Tale of the Wandering Reactor 
In the dim light of the Polar day, a column of tracked vehicles crawls through the tundra in a dotted line: escort APCs, jeeps with personnel, fuel tankers - and four mysterious, imposing vehicles, like oversized iron coffins. This is approximately what it looked like - the mobile nuclear power plant transiting towards Military Object N, guarding our country from its probably strategic opponent in the very heart of the icy deserts...
Our tale begins, of course, in the era of atomic romantics - in the mid-1950's. In 1955, Yefim Pavlovich Slavsky - one of the founders of the USSR atomic industry, later head of the MinSredMash - personally visited the Kirov Factory in Leningrad. It was during the conversation with its director, I. M. Sinev that the proposal was first made - developing a mobile atomic plant to provide energy to civilian and military installations in the Far North and Siberia.
The draft blueprint appeared in 1957, and two years later, the equipment was made for the sample TES-3 [Transportable Electric Station] unit.
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One of the main factors considered by the project leadership was, of course, safety. From this standpoint, the small-scale, two-cycle water-steam reactor was choisen. The heat was collected by 130-atmosphere water at an entry temperature of 275 degrees Celcus and exit tempterature of 300 degrees. The heat exchanger transferred the heat to the working body, also formed from water. The steam moved the generator turbine.
The reactor's active zone was a cylinder 600 mm tall and 660mm wide, using 74 heat-producing assemblies. The fuel was UAl3, covered in SiAl [Silumine]. The assemblies were in the shape of two coaxial rings with this fuel, developed especially for TES-3.
In 1960, the plant was installed on the tracked chassis of the last Soviet heavy tank, the T-10. The chassis had to be lengthened, and thus the self-propelled nuclear plant [the
energosamokhod] now had ten wheel pairs where the tank had only seven.
The plant's turbine generator produces 1.5 megawatt, however its three steam generator can give 20-atmosphere, 285-degree steam in quantities sufficient to create 2 megawatt of power at the turbine. As all nuclear reactors, the TES-3 also produced vasts amounts of radiactivity. As such, during the plant's work a large earth berm had to be dug around the early propotypes to protect the crew from radioactivity.
In august 1960, the plant arrived to the Physics and Energy Institute at Obninsk for testing. Less than a year later, on June 7th, 1961, the reactor achieved criticality. On October 13th it started producing energy.
The tests proceeded up until 1965, with the reactor finishing its first campaign. But this was the end of the plant. The Obninsk institute was simultaneously working on a similar project - the floating plant "Sever". However, in 1967 the Ministry of Defense refused to order the plant, and the land-bound system was cut off along with it. The TES-3 was put on strandby. Still, in the late 1960's it was hoped it would find use - the nuclear plant could be deployed in oil pumping, to pump large quantities of hot water underground in order to raise the oil to the surface. Such a thing was proposed to be done, for example, near Grozny - but even that was not implemented. The use of the TES-3 was ruled unprofitable, and the TES-3 was mothballed in 1969. Forever.
However surprising that may be, the tale of Soviet mobile power plants did not end with the Obninsk experiments. Another project worth telling off is a very curious sample of the slow pace of Soviet energy cnstruction. It started in the erly 1960's but only gave results in the Gorbachev era, only to be 'murdered' by the nuclear phobia that strengthened greatly after Chernobyl. This was the Belorussian Pamir 630D.
The mobile "Pamir" was designed for the military - to supply electric power to air defense RADAR, should the existing plants be destroyed by enemy missile attacks. However, like most military designs, the Pamir had also a civilian use - it was to be utilized in areas of natural disaster.
Thus, despite the relatively low power of the reactor (0.6 Megawatt electic output), great demands were made on it to be compact and reliably cooled.
After many years of work designers have created for the "Pamir" a unique gas-cooled reactor based on dinitrogen tetroxide, working on a single - cycle scheme. One load of fuel lasted up to five years.
Experiments took years. Those who planned the "Pamir" in the 1960's only saw it in the steel in the mid-1980's.
Just like the TES-3, the Pamir moved on multiple vehicles. The reactor block was installed on a three-wheel pair MAZ-9994 semitrailer capable of lifting 65 tons, towed by a MAZ-796s. The block included a reactor, an emergency cooling system, an internal switchboard, and two 16-kilowatt internal generators. A second vehicle carried the turbine block and electric power plant.
Additional vehicles - KRAZ trucks - carried automatic control electronics, and yet another one carried two 100-kw diesel generators. The Pamir-630D was designed to be stationary. in exploitation. When deployed, workers would pose the generator and reactor together and link them with pipes. The control and reserve power structure was poised 150 meters away for radiation safety. The plant and turbine block were put on jacks,and the wheels removed and taken into a safe zone - in theory. For reality proved different.
Как и в случае с ТЭС-3, белорусским конструкторам понадобилось несколько машин для размещения на них своей ПАЭС. Реакторный блок монтировался на трехосном полуприцепе МАЗ-9994 грузоподъемностью 65 т, в роли тягача для которого выступал МАЗ-796. Кроме реактора с биозащитой в этом блоке размещались система аварийного расхолаживания, шкаф распределительного устройства собственных нужд и два автономных дизель-генератора по 16 кВт. Такая же связка МАЗ-767 – МАЗ-994 везла на себе и турбогенераторный блок с оборудованием электростанции.
The station passed all tests successfully, and two were produced. But they did not arrive at their area of service. After the Chernobyl accident, anti-nuclear sentiments in Belarus caused the project to be closed, and the existing plants to be axed.
Afterword: Today, Atomenergoprom, Inc. is working on a 2.4-2.6 megawatt portable reactor to be made commercial by 2013, producedi n a single block. it will cost 750 million roubles per block.
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