Nuclear power plant

In the middle of the XX century there were many projects on the use of atomic energy for domestic purposes. Projects on the use of a nuclear reactor in the transport industry were mainly developed in the USA and the USSR .

For example, Ford in 1958 created the Ford Nucleon concept car with YaSu. In the mid-1950s, the United States wrote that perhaps an atomic vacuum cleaner would soon be created ^[2] . In addition, in the defense industry of the USSR and the USA, the following were developed: atomic tank , atomic carrier , atomic aircraft and nuclear rocket engine . In the USSR, the Gudok newspaper in 1958 wrote ^[3] :

Of course, an atomic locomotive will be much heavier than a steam or diesel locomotive of the same power. But if such a locomotive is sent to a remote highway, for example, to the Arctic, then it will work there intermittently during the whole winter season without additional supply. It is very easy to turn it into a mobile power station. In addition, he will be able to supply energy to baths, laundries, greenhouses for growing vegetables.

But none of these projects was implemented in practice in the 20th century.

In the 1950s and 1970s, a lot of money and resources were spent in the USSR on the creation of a nuclear rocket engine for space rockets , which was practically created by 1981 , but the further development of this project was suspended ^[4] . Some projects on the use of nuclear reactors in spacecraft have been crowned with partial success.

Also, in the 1960s, work was underway to create a shuttle with a nuclear propulsion system for flying between the orbits of the Earth, the Moon and Mars ^[5] .

In the XX century, projects for the use of nuclear weapons were successfully implemented only in water transport and in the navy in the form of:

• Nuclear-powered icebreakers ;
• Nuclear submarines ;
• Civil and military nuclear powered ships .

At the beginning of the XXI century, many mid- XX century projects on the use of nuclear weapons were rethought and began to be implemented using modern technologies and taking into account the positive and negative experiences of the past. The key to success in the implementation of such projects is the further miniaturization of nuclear reactors at compact mini-nuclear power plants that do not require constant maintenance, which are now being successfully developed in the USA and Japan ^[6] . An example is the Rapid-L reactor, developed in Japan, whose weight is 8 tons at a height of 6 m and a width of 2 m ^[7] .

For example, in the USA, the atomic project is being revived in a new incarnation: in 2003, the US Air Force military research laboratory funded the development of a nuclear engine for the Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in order to increase the flight duration to several months ^[8] .

And in Russia, projects of a nuclear rocket engine for deep space exploration ^[9] and an atomic carrier are being revived in the framework of cooperation between Rosatom and Russian Railways OJSC ^[10] .

In modern projects of water and land vehicles with nuclear power , most often nuclear power is used as a power plant (mini- nuclear power plant ) that generates electric current and feeds the vehicle's electric motors . According to this principle, today all modern atomic icebreakers , nuclear submarines , nuclear powered ships and atomic carriers are built and designed.

March 1, 2018, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin announced the flight design tests of a cruise missile with a small nuclear power plant ^[11] . On March 3, 2018, the TASS agency announced the completion of tests of a small-sized nuclear power plant, which can be used in the manufacture of cruise missiles and underwater vehicles ^[12] .

• Atomic ship
• Nuclear carrier
• Atomic plane
• Spacecraft Nuclear Reactors
• Gas phase nuclear engine
• Nuclear rocket engine
• Nuclear propulsion system
• nuclear power station
  • (Japanese) ソ ヴ ィ エ ト 連邦 に お け る 宇宙 用 原子 炉 の 開 発 と そ の 実 用