Soviet Technology Not All Bad : U.S. Turns to Russia for Help in Developing Nuclear Space Reactor

Let’s face it, “Soviet,” in most people’s minds, doesn’t mean “quality.” Remember all those party hacks in cardboard suits? The ossified political system? The inept industry, surpassed only by the inefficient agriculture? Stalin?

So where is the U.S. space program turning for help in developing compact nuclear reactors for use in outer space? To the people who gave the world Chernobyl.

Thus, in May, two U.S. Air Force C-5 transports set down in Albuquerque, N.M., carrying a pair of formerly top-secret Russian space nuclear reactors.

The Topaz-2 Soviet reactors intrigue U.S. researchers who are seeking a compact nuclear device that can satisfy the increased power demands of next-generation U.S. defense satellites. Researchers also see a need for stronger generating plants that could power long-distance space exploration or provide electricity for manned bases on the Moon or Mars.

Chernobyl notwithstanding, the Russians happen to be way ahead in the field of thermionic systems--nuclear reactors with no moving parts that use exotic metals to convert heat directly into electricity. But fostered by federal spending, a small group of techonology-oriented U.S. companies is trying to catch up.

“It’s my hunch that there are going to be some areas where they have an awful lot to contribute,” says Richard T. Dahlberg, a member of the nation’s small community of space-based reactor researchers.

Dahlberg is director of space power programs at La Jolla-based General Atomics, a privately held research and development concern specializing in atomic energy that hopes to get its hands on some of that Russian technology.

A former unit of Chevron, General Atomics is part of a consortium that recently won a $22-million Department of Energy contract to design a reactor based in part on the Topaz technology.

Assuming that what arrived in New Mexico were, indeed, Topaz reactors. Like so much about doing business with Russia these days, there are questions about the $13-million deal for the two reactors (and tons of related test equipment).

Critics say Uncle Sam got snookered into buying an imitation of sorts, designed by a rival Russian group with no links to the group that designed and built all of the former Soviet Union’s space reactors.

The U.S. government insists that the reactors it bought are real. Dahlberg and his fellow commercial researchers certainly hope so, because developing the next generation of high-powered nuclear reactors without Russian help has been a slow and expensive process.

The federal government has spent an estimated $420 million on researching thermoelectrics, a competing space nuclear power technology. But supporters acknowledge that it will take at least an additional $1.6 billion to prove that thermoelectric technology works--and at least $1 billion more to build a prototype reactor that could be launched into space some time after the year 2000.

By contrast, thermionics proponents believe that researchers can produce a flight-ready reactor by 1999 at a cost of $500 million--in part by incorporating knowledge gleaned from the Topaz 2 reactors in New Mexico that, for safety reasons, will be tested without their nuclear fuel elements. Since 1986, the government has spent $37 million on thermionics research.

Thermionics’ allure is so strong that defense officials are considering getting another nuclear-fueled Topaz reactor and blasting it into space atop a U.S. rocket in 1995. The reactor would run on uranium, but for safety reasons, the Topaz 2 devices shipped to New Mexico didn’t contain any. It won’t be necessary.

“We can find out how the system starts up, how it shuts down, how it behaves,” said Joseph Mills, an official with Rockwell International’s Canoga Park-based Rocketdyne Division. “If we can learn all of those things during testing, we’d have an increased level of confidence, which means lower down-stream risk, lower costs and a more predictable program.”

Data from the Topaz 2 tests will be given to companies conducting thermionics research, the Air Force says. Some of that data will be used to help speed a Department of Energy demonstration project that is to produce a space nuclear power system capable of producing between five and 40 kilowatts.

On June 12, the Energy Department, in conjunction with the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and the Air Force, began negotiating two separate $22-million thermionic research and development contracts, one with San Jose-based Space Power Inc. and the other with Canoga Park-based Rockwell International Corp.

Both General Atomics and Thermo Electron Corp. would act as subcontractors on the program, along with Rasor Associates, Teledyne Corp., TRW Corp., Martin Marietta Corp. and POD Associates.

Space Power Inc.’s team will also have a strong Russian presence. Moscow-based Krasnaya Zvezda, a research institute, and International Space Power/Intertek, a Russian consortium, will handle portions of the research and development program.

Even as Air Force scientists ready the Topaz 2 devices for testing, critics are questioning the need for a powerful space-based reactor. And some scientists are raising safety issues.

“For starters, there’s the basic question of why are we doing this,” said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, a public interest group in Washington. “Then, there’s funding, a minor point . . . and when it comes to launch approval, any launch of nuclear materials requires specific authorization and approval from the President.”

Aftergood also said the Topaz reactors aren’t what the government initially intended to buy. He said the Russian research consortium that negotiated the technology sale began to describe their device as a “Topaz 2” in an attempt to make it more appealing to U.S. officials. “Its real name is ‘Enesey,’ ” he said.

The original Topaz was designed and built by the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk, together with Red Star in Moscow and Luch in Podolsk, said Aftergood. The Topaz 2 devices purchased by the Defense Department were designed by the Central Machine Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow and the Physical Technical Institute in Sukhuni.

Aftergood, who isn’t sure what the United States has purchased, said the tests under way in New Mexico will help to determine if Topaz 2’s technology is any good.

But Mills insisted that the Topaz 2 reactors in New Mexico are real: “I was involved in the planning committee that reviewed it. . . . We got precisely what we asked for and what we intended to get.”

As for Soviet incompetence, it wasn’t always thus. The U.S. space program, after all, was spurred on by Sputnik.