| Moscow agreed to help Washington with its “Star Wars” The current visit to the United States by the head of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Alexander Rumyantsev, has created a sensation of a very serious caliber. Speaking in Washington at a press conference following negotiations with his American counterpart, US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the Russian “nuclear minister” announced that the parties had reached a fundamentally new agreement in this sensitive area. Moscow agreed to help the Americans create spacecraft with nuclear power plants. Moreover, agreements on the supply of highly enriched uranium-238 from Russia to the United States for these purposes have already been fully agreed upon by the parties. According to RIA Novosti, Spencer Abraham said literally the following on this matter: “The American side will begin placing orders immediately.” Taking into account both the current specific focus of most US space programs and what space nuclear reactors can be used for in general, the Rumyantsev-Abraham agreement can only indicate one thing: Russia has agreed to provide real assistance to the Americans in creating the orbital echelon of their national missile defense system.
In principle, Moscow’s international cooperation in the field of space nuclear energy in itself is not something fundamentally new. The national aerospace industry remains the undisputed leader in the development and use of “extraterrestrial” reactors of various types. True, their use in Russian cosmonautics itself practically disappeared with the end of the Cold War. The colossal energy potential provided by installing a nuclear reactor on a spacecraft was used mainly for military purposes. Equipped with a Topaz-type nuclear installation that powered a powerful radar, Soviet US-A reconnaissance satellites tracked the movements of American warships throughout the oceans. One of these satellites, called “Cosmos-954” for secrecy purposes, caused a lot of noise in its time when in January 1978, having escaped the control of ground services, it suddenly “dived” into the earth’s atmosphere and burned up in the sky over northern Canada . Moscow then had to prove for a long time that its “heavenly messenger” did not lead to radioactive contamination of foreign territory. Nevertheless, until the collapse of the USSR, our nuclear scientists did not curtail the program to create reactors for space purposes: the Topaz-2 (Yenisei) and the new Panther energy system were created to replace the Topaz. The last “nuclear” satellites actually launched into orbit were, apparently, Cosmos-1818 and Cosmos-1867, launched in 1987, on board each of which a modernized Topaz was installed, loaded with more than thirty kilograms highly enriched uranium-235.
The first attempts by the Russian defense industry to receive real financial dividends from its nuclear and space leadership were made back in the early 90s. Even then the USA appeared as a buyer of our know-how. The Americans have also been experimenting with space nuclear power for a long time. However, their successes in this area were much more modest than ours, and the US “nuclear” satellites created problems no less than ours: in 1964, the American military satellite “Transit”, burning in the atmosphere, scattered about a kilogram of poisonous plutonium-238 over the Earth, and several years later, the “nuclear” Nimbus-B1 crashed into the Indian Ocean... Considering the much more successful experience of Soviet orbital “reconnaissance” aircraft, the Americans tried to outbid them: an agreement on this was concluded in February 1994. The deal was carried out in the strictest confidence, since it aroused serious objections from a significant part of the Russian military-industrial leadership. However, in reality, Washington, it seems, then received at its disposal something completely different from what it had expected. Instead of the Topazes used in the Soviet military space program (which operated on uranium-235 and 238), a power plant using plutonium-238 was sold to the Americans. Suitable rather for creating devices for interplanetary flights (a similar Panther installation was on the last Russian interplanetary station Mars-96, which crashed into the Pacific Ocean during an unsuccessful launch) than for military satellites.
Moscow again remembered the nuclear resource of the Russian cosmonautics only in 1998, when the Chernomyrdin government endorsed the “Concept for the development of space nuclear energy in Russia.” In this document, an entire section has already been devoted to the possibility of international cooperation in the field of space nuclear installations. But again, until recently, preference was given to cooperation in the field of creating power plants for interplanetary flights with Europeans. Since the Americans’ interest in the powerful energy of satellites is of too practical interest: their spacecraft, equipped with a uranium nuclear plant, receive an almost unlimited possibility of orbital maneuver and colossal power of on-board equipment. Both are completely meaningless for civilian satellites, but are vital for the space echelon of the American missile defense system currently being developed. Yuri GOLOTYUK |
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