The Romashka reactor (russian: Ромашка, translation=chamomile) was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

experimental

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat fr ...

. It began operation in 1964, and was developed by the

Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy The Kurchatov Institute (russian: Национальный исследовательский центр «Курчатовский Институт», 'National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute) is Russia's leading research and developmen ...

. The reactor used direct

thermoelectric The thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa via a thermocouple. A thermoelectric device creates a voltage when there is a different temperature on each side. Conversely, when ...

conversion to create electricity, rather than heating water to drive a turbine. It is thus similar to a

radioisotope thermoelectric generator A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG), sometimes referred to as a radioisotope power system (RPS), is a type of nuclear battery that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioacti ...

, but higher power. The Romashka reactor was developed with the intention of using nuclear power in space satellites, but was superseded by the more powerful

BES-5 BES-5, also known as Bouk or Buk (russian: бук, translation=beech), was a Soviet thermoelectric generator that was used to power 31 satellites in the US-A (RORSAT) project. The heat source was a uranium 235 fast fission nuclear reactor (FNR ...

reactor. The project was canceled after the death of

Sergei Korolev Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (russian: Сергей Павлович Королёв, Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov, sʲɪrˈɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ kərɐˈlʲɵf, Ru-Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.ogg; ukr, Сергій Павлович Корольов, ...

, who was heavily involved in the project.

Reactor design

The fuel was of

highly enriched uranium Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238U ...

(90% ) in the form of UC₂ (

uranium carbide Uranium carbide, a carbide of uranium, is a hard refractory ceramic material. It comes in several stoichiometries (''x'' differs in ), such as uranium methanide (UC, CAS number 12070-09-6), uranium sesquicarbide (U2C3, CAS number 12076-62-9), a ...

). A beryllium reflector was used on the ends of the reactor, and electricity was generated using silicon-germanium semiconductors. The Romashka reactor didn't use liquid coolant; it was designed to be simple, compact, and light. Temperature was self-regulated through the use of a negative temperature reactivity coefficient. The successful demonstration of the Romashka reactor provided a baseline for further developments in Soviet nuclear power for space satellites. The experimental reactor was started (reached criticality) in 1964 and decommissioned in 1966, and was used to research the concept of direct energy conversion. It produced of heat, and reached temperatures of .The reactor operated for .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romashka Reactor Nuclear power in space Nuclear technology in the Soviet Union

Reactor design

See also

References