testing in May-July 1969 seem to be consistent with the worst failures in the fuel elements, called Type 3 in the reports: high hydrogen loss, highly oval cross section of the swollen fuel elements (there were a total of 31 of these, 18 of them were intact, 13 were cracked). One interesting note about the clad composition is that where there was a higher copper content due to irregularities in metallography there was far less swelling of the Hastelloy N clad, although the precise mechanism was not understood at the time (and my rather cursory perusal of current literature didn’t show any explanation either). However, at the time testing showed that these problems could be mitigated, to the point of insignificance even, by maintaining a lower core temperature to ensure localized over-temperature failures (like the changes in crystalline structure) would not occur.
The best thing that can be said about the reactivity loss rate (partially due to hydrogen losses, and partially due to fission product buildup) is that it was able to be extrapolated given the data available, and that the failure would have occurred after the design’s required lifetime (had S8DR been operated at design temperature and power, the reactor would have lost all excess reactivity – and therefore the ability to maintain criticality – between October and November of 1970).
On this mixed news note, the reactor’s future was somewhat in doubt. NASA was certainly still interested in a nuclear reactor of a similar core power, but this particular configuration was neither the most useful to their needs, nor was it exceptionally hopeful in many of the particulars of its design. While NASA’s reassessment of the program was not solely due to the S8DR’s testing history, this may have been a contributing factor.
One way or the other, NASA was looking for something different out of the reactor system, and this led to many changes. Rather than an electric propulsion system, focus shifted to a crewed space station, which has different design requirements, most especially in shielding. In fact, the reactor was split into three designs, none of which kept the SNAP name (but all kept the fuel element and basic core geometry).
A New Life: the Children of SNAP-8
Even as the SNAP-8 Development Reactor was undergoing tests, the mission for the SNAP-8 system was being changed. This would have major consequences for the design of the reactor, its power conversion system, and what missions it would be used in. These changes would be so extensive that the SNAP-8 reactor name would be completely dropped, and the reactor would be split into four concepts.
The first concept was the Space Power Facility – Plumbrook (SPT) reactor, which would be used to test shielding and other components at NASA’s Plum Brook Research Center outside Cleveland, OH, and could also be used for space missions if needed. The smallest of the designs (at 300 kWt), it was designed to avoid many of the problems associated with the S8ER and S8DR; however, funding was cut before the reactor could be built. In fact, it was cut so early that details on the design are very difficult to find.
The second reactor, the Reactor Core Test, was very similar to the SPF reactor, but it was the same power output as the nominal “full power” reactor, at 600 kWt. Both of these designs increased the number of control drums to eight, and were designed to be used with a traditional shadow shield. Neither of them were developed to any great extent, much less built.
A third design, the 5 kWe Thermoelectric Reactor, was a space system, meant to take many of the lessons from the SNAP-8 program and apply them to a medium-power system which would apply both the lessons of the SNAP-8 ER and DR as well as the SNAP-10A’s experience with thermoelectric power conversion systems to a reactor between the SNAP-10B and Reference Zirconium Hydride reactor in power output.
The final design, the Reference Zirconium Hydride Reactor (ZrHR), was extensively developed, even if geometry-specific testing was never conducted. This was the most direct replacement for the SNAP-8 reactor, and the last of the major U-ZrH fueled space reactors in the SNAP program. Rather than powering a nuclear electric spacecraft, however, this design was meant to power space stations.
The 5 kWe Thermoelectric Reactor: Simpler, Cleaner, and More Reliable
The 5 kWe Thermoelectric Reactor (5 kWe reactor) was a reasonably simple adaptation of the SNAP-8 design, intended to be used with a shadow shield. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the design changes mirrored some of the work done on the SNAP-10B Interim design, which was undergoing work at about the same time. Meant to supply 5 kWe of power for 5 years using lead telluride thermoelectric convertors (derived from the SNAP-10A convertors), this system was meant to provide power for everything from small crewed space stations to large communications satellites. In many ways, this was a very different departure from the SNAP-8 reactor, but at the same time the changes that were proposed were based on evolutionary changes during the S8ER and S8DR experimental runs, as well as advances in the SNAP 2/10 core which was undergoing parallel post-SNAPSHOT design evolution (the SNAP-10A design had been frozen for the SNAPSHOT program at this point, so these changes were either for the followon SNAP-10A Advanced or SNAP-10B reactors). The change from mercury Rankine to thermoelectric power conversion, though, paralleled a change in the SNAP-2/10A origram, where greater efficiency was seen as unnecessary due to the constantly-lower power requirements of the systems.
The first thing (in the reactor itself, at least) that was different about the design was that the axial reflector was tapered, rather than cylindrical. This was done to keep the exterior profile of the reactor cleaner. While aerodynamic considerations aren’t a big deal (although they do still play a minute part in low Earth orbit) for astronuclear power plants, everything that’s exposed to the unshielded reactor becomes a radiation source itself, due to radiation scattering and material activation under neutron bombardment. If you could get your reactor to be a continuation of the taper of your shadow shield, rather than sticking out from that cone shape, you can make the shadow shield smaller for a given reactor. Since the shield is often many times heavier than the power system itself, especially for crewed applications, the single biggest place a designer can save mass is in the shadow shield.
This tapered profile meant two things: first, there would be a gradient in the amount of neutron moderation between the top and the bottom of the reactor, and second, the control system would have to be reworked. It’s unclear exactly how far the neutronics analysis for the new reflector configuration had proceeded, sadly, but the control systems were adaptations of the design changes that were proposed for the SNAP-10B reactor: instead of having the wide, partial cylinder control drums of the original design, large sections (235 degrees in total) of the reflector would be slid up or down around the core containment vessel to control the amount of reactivity available. This is somewhat similar to the SNAP-10B and BES-5 concepts in its execution, but the mechanism is quite different from a neutronics perspective: rather than capturing the unwanted neutrons using a neutron poison like boron or europium, they’re essentially vented into space.
A few other big changes from the SNAP-8 reference design when it comes to the core itself. The first is in the fuel: instead of having a single long fuel rod in the clad, the U-XrH fuel was split into five different “slugs,” which were held together by the clad. This would create a far more complex thermal distribution situation in the fuel, but would also allow for better thermal stress management within the hydride itself. The number of fuel elements was reduced to 85, and they came in three configurations: one set of 27 had radial fins to control the flow that spiralled around the fuel element in a right-hand direction, another set of 27 had fins in the left-hand direction, and the final 31 were unfinned. This was done to better manage the flow of the NaK coolant through the core, and avoid some of the hydrodynamic problems that were experienced on the S8DR.
The U-ZrH Reactor: Power for America’s Latest and Greatest Space Stations.
The Reference ZrH Reactor was begun in 1968, while the S8DR was still under construction. Because of this increased focus on having a crewed space station configuration, and the shielding requirement changes, some redesign of the reactor core was needed. The axial shield would change the reactivity of the core, and the control drums would no longer be able to effectively expose portions of the core to the vacuum of space to get rid of excess reactivity. Because of this, the number of fuel elements in the core were increased from 211 to 295. Another change was that rather than the even spacing of fuel elements used in the S8DR, the fuel elements were spaced in such a way that the amount of coolant around each fuel element was proportional to the amount of power produced by each fuel element. This means that the fuel elements on the interior of the core were wider spaced than the fuel elements around the periphery. This made it far more unlikely that local hot spots will develop which could lead to fuel element failures, but it also meant that the flow of coolant through the reactor core would need to be far more thoroughly studied than was done on the SNAP 8 reactor design. These thermohydrodynamic studies would be a major focus of the ZrHR program.
Another change was in the control drum configuration, as well as the need to provide coolant to the drums. This was because the drums were now not only fully enclosed solid cylinders, but were surrounded by a layer of molten lead gamma shielding. Each drum would be a solid cylinder in overall cross section; the main body was beryllium, but a crescent of europium alloy was used as a neutron poison (this is one of the more popular alternatives to boron for control mechanisms that operate in a high temperature environment) to absorb neutrons when this portion of the control drum was turned toward the core. These drums would be placed in dry wells, with NaK coolant flowing around them from the spacecraft (bottom) end before entering the upper reactor core plenum to flow through the core itself. The bearings would be identical to those used on the SNAP-8 Development Reactor, and minimal modifications would be needed for the drum motion control and position sensing apparatus. Fixed cylindrical beryllium reflectors, one small one along the interior radius of the control drums and a larger one along the outside of the drums, filled the gaps left by the control drums in this annular reflector structure. These, too, would be kept cool by the NaK coolant flowing around them.
Surrounding this would be an axial gamma shield, with the preferred material being molten lead encased in stainless steel – but tungsten was also considered as an alternative. Why the lead was kept molten is still a mystery to me, but my best guess is that this was due to the thermal conditions of the axial shield, which would have forced the lead to remain above its melting point. This shield would have made it possible to maneuver near the space station without having to remain in the shadow of the directional shield – although obviously dose rates would still be higher than being aboard the station itself.
Another interesting thing about the shielding is that the shadow shield was divided in two, in order to balance thermal transfer and radiation protection for the power conversion system, and also to maximize the effectiveness of the shadow shields. Most designs used a 4 pi shield design, which is basically a frustrum completely surrounding the reactor core with the wide end pointing at the spacecraft. The primary coolant loops wrapped around this structure before entering the thermoelectric conversion units. After this, there’s a small “galley” where the power conversion system is mounted, followed by a slightly larger shadow shield, with the heat rejection system feed loops running across the outside as well. Finally, the radiator – usually cylindrical or conical – completed the main body of the power system. The base of the radiator would meet up with the mounting hardware for attachment to the spacecraft, although the majority of the structural load was an internal spar running from the core all the way to the spacecraft.
While the option for using a pure shadow shield concept was always kept on the table, the complications in docking with a nuclear powered space station which has an unshielded nuclear reactor at one end of the structure were significant. Because of this, the ZrHR was designed with full shielding around the entire core, with supplementary shadow shields between the reactor itself and the power conversion system, and also a second shadow shield after the power conversion system. These shadow shields could be increased to so-called 4-pi shields for more complete shielding area, assuming the mission mass budget allowed, but as a general rule the shielding used was a combination of the liquid lead gamma shield and the combined shadow shield configuration. These shields would change to a fairly large extent depending on the mission that the ZrHR would be used on.
Another thing that was highly variable was the radiator configuration. Some designs had a radiator that was fixed in relation to the reactor, even if it was extended on a boom (as was the case of the Saturn V Orbital Workshop, later known as Skylab). Others would telescope out, as was the case for the later Modular Space Station (much later this became the International Space Station). The last option was for the radiators to be hinged, with flexible joints that the NaK coolant would flow through (this was the configuration for the lunar surface mission), and those joints took a lot of careful study, design, and material testing to verify that they would be reliable, seal properly, and not cause too many engineering compromises. We’ll look at the challenges of designing a radiator in the future, when we look at heat rejection systems (at this point, possibly next summer), but suffice to say that designing and executing a hinged radiator is a significant challenge for engineers, especially with a material at hot, and as reactive, as liquid NaK.
The ZrHR was continually being updated, since there was no reason to freeze the majority of the design components (although the fuel element spacing and fin configuration in the core may have indeed been frozen to allow for more detailed hydrodynamic predictability), until the program’s cancellation in 1973. Because of this, many design details were still in flux, and the final reactor configuration wasn’t ever set in stone. Additional modifications for surface use for a crewed lunar base would have required tweaking, as well, so there is a lot of variety in the final configurations.
The Stations: Orbital Missions for SNAP-8 Reactors
At the time of the redesign, three space stations were being proposed for the near future: the first, the Manned Orbiting Research Laboratory, (later changed to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL), was a US Air Force project as part of the Blue Gemini program. Primarily designed as a surveillance platform, advances in photorecoinnasance satellites made this program redundant after just a single flight of an uncrewed, upgraded Gemini capsule.
The second was part of the Apollo Applications Program. Originally known as the Saturn V Orbital Workshop (OWS), this later evolved into Skylab. Three crews visited this space station after it was launched on the final Saturn V, and despite huge amounts of work needed to repair damage caused during a particularly difficult launch, the scientific return in everything from anatomy and physiology to meteorology to heliophysics (the study of the Sun and other stars) fundamentally changed our understanding of the solar system around us, and the challenges associated with continuing our expansion into space.
The final space station that was then under development was the Modular Space Station, which would in the late 1980s and early 1990s evolve into Space Station Freedom, and at the start of its construction in 1998 (exactly 20 years ago as of the day I’m writing this, actually) was known as the International Space Station. While many of the concepts from the MSS were carried over through its later iterations, this design was also quite different from the ISS that we know today.
Because of this change in mission, quite a few of the subsystems for the power plant were changed extensively, starting just outside the reactor core and extending through to shielding, power conversion systems, and heat rejection systems. The power conversion system was changed to four parallel thermoelectric convertors, a more advanced setup than the SNAP-10 series of reactors used. These allowed for partial outages of the PCS without complete power loss. The heat rejection system was one of the most mission-dependent structures, so would vary in size and configuration quite a bit from mission to mission. It, too, would use NaK-78 as the working fluid, and in general would be 1200 (on the OWS) to 1400 (reference mission) sq. ft in surface area. We’ll look more at these concepts in later posts on power conversion and heat rejection systems, but these changes took up a great deal of the work that was done on the ZrHR program.
One of the biggest reasons for this unusual shielding configuration was to allow a compromise between shielding mass and crew radiation dose. In this configuration, there would be three zones of radiation exposure: only shielded by the 4 pi shield during rendezvous and docking (a relatively short time period) called the rendezvous zone; a more significant shielding for the spacecraft but still slightly higher than fully shielded (because the spacecraft would be empty when docked the vast majority of the time) called the scatter shield zone; and the crewed portion of the space station itself, which would be the most shielded, called the primary shielded zone. With the 4 pi shield, the entire system would mass 24,450 pounds, of which 16,500 lbs was radiation shielding, leading to a crew dose of between 20 and 30 rem a year from the reactor.
The mission planning for the OWS was flexible in its launch configuration: it could have launched integral to the OWS on a Saturn V (although, considering the troubles that the Skylab launch actually had, I’m curious how well the system would have performed), or it could have been launched on a separate launcher and had an upper stage to attach it to the OWS. The two options proposed were either a Saturn 1B with a modified Apollo Service Module as a trans-stage, or a Titan IIIF with the Titan Trans-stage for on-orbit delivery (the Titan IIIC was considered unworkable due to mass restrictions).
After the 3-5 years of operational life, the reactor could be disposed of in two ways: either it would be deorbited into a deep ocean area (as with the SNAP-10A, although as we saw during the BES-5’s operational history this ended up not being considered a good option), or it could be boosted into a graveyard orbit. One consideration which is very different from the SNAP-10A is that the reactor would likely be intact due to the 4 pi shield, rather than burning up as the SNAP-10A would have, meaning that a terrestrial impact could lead to civilian population exposures to fission products, and also having highly enriched (although not quite bomb grade) uranium somewhere for someone to be able to relatively easily pick up. This made the deorbiting of the reactor a bit pickier in terms of location, and so an uncontrolled re-entry was not considered. The ideal was to leave it in a parking orbit of at least 400 nautical miles in altitude for a few hundred years to allow the fission products to completely decay away before de-orbiting the reactor over the ocean.
Nuclear Power for the Moon
The final configuration that was examined for the Advanced ZrH Reactor was for the lunar base that was planned as a follow-on to the Apollo Program. While this never came to fruition, it was still studied carefully. Nuclear power on the Moon was nothing new: the SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator had been used on every single Apollo surface mission as part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP). However, these RTGs would not provide nearly enough power for a permanently crewed lunar base. As an additional complication, all of the power sources available would be severely taxed by the 24 day long, incredibly cold lunar night that the base would have to contend with. Only nuclear fission offered both the power and the heat needed for a permanently staffed lunar base, and the reactor that was considered the best option was the Advanced ZrH Reactor.
The configuration of this form of the reactor was very different. There are three options for a surface power plant: the reactor is offloaded from the lander and buried in the lunar regolith for shielding (which is how the Kilopower reactor is being planned for surface operations); an integral lander and power plant which is assembled in Earth (or lunar) orbit before landing, with a 4 pi shield configuration; finally an integrated lander and reactor with a deployable radiator which is activated once the reactor is on the surface of the moon, again with a 4 pi shield configuration. There are, of course, in-between options between the last two configurations, where part of the radiator is fixed and part deploys. The designers of the ZrHR decided to go with the second option as their best design option, due to the ability to check out the reactor before deployment to the lunar surface but also minimizing the amount of effort needed by the astronauts to prepare the reactor for power operations after landing. This makes sense because, while on-orbit assembly and checkout is a complex and difficult process, it’s still cheaper in terms of manpower to do this work in Earth orbit rather than a lunar EVA due to the value of every minute on the lunar surface. If additional heat rejection was required, a deployable radiator could be used, but this would require flexible joints for the NaK coolant, which would pose a significant materials and design challenge. A heat shield was used when the reactor wasn’t in operation to prevent exessive heat loss from the reactor. This eased startup transient issues, as well as ensuring that the NaK coolant remained liquid even during reactor shutdown (frozen working fluids are never good for a mechanical system, after all). The power conversion system was exactly the same configuration as would be used in the OWS configuration that we discussed earlier, with the upgraded, larger tubes rather than the smaller, more numerous ones (we’ll discuss the tradeoffs here in the power conversion system blog posts).
This power plant would end up providing a total of 35.5 kWe of conditioned (i.e. usable, reliable power) electricity out of the 962 kWt reactor core, with 22.9 kWe being delivered to the habitat itself, for at least 5 years. The overall power supply system, including radiator, shield, power conditioning unit, and the rest of the ancillary bits and pieces that make a nuclear reactor core into a fission power plant, ended up massing a total of 23,100 lbs, which is comfortably under the 29,475 lb weight limit of the lander design that was selected (unfortunately, finding information on that design is proving difficult). A total dose rate at a half mile for an unshielded astronaut would be 7.55 mrem/hr was considered sufficient for crew radiation safety (this is a small radiation dose compared to the lunar radiation environment, and the astronauts will spend much of their time in the much better shielded habitat.
Sadly, this power supply was not developed to a great extent (although I was unable to find the source document for this particular design: NAA-SR-12374, “Reactor Power Plants for Lunar Base Applications, Atomics International 1967), because the plans for the crewed lunar base were canceled before much work was done on this design. The plans were developed to the point that future lunar base plans would have a significant starting off point, but again the design was never frozen, so there was a lot of flexibility remaining in the design.
The End of the Line
Sadly, these plans never reached fruition. The U-ZrH Reactor had its budget cut by 75% in 1971, with cuts to alternate power conversion systems such as the use of thermionic power conversion (30%) and reactor safety (50%), and the advanced Brayton system (completely canceled) happening at the same time. NERVA, which we covered in a number of earlier posts, also had its funding slashed at the same time. This was due to a reorientation of funds away from many current programs, and instead focusing on the Space Shuttle and a modular space station, whose power requirements were higher than the U-ZrH Reactor would be able to offer.
At this point, the AEC shifted their funding philosophy, moving away from preparing specific designs for flight readiness and instead moving toward a long-term development strategy. In 1973 head of the AEC’s Space Nuclear Systems Division said that, given the lower funding levels that NASA was forced to work within, “…the missions which were likely to require large amounts of energy, now appear to be postponed until around 1990 or later.” This led to the cancellation of all nuclear reactor systems, and a shift in focus to radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which gave enough power for NASA and the DoD’s current mission priorities in a far simpler form.
Funding would continue at a low level all the way to the current day for space fission power systems, but the shift in focus led to a very different program. While new reactor concepts continue to be regularly put forth, both by Department of Energy laboratories and NASA, for decades the focus was more on enhancing the technological capability of many areas, especially materials, which could be used by a wide range of reactor systems. This meant that specific systems wouldn’t be developed to the same level of technological readiness in the US for over 30 years, and in fact it wouldn’t be until 2018 that another fission power system of US design would undergo criticality testing (the KRUSTY test for Kilopower, in early 2018).
More Coming Soon!
Originally, I was hoping to cover another system in this blog post as well, but the design is so different compared to the ZrH fueled reactors that we’ve been discussing so far in this series that it warranted its own post. This reactor is the SNAP-50, which didn’t start out as a space reactor, but rather one of the most serious contenders for the indirect-cycle Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program. It used uranium carbide/nitride fuel elements, liquid lithium coolant, and was far more powerful than anything that weve discussed yet in terms of electric power plants. Having it in its own post will also allow me to talk a little bit about the ANP program, something that I’ve wanted to cover for a while now, but considering how much more there is to discuss about in-space systems (and my personal aversion to nuclear reactors for atmospheric craft on Earth), hasn’t really been in the cards until now.
This series continues to expand, largely because there’s so much to cover that we haven’t gotten to yet – and no-one else has covered these systems much either! I’m currently planning on doing the SNAP-50/SPUR system as a standalone post, followed by the SP-100 and a selection of other reactor designs. After that, we’ll cover the ENISY reactor program in its own post, followed by the NEP designs from the 90s and early 00s, both in the US and Russia. Finally, we’ll cover the predecessors to Kilopower, and round out our look at fission power plant cores by revisiting Kilopower to have a look at what’s changed, and what’s stayed the same, over the last year since the KRUSTY test. We will then move on to shielding materials and design (probably two or three posts, because there’s a lot to cover there) before moving on to power conversion systems, another long series. We’ll finish up the nuclear systems side of nuclear power supplies by looking at heat sinks, radiators, and other heat rejection systems, followed by a look at nuclear electric spacecraft architecture and design considerations.
A lot of work continues in the background, especially in terms of website planning and design, research on a lot of the lesser-known reactor systems, and planning for the future of the web page. The blog is definitely set for topics for at least another year, probably more like two, just covering the basics and history of astronuclear design, but getting the web page to be more functional is a far more complex, and planning-heavy, task.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and much more is coming next year! Don’t forget to join us on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter!
References
SNAP 8 Summary Report, AEC/Atomics International Staff, 1973 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4393793
SNAP-8, the First Electric Propulsion Power System, Wood et al 1961 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4837472
SNAP 8 Reactor Preliminary Design Summary, ed. Rosenberg, 1961 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4476265
SNAP 8 Reactor and Shield, Johnson and Goetz 1963 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4875647
SNAP 8 Reactors for Unmanned and Manned Applications, Mason 1965 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4476766
SNAP 8 Reactor Critical Experiment, ed. Crouter. 1964 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4471079
Disassembly and Postoperation Examination of the SNAP 8 Experimental Reactor, Dyer 1967 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4275472
SNAP 8 Experimental Reactor Fuel Element Behavior, Pearlman et al 1966 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4196260
Summary of SNAP 8 Development Reactor Operations, Felten and May 1973 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4456300
Structural Analysis of the SNAP 8 Development Reactor Fuel Cladding, Dalcher 1969 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6315913
Reference Zirconium Hydride Thermoelectric System, AI Staff 1969 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4004948
Reactor-Thermoelectric System for NASA Space Station, Gylfe and Johnson 1969 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4773689
