CURRENT STATUS
OF NUCLEAR POWER

As indicated in an earlier chapter, the Soviet Union began its effort to develop nuclear power quite early. It claims to have created the first nuclear power plant in the world (the Obninsk station), though some Western sources dispute this on the grounds that it was essentially only a test reactor. They have also had a fairly large R and D program—lots of resources, high priority, a variety of programs and approaches. The growth of nuclear power capacity, however, has been relatively slow in the USSR, as shown in Table 5-1. Table 5-2 shows the major stations in operation and under construction or planned.

TABLE 5-1. Growth of Nuclear Power Capacity and Output End of Year

SOURCE: Campbell, 1979, pp. 16, 18; Atomnaia energia, 1979:4 p. 279; Nekrasov and Pervukhin, 1977, pp. 6, 110, 114.

Several different kinds of reactors have been used. The original Obninsk station used a water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor, and two others among the early installations—the Troitsk station and the Beloiarsk station—were also of this type. The Beloiarsk station was distinguished by having a superheat cycle. The main commercialization effort, however, was made with a pressurized water reactor (described by the Russian initials VVER), which was first installed in the Novo-Voronezh station in the Ukraine. The first unit at that station was a prototype reactor of 210 MW capacity, commissioned in 1964. As the station was expanded, successively larger versions were employed, and the version that became the standard and that was produced in series was the VVER-440, with 440 MW electrical capacity. The first unit of this model was commissioned in 1971. This reactor was also used for the Kola station in the USSR (completed in 1973) and was the model exported to the Eastern European countries and to Finland. Stations using the VVER-440 are in operation in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as of 1977 and are being built or have been contracted for in Hungary, Poland, and Cuba. Finland has now purchased its third WER-440. This reactor is now being scaled up, and the next unit to be installed at the Novo-Voronezh station will have a capacity of 1,000 MW.

TABLE 5-2. Soviet Nuclear Power Reactors in Operation and Under Construction

BWR = Boiling-water Reactor; FBR = Fast Breeder Reactor; LW G R = Light-water Graphite Reactor; RBMK = Channel type Light Water Graphite Reactor; V VER = Pressurized-light-water Reactor. See text for fuller descriptions.

^aAtomnaia energiia, 1976:2.

^bAtomnaia energiia, 1979:4, p. 279.

But at some point in this expansion, a decision was made to commercialize a different kind of reactor as well—the graphite-moderated-type, called in its current version the RBMK-1000, the first of which was installed in a station near Leningrad. In the plan for the future, such reactors will play an increasingly important role (More will be said about the competition between the two types below). The Leningrad reactor had a capacity of 1,000 MW, and most of the stations now being built use this same size reactor. Those farther into the future will use larger units. A 1,500 MW reactor of the RBMK type is under development for the Ignalina station to be built in Lithuania, and this is expected to be an intermediate step on the way to reactors with 2–2.4 GW capacity.

The Soviet Union is also one of the world leaders in the creation of breeder reactors; as of the mid-seventies one experimental reactor was in operation, and a larger, second-generation version (600 MW capacity) was under construction.

The explanation for the relatively late start and slow growth of nuclear power in the USSR is the competition from cheaper alternative energy sources. Given the easy availability of fuel and its relatively low cost, fossil-fired power stations appeared more economical. The situation began to change at the end of the sixties, when the successful operation of several commercial nuclear plants provided encouraging evidence on capital costs per unit of capacity, and when the difficulty of expanding fuel output and the high cost of fuel (at first on a regional basis) made nuclear plants look comparatively more attractive. So during the 9th Five Year Plan period (1971–1975) a shift to nuclear power was begun, especially for the European region of the country—some new stations were brought into operation, and construction was started on several more. In the 10th Five Year Plan (1976— 1980), 13 to 15 Megawatts, or about 20 percent of all new generating capacity, is to be accounted for by nuclear plants. A considerable number of new plants will also be started to ensure continued growth in subsequent periods.

The Soviet nuclear power program certainly seems to be a success— it has commercialized two types of reactor and is on the way to making nuclear power provide a significant fraction of total electric power. The Soviet position today is that the cost of power from nuclear plants is competitive with that from conventional plants and that operating experience shows adequate reliability and safety and demonstrates the viability of the basic technological decisions taken. A few questions about this picture will be introduced later, but it seems to be essentially correct. In short, the USSR has a working, domestically developed technology for fission and is among the world leaders in the two major frontier nuclear technologies of breeder and fusion reactors. The rest of this chapter will explore how the Soviet system has approached this area of R and D, explain what is distinctive about the decisions that have been made on such questions as reactor types and safety, and examine what position the USSR is taking on some major controversial issues, such as the role of the breeder reactor, the reprocessing of waste fuel, and the international diffusion of nuclear technology.

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS
IN NUCLEAR POLICY

There is a standard genre of article in the Soviet energy literature dealing with “possible paths of development of nuclear power” or “the future of nuclear power,” which is helpful in understanding the strategic considerations that have guided nuclear power decision making and influence current decisions. And it may be useful to emphasize here that virtually all decision making in nuclear power contains a large element of R and D decision making. The technology is changing just enough that every decision must include a big R and D effort; each choice involves questions to which the answers are uncertain. These discussions usually turn around several main themes.

One is the issue of fuel supply for nuclear power—the potential reserves of nuclear fuel and the cost of producing it—which has important implications for many issues in nuclear R and D. The long-range supply picture for fissionable material is an area of controversy in the USSR, though it is usually discussed in guarded terms. A. M. Petrosiants, Chief of the State Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, has introduced a new chapter in the 3rd edition of his book on Soviet nuclear policy entitled “Are the Supplies of Uranium Large?” (Petrosiants, 1976). My impression is that the USSR does not have very large domestic reserves. The USSR has depended on Eastern Europe in part, and the directives for the 10th Five Year Plan list exploration to discover more nuclear fuel as a high priority task. Though the USSR has the surplus enrichment capacity that induces it to produce nuclear fuel for export to numerous countries, such export is carried out only in the form of toll enrichment of uranium supplied by the customer (except to Eastern Europe and possibly to Finland). It also seems likely that Soviet leaders would want, for strategic reasons, to be independent of outside supplies, so in thinking about future supplies they are less influenced by the reserves situation in the world as a whole and possible prices in international trade than by domestic production potential. Petrosiants makes a special point of this: “The development of this branch of technology in the socialist countries does not depend in any way on supplies of uranium from the capitalist world” (A. M. Petrosiants, 1976, p. 260). The question of uranium supplies has important implications for nuclear R and D, especially for the importance attached to the breeder reactor and the timetable for its development as the transition technology bridging the period between the era of uranium-fueled thermal reactors and the advent of fusion sources.

A second major theme has to do with the adaptation of nuclear reactors to supply energy for additional uses beyond electric power generation. Under Soviet conditions the competitive status of nuclear power is basically determined by the regional problem, and there is thus a strong motivation to diversify the applications of nuclear power in the regions where it is competitive, to serve more energy uses than power generation alone. The R and D planners accept as a high priority task the development of nuclear reactors to supply high-temperature heat (either direct or by-product) for chemical and metallurgical processing, as well as lower-temperature heat for space heating. This latter goal continues a tradition well established in fossil-fuel power generation.

A third factor governing R and D decisions is the relatively short history and small scale of nuclear power production in the USSR to date, which leads to special considerations in Soviet thinking about the fuel cycle. Specifically, there are today relatively smaller stocks of plutonium available to the Russians in the form of spent fuel than in the United States. It is from the reprocessing of such fuel that the first generation of breeder reactors will be supplied with fuel. Because Soviet nuclear planning envisages fairly early introduction of the breeder and rapid expansion once it is commercialized, the nuclear R and D decision makers seek high breeding rates and modifications of the current thermal-neutron reactors to produce more than the usual amounts of plutonium. The interest in using by-product heat for high-temperature processing interacts with the concern for short doubling times to generate an interest in new coolants, such as dissociating oxides of nitrogen for a gas-cooled fast-neutron reactor.

Another issue with which nuclear policy makers must deal is size of reactors and nuclear power stations. As explained in Chapter 4, the Soviet power industry has a long-held faith in economies of scale, and this has a strong influence on nuclear power R and D decisions. Conventional stations are now projected to be 4.8–6 GW in capacity, using 800, 1,000, and 1,500 MW generating units. The largest nuclear station in 1977 is the 2 GW Leningrad station, using two RBMK—1000 reactors, but several stations using this reactor will be expanded to 4 GW, using four such units (N. A. Dollezhal’ and I. Ia. Emelianov, in Atomnaia energiia, 1976:2, p. 122—these are the Leningrad, Chernobyl, and Smolensk stations). As already explained, the VVER reactor is being scaled up to a 1,000 MW version, and a 1,500 MW RBMK is being created for the Lithuanian station. This size goal has an important impact on R and D and nuclear policy in general. The biggest obstacle to increasing the size of VVER-type reactors is the pressure vessel used; this is one of the factors that has led to an increased priority for the modular-type RBMK. Also, the combination of large size, desire to use by-product heat, and commitment to large-scale use of the breeder combine to produce, what would seem to an outsider, an extraordinary safety hazard in the form of extremely large plants using novel technology, located in close proximity to large population concentrations. The factors that inhibit this line of development in the United States do not seem to operate in the Soviet case.

FORECASTING AND MODELING
IN NUCLEAR R AND D

There is a considerable Soviet literature on policymaking approaches for the nuclear power sector, focussed on how to forecast and optimize. The approach is usually described by Soviet authors as iterative hierarchical modeling which seeks to optimize the internal composition of the nuclear power generating sector, while fitting it in an optimal way into the overall primary energy supply on the one hand, and into a concrete electrical (and ultimately heat) supply system on the other. A description of this approach may be found in a pair of articles by Academicians N. A. Dollezhal’ and L. A. Melent’ev in Vestnik ANSSSR (1976:11, pp. 51–61; and 1977:1, pp. 87–99). Another typical example is a book by Batov and Koriakin (1969) that analyzes economic choices for nuclear power in a systems approach based on a rather complicated model of the fuel cycle. The authors are clearly conversant with the Western literature on the same subject and one of them has even published an article in the IAEA journal acknowledging the commonality of the Soviet approach with that used in the West (Atomic Energy Review, 1972, pp. 233–249).

Basic to much of the modeling is an effort to lay out the relevance tree for electric-power-generating technologies and to forecast costs and timetables for various new technologies. One can then use various optimizing models that answer some questions about where the R and D effort and emphasis ought to go. As an illustration, Figure 5-1 is proposed as the relevance tree in Gitelman (1974, pp. 291–296). This particular exercise has a somewhat narrow goal; the authors want to estimate when some current nuclear plant technologies may become obsolete, so that it will be possible to set depreciation rates to include possible obsolescence. Depreciation is a very large item in total costs, and cost effectiveness calculations for nuclear proposals require realistic depreciation rates. But this general approach is common to almost all the thinking of the nuclear modelers. Another author makes forecasts of when the “commercial” form of the breeder will become available and then tries to optimize the split between conventional reactors, converters, and breeders in new construction over the next 50 years (Bobolovich, 1974, pp. 251–257). He makes various assumptions about the date when the breeder will be ready, its cost relative to slow-neutron reactors, and the growth in total nuclear capacity needed. The important consideration is that the breeder will have an economic advantage over slow-neutron reactors once it is available. At that point it should therefore cover the whole incremental market, except that there will not be enough plutonium to load new breeders as fast as they could be built. Hence, there is an advantage in building converters now to stockpile plutonium to facilitate the shift in structure of new investment when the breeder is ready. The author then investigates via his optimizing model the impact on the optimum pattern of the date when the breeder will be ready, and whether the nuclear power system is to work only on base load or is to have a smaller number of hours of utilization per year (which interferes with the plutonium production capacity of the breeders).

FIGURE 5-1. Relevance Tree for Raising the Effectiveness of Power Production

The point is that these studies seem thoroughly sensible and very much in the spirit of analyses done in the West. They are perhaps open to criticism on the same grounds. The exogenous factors (such as growth in demand or cost of construction) are unknown and are probably estimated unreliably. The number of interdependencies in a complex system of this kind is great, and the trick is to make a model simple enough to handle but complicated enough to capture the important variables and relationships. Since various models ask different questions or look at different aspects of the internal connections, sensible decision making must be eclectic, playing one model off against another. Some things that may be crucial, such as the security issues associated with diffusion of nuclear technology never get captured in the models, and decisions have to be made in the end according to less formal criteria. In short, these large models are always subject to abuse, but my impression is that the Soviet nuclear planners use them with as much understanding and economic sophistication as does anyone in the West. They probably have a distinctive set of biases, such as a desire for autonomy in fuel supply, special pessimism about the high cost and small amounts of natural uranium available, and a surprising lack of concern about safety and environmental hazards.

MAIN DIRECTIONS OF
CURRENT STRATEGY

Let us consider where the Soviet nuclear R and D planners now stand on various issues in nuclear technology and their ideas about directions of R and D efforts for the future. As already explained, the Soviet nuclear power industry currently employs two main kinds of reactors—a pressurized-water reactor (the VVER) and a graphite-moderated channel-type reactor (the RBMK, which stands for reaktor bol’shoi moshchnosti—kipiashchii, or large capacity, boiling-water reactor). The VVER was the first to be commercialized, with the first mature version commissioned in 1971. It is said to be a reliable and economical reactor and is the one which has been offered to other countries. The RBMK was commercialized rather later (the first unit was commissioned in 1975) and represents an independent Soviet line of development. As one authority says “no other country has solved the problem” of developing a reactor of this type (N. A. Dollezhal’ in Atomnaia energiia, 1972:2). Factors influencing the development of this reactor and its current prominent role include: long experience; an absence of novel engineering problems; modular construction, which both makes it easy to expand and susceptible to modifying and upgrading the various elements; distinct moderator and coolant, so that it is possible to choose each for its best qualities; possibility to reload without stopping; individual control over each channel; and flexibility in fuel cycle characteristics. Specifically, the last point means that it is possible to vary the amount of plutonium produced. The reactor’s main deficiency is that as a boiling-water reactor it creates problems for turbine design. Relatively poor steam conditions mean a reduction in the thermal efficiency of turbines, and large volumes of steam that must be handled put a limit on turbogenerator unit size and require large cooling water supplies. The main adaptation to solve those problems is the introduction of a superheat cycle. An earlier version of this kind of reactor did employ superheating of steam, and the R and D people say that it will be relatively simple to redesign the RBMK to include superheating.

Improvements in the fuel cycle are also mentioned as important in the further evolution of this design (Energetik, 1974:6, p. 4). The zirconium cladding now used causes some deterioration in heat characteristics, but I think that “improvements in the fuel cycle” means basically an increase in plutonium production. The RBMK apparently also uses less thoroughly enriched uranium than does the VVER (Atomnoi energetiki XX let, 1974, p. 128).

The competition between these two reactor types seems to have been one of the major issues in the history of Soviet nuclear R and D decision making. It is predicted in some sources that the VVER will dominate additions to nuclear capacity over the next 30 to 40 years (Atomnaia energiia, 1974:3, p. 274). In contrast to that assertion, however, an official of the State Committee says in a review of a new book by Petrosiants that “it is natural that . . . among kinds of power stations, the attention is given primarily to those with channel-type reactors. The latter, as is well known [a giveaway phrase in Soviet polemics indicating what is not generally accepted], have made the dominant contribution to the introduction of nuclear capacity in the USSR in the 9th Five Year Plan, and this situation will be maintained in the 10th” (Atomnaia energiia, 1976:6, p. 503). More than 65 percent of the nuclear capacity to be commissioned in the 10th Five Year Plan will be in the form of RBMK (Nekrasov and Pervukhin, 1977, p. 47). It was originally planned to equip the Chernobyl and Smolensk stations with VVER reactors, but they were actually built with RBMK (Josef Wilczynski, “Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes in the Warsaw Pact Countries,” and Elektricheskie stantsii, 1975:4, p. 14).

A recent statement by the Minister of Electric Power, P. S. Neporozhnyi suggests that there is still some argument. He says that the rationale for developing both lines is that it will be possible to compare their strengths and weaknesses and to draw more machinery plants into the task of producing the equipment ( Elektricheskie stantsii, 1977:8, p. 3). It may be that the VVER grew out of the work on submarine propulsion, as did the basic U.S. commercial power plant designs, or was based on following the U.S. lead, so that advocates of the RBMK were able to win a role for their candidate only after a long struggle. The competitive status of the RBMK will no doubt depend in part on the requirement for the extra plutonium the RBMK can provide, which depends in part on whether the breeder is developed on schedule. (An article by Iu. I. Koriakin, et al., in Atomnaia energiia, 1974:4, pp. 251–256, focuses on this point.)

Breeder Reactors

The USSR may be one of the first countries to achieve successful commercialization of the breeder reactor. This will be the culmination of an R and D line followed consistently over a long period of time. The Soviet specialists have no doubts about the feasibility or desirability of the breeder. As A. M. Petrosiants says: “The basic general strategy for the development of nuclear power in the USSR is an orientation toward all-out and accelerated development and introduction of fast-neutron reactors with expanded reproduction of fuel” (Petrosiants, 1976, p. 24).

The Soviet Union is now building what is usually called a second-generation industrial plant—the BN-600 at Beloiarsk. A “first-generation industrial” plant (the BN-350) has been in operation since 1973. A British report speaks of plants in several countries, of the general size and stage of development of the BN-350, as “prototype reactors” and the next step (such as the BN-600), as “near-commercial plants” (Annals of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Vol. 1, 1974, p. 471).

There are numerous options in breeder reactor design and development. Such a reactor can be based on breeding fissionable U²³³ from thorium or plutonium from U²³⁸. Even when this choice has been made, decisions are still open regarding such parameters as size, fuel doubling time, coolant, temperature, and pressure. Soviet efforts are oriented toward a short doubling time because the planners envisage a very large role for breeders in total nuclear capacity. The stock of fissile material invested in breeder reactors would have to grow at about the same rate as their capacity, and since it is expected that in the 1990s, the capacity of breeder reactors will double over a period of about 8 to 9 years, Soviet designers want to find a way to cut the doubling time for fissile material well below the period that is standard for Western reactor projects. The British prototype breeder at Dounreay has a doubling time of 25 years and the French Phénix, 20 years (Science, 30 January 1976, p. 372). The BN-600 is expected to have a doubling time of 12 years (Elektricheskie stantsii, 1975:10, pp. 10–11). Because it is expected that some of the plutonium produced in breeders will be employed in fission reactors adapted to special needs (such as high-temperature gas-cooled reactors for industrial processing), A. P. Aleksandrov* indicates that the goal is to achieve a doubling time in breeder of 4 to 6 years (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 211).

Reactors for Heat Production

Soviet nuclear planners have always been much interested in using the by-product heat from reactors, and in the BN-350 breeder at Shevchenko, by-product heat is used to desalinate water via a load connected to a back-pressure turbine. The R and D planners would also like to capture low-potential rejected heat (for use in urban space heating) from power plants using boiling-water and pressurized-water reactors. The Beloiarsk reactor was adapted to serve a small heat load, and the first serious experiment with such a technology is the small station at Bilibino, in the Soviet North. This station has four power blocks aggregating 48 MW and, in addition, a heat-producing capacity of 25 GKal/hr. via extraction turbines (Atomnaia energiia, 1973:5, pp. 299–304). But the main goal in this experiment has been to create small, simply built reactors as energy sources for remote regions rather than to add heating capacity to traditional stations, and the status of the development effort to create a prototype large-scale atomic TETs is unclear. One source says: “atomic TETsy as of the beginning of the 10th Five Year Plan are still in the beginning stage of development so that it is not possible to count on their introduction in this period” (A. M. Nekrasov and M. G. Pervukhin, Energetika SSSR v 1976–1980 godakh, 1977, p. 114)· They add that an important task of the 10th Five Year Plan is the acceleration of the necessary research, design, and project-making work . . . “in connection with which it is envisaged to begin at the end of the 10th Five Year Plan period the construction of a large-scale atomic TETs, which will lay the foundation for the further development of centralized heat supply on the basis of nuclear fuel in 1981–1990” (ibid., p. 122). A Grigoriants, head of Minenergo’s Nuclear Power Administration, says such a station will be built in 1981–1985 (Pravda, 22 February 1977).

This concern flows out of the regional problem already described. The area in which nuclear power has a competitive edge is limited largely to the European part of the country, where its cost advantage flows from the high local cost of other primary energy sources. Given its appeal as a substitute for more expensive alternative primary sources, it would be useful to find ways of using nuclear power outside the base-load generating plants for which it has thus far been developed. One objective is to be able to utilize high-temperature byproduct heat for chemical processing, metallurgy, and other industrial needs. The present development line in breeder reactors based on sodium as the coolant is incompatible with this goal, since the coolant leaves the reactor at a relatively low temperature (50o-6oo°C). To meet this objective, it will be necessary to develop a high-temperature gas-cooled breeder. A great deal of experimental work has been done with various gaseous coolants, and a distinctive feature of the Soviet effort is work with dissociating oxides of nitrogen. This line of research is carried on at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences. An experimental reactor to try out this scheme has been proposed (Atomnaia energiia, 1974:1, pp. 11–21). According to Pavlenko and Nekrasov (1972, p. 121), enough experience has been acquired to proceed with the construction of an experimental block on this principle in the 10th Five Year Plan, though they do not say that a decision has actually been made. The creation of a gas-cooled reactor would introduce new technical difficulties, such as high pressures and risk from cooling failure in a reactor with very high energy density. The USSR has apparently never done any extensive work on high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (see below) and thus would start from a minimal base of experience.

One serious limitation on the role nuclear reactors can play, even in electric power generation, is their poor adaptation to load variations. A recent article points out that, given the load pattern and the already existing facilities, much new capacity will have to take the form of cycling and peaking units (N. A. Dollezhal’ and L. A. Melent’ev, in Vestnik ANSSSR, 1977:1, pp. 89–90). There is thus a strong desire to modify nuclear stations, both to permit them to compete with fossil fired TETs as well as to replace condensing stations, and to permit them to supply high-temperature heat.

Gas-cooled Reactors

Gas reactors apparently enjoy a high priority in Soviet nuclear R and D policy at present. Academicians Dollezhal’ and Melent’ev speak of the necessity of forcing the development of high-temperature gas reactors (Vestnik ANSSSR, 1976:11, p. 60). There are two different reasons for taking this direction. First, given the conviction as to the desirability of fast-neutron reactors, a backup project is desirable in case the liquid metal breeder should come to grief. One source suggests that gas-cooled breeders are being thought of primarily as a backup for sodium-cooled breeders, though they might eventually have an independent appeal on grounds of cost (Atomnaia energiia, 1976:2, p. 135). Secondly, they want heat at high temperatures for more efficient power and for industrial processing; only a gas-cooled reactor can provide this type of heat. A gas-cooled reactor designed primarily to meet the second objective would not have to be a fast-neutron type. Thermal-neutron gas-cooled reactors, fueled with plutonium produced in the breeders in excess of what is needed to fuel new breeders, could also do the job (Meshkov, 1976, pp. 121–127).

Gas-cooled slow-neutron reactors seem to have been neglected in earlier Soviet nuclear R and D, and one wonders why they were overlooked, given a long standing interest in “atomic furnaces.” I imagine that gas-cooled reactors must have simply seemed too risky—they present great problems in metallurgy, for instance. Also, the high-temperature gas reactor has been very difficult for the Western countries to perfect. In the United States, this type of reactor drove its developers into bankruptcy. More than is sometimes realized, Soviet policymakers are much impressed by the example of what Western countries are doing, and I would not be surprised that they chose for commercialization the pressurized-water reactor just because that is what was being done in the United States and avoided the HTGR because it was a poor risk in the eyes of the West. This cannot be an all-encompassing interpretation, because there is one distinctive Soviet reactor—the RBMK—but there are indications that, despite an early commitment to this type, it must have been downgraded at one point because it was different from what the Americans were doing.

Natural Uranium Reactors

The Soviet program seems never to have allocated much effort to natural uranium reactors. There is little discussion of this point in Soviet sources, but we can speculate on the reasons. The only natural uranium heavy-water reactor project has been the reactor developed by the Czechs—the A-1 reactor at Bohunice. This is a 150 MW reactor, cooled by carbon dioxide, now usually described as an experimental prototype effort (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 107). This project was undertaken by the Czechs in the first place on the strength of Soviet offers of assistance, and a Czech author even indicates that the project was proposed by the USSR (Jan Neumann, Chairman of the Czech Atomic Energy Commission, in Ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo stran-chlenov SEV, 1972:2, p. 18). It was supposed to be a cooperative project, but in fact must have been very much under the control of the Soviet side. Soviet institutes prepared the technical design and exercised design supervision in the actual construction (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 111). It has been suggested that the Russians were not very forthcoming in supplying the promised aid and for a long time in effect blocked this development (Polach, 1968, pp. 831–851). The original hope was that the station would be finished by 1960. That was certainly unjustified optimism, but a subsequently reset deadline of 1968 was also badly missed, and the plant first operated at the end of December 1972 (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 109). It seems reasonable to suppose that the Czechs were interested in a reactor type that would make them independent of Soviet enrichment processes, but that the Russians were ambivalent about this. The Russians surely want to keep the external fuel cycle under their own control and would be reluctant to see the Czechs develop an independent enrichment capability as a part of their domestic nuclear technology. A natural uranium reactor would remove the temptation for the Czechs to develop such technology. On the other hand, Soviet opposition to a Czech-developed natural uranium technology would be understandable, both in terms of the commercial motive of wanting to eliminate competition in supplying power reactors to the other Eastern European countries, and in terms of permitting the Czechs a way to use their own uranium directly without sending it to the Russians for enrichment.

In any case, the current attitude seems to be that the A-1 experiment was not especially encouraging for further development, though one Soviet source says that it can be “described as a serious success of Soviet and Czechoslovak science and technology,” apparently mostly in terms of generating experimental data ( Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 113). The Czechs apparently have no intention of building another one and in 1970 signed a contract for Soviet VVER-440 reactors for two stations (Neumann, 1972, p. 18).

The USSR also helped the GDR in the creation of a nuclear power plant, water-moderated and cooled, using natural and lightly enriched uranium. Subsequently, we have indications the Russians are still interested in natural uranium reactors and are doing some work along this line. The twentieth anniversary symposium at Obninsk included a paper on such reactors (Atomnaia energiia, 1974:3, p. 274).

FUSION POWER

One of the greatest puzzles in interpreting Soviet nuclear policy is how Soviet nuclear planners evaluate the relationship of the fission and fusion forms of nuclear power. In the United States, it is often assumed that fission should be considered only an interim technology until fusion power is perfected. Most discussions center on the question of how long the interim period will be, which in turn will influence how badly a breeder reactor is needed to stretch uranium resources. I have never seen the question of the desirability of the breeder put this way in Soviet discussions; their decisions about the breeder seem to have been taken independently of any forecast concerning the likely mastery or timetable of fusion. A. P. Aleksandrov has said that the Kurchatov Institute “has made a fundamental contribution to the ideology of developing and economically optimizing the structure of nuclear power in the coming period extending over several centuries” (Vestnik ANSSSR, 1975:9, p. 6). This is an obvious reference to the modeling and forecasting studies described earlier, and some additional interpretation of what he means comes from Atomnoi energetike XX let (1974, pp. 209–210), in which he says that, with the breeder, nuclear resources will be adequate for hundreds of years and that “such a development path was marked out many years ago in the Soviet Union.” I have never seen any reference in the concrete forecasting and modeling exercises as to how fusion fits in with this concept of the breeder’s role. The relevance tree study cited earlier just disposes of it by saying it is far enough in the future that it is irrelevant to the problem at issue. Aleksandrov mentions that fusion may be available by the end of the century, but mentions it only in passing and says that if it does get perfected, then in connection with the breeder it will be possible to “rebuild” the world’s energy resources (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 213). This would seem to be a rather poorly reasoned idea.

Academicians Dollezhal’ and Melent’ev, in the article cited earlier, describe the general strategy of nuclear policy, including roles and timetables for the different kinds of reactors, but never mention fusion until the last paragraph, when they say that work on such problems of the breeder as transport security, storage, and reprocessing should be combined with study of fusion at the most promising energy approach (Vestnik ANSSSR, 1976:11, p. 61). These two authors give a possible answer to the puzzle of why fusion is ignored as a competitor to the breeder by asserting that, although strategic decisions may have consequences several decades into the future, the uncertainties multiply so fast toward the end of such a forecast period that forecasts must be limited to about 30 years (ibid., p. 54).

At the same time, the USSR does have a large and active fusion program, and its managers seem to encourage positive thinking about the likelihood of success. A. P. Aleksandrov frequently asserts that a breakthrough is likely soon. Academician E. Velikov of the Kurchatov Institute says, in an article in Kommunist (1976:1), that great progress is being made and there will be a fusion power plant before the end of the century.

The current status of Soviet forecasts and priorities in fusion research is unclear but policy seems somewhat unsettled, as in the United States. The USSR has for a long time had a strong program based on the tokamak, which of course is a Soviet creation. In this line of research the last machine built was the Tokamak-10, described as the last of the purely experimental fusion installations by E. Velikov, Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute (Kommunist, 1976:1, p. 67–70). He thinks that the data accumulated in experiments with it, together with foreign data, will provide a sufficient basis to create at the beginning of the 1980s the first “demonstration tokamak reactor”— that is, a machine in which the energy output will almost match the input. He speaks of this as the Tokamak-20, which will apparently be a hybrid reactor (according to a story in the New York Times, 23 March 1976). A hybrid reactor uses the supply of neutrons from the plasma for producing plutonium rather than, or along with, creating heat. The current Soviet literature shows a strong interest in hybrid reactors. An article in Atomnaia energiia (1975:12, pp. 379–386). surveys the possibilities, and two of the major researchers in the field at the Kurchatov Institute describe this as a very attractive option (Pravda, 10 March 1976, p. 3). Many of the discussions of breeder reactors do envisage the possibility of specialized plutonium producers (i.e., facilities that do not produce energy), which may be needed to produce the fuel stocks for breeders if the latter become available early, grow fast, and breed slow (Atomnaia energiia, 1976:11, pp. 57–58). It is not explained what kind of reactors these will be, but perhaps this is one of the roles forecast for fusion. In those scenarios, however, the specialized plutonium-producing reactors play a role of limited duration.

Moreover, in the scenarios now envisaged, hybrid tokamaks would come on the scene too late to serve in this role. But one study shows that, even when breeders are widely employed, “the production of additional plutonium in hybrid fusion reactors will still be useful,” a conclusion based on an assumed shadow price for plutonium, which would add enough value to a hybrid’s output to justify its capital cost (Atomnaia energiia, 1976:11). The Electric Power Research Institute (the U.S. electric utility R and D institute) has reached an agreement with the Kurchatov Institute to explore hybrid reactor concepts. “A joint working group will plan testing of U.S. built modules in the T-20 which is now being designed in Russia” (Nuclear News, 1977: August, p. 144). The source goes on to say that the T-20 is the only magnetic confinement device, now existing or planned, to test the hybrid concept. The Soviet fusion program also includes intensive research on other lines as well, particularly the laser and electron-beam excitation of fuel pellets (New York Times, 15 January 1976). In fact, Soviet researchers are said to have made some significant breakthroughs in this approach. In the summer of 1976, L. I. Rudakov, who heads this work at the Kurchatov Institute, gave talks at several U.S. organizations in which he disclosed what are described as fundamental new ideas that might solve the problem of electron-beam fusion. These ideas are still classified in the United States, and the ironic outcome of Rudakov’s presentation was an effort by U.S. authorities to control the dissemination of concepts that had been openly presented by a Soviet specialist! (Science, 1976: October, p. 166.)

Regrettably, it seems impossible for me to draw any conclusions about R and D decision making as reflected in the evolution of the fusion power program, or as to how fusion power is related to Soviet nuclear energy policy. This is a research area at the far frontier of knowledge. As L. M. Artsimovich, the physicist who pioneered this work in the USSR once said, “it is still not known from which branch this golden apple will fall.” Fundamental breakthroughs may radically alter the priorities and directions of work at any time. Also, as an area with military implications, we can be sure that it is not discussed completely openly. An initiate, an active researcher in the field, might be able to deduce from the technical literature and from such meager bits of evidence as are available, how the Soviet managers of this effort are evaluating its potential and making their decisions about how to attack it, but the author is not in a position to do that. The remarkable thing is that, in the standard Soviet discussions of nuclear power (which, as I have indicated, have in recent years been quite straightforward and explicit), there is virtually no discussion of how the fusion effort is managed or of how it is seen as fitting into nuclear R and D policy in general.

NUCLEAR SAFETY

Special comment is in order as to the influence of environmental and safety considerations on Soviet nuclear R and D effort. It is a commonplace in Western analyses of the Soviet nuclear program to assert that safety and environmental considerations weigh much less heavily on Soviet decision making than on ours. This position is no doubt basically correct; it does seem that Soviet nuclear power policymakers have not really faced up to most of the hard questions that are so important in Western concerns about nuclear safety. For example, little credence is given to the possibility of a loss-of-coolant accident. As one Soviet source says,

Generalization of the operating experience of the uranium-graphite channel type reactors in the USSR shows that unexpected, instantaneous rupture of large-diameter pipes and drums, designed according to accepted standards, and manufactured according to the technology of high pressure vessels, at moderate pressures and temperatures under a system of verification and inspection, are extremely unlikely. [Atomnaia energiia, 1971 : October, p. 239]

The conclusion of a U.S. delegation in 1970 was that the basic philosophy on safety was to “omit intricate design backups for accidents determined to be virtually impossible. In this category are propagation of coolant flow loss beyond a single fuel assembly and progression of small accidents into large ones with bulk fuel meltdown and redistribution and explosive energy release. . . . In many cases, design requirements are limited to likely events or malfunctions and unlikely events are not designed for. . . . In summary, Soviet safety practice is focussed on reliability and operability of components and systems through adequate design margins and engineered safeguard features which prevent small accidents from occurring, and for cases considered to be reasonable, from developing into serious accidents” (AEC, 1970, pp. 16–18). There is certainly no special sensitivity about the increased risk associated with locating nuclear plants near heavy concentrations of population. A. Grigoriants, head of Minenergo’s nuclear power administration seems to accept that it would be uneconomic to locate nuclear TETs 30–40 KM from cities (as is now done for conventional nuclear plants) and sees them as being located on the edges of cities, though he makes the concession that they should have containment shells (Pravda, 27 March 1977). This is not to say that Soviet officials have no concern with safety; there is considerable Soviet literature on safety as an aspect of nuclear power plant design. The twentieth anniversary volume on atomic power (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974) includes a chapter on problems of safety. There are reasonably frequent articles in Atomnaia energiia on various aspects of safety and environmental effects. A recent book (which unfortunately I have not yet been able to obtain) covers the whole area (Emelianov, 1975). But the focus in most of this literature is on safety as an aspect of the normal operation of plants. The reviewer of the Emelianov book says that it does provide techniques for evaluating the risks associated with various failures, but whether the Russians use anything like the fault tree design used in U.S. studies is not clear.

NUCLEAR REPROCESSING

It is difficult to find direct evidence on the Soviet attitude toward the plutonium problem that is an important element in Western fears about the breeder reactor. The Soviet literature does not even mention the danger of diversion or terrorism as a potential difficulty domestically, but the Soviet authorities are concerned with the dissemination of plutonium as an aspect of national security. Perhaps the best clue to their attitude is how fuel for the reactors supplied to the Eastern European countries and to Finland has been handled. It is apparently required that spent fuel be sent back to the USSR for reprocessing. An article in Atomnaia energiia (1975:July) describes the container and transport systems used for shipping spent fuel and speaks of its being shipped to the USSR, even mentioning the problem of shifting the gauge of railroad cars at the Soviet border. But since R and D on reprocessing is conducted within the CEMA framework under a Council on Reprocessing of Spent Fuel of the Permanent Commission on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, the USSR must not be ruling out entirely the diffusion of reprocessing technology to other Communist countries. Finland also returns spent fuel to the USSR for reprocessing—a feature of the contract with which the Finns are pleased (Nuclear News, October 1977, p. 72), since that relieves them of the problem of storing or processing the wastes. There is, however, a curious article in Atomnaia energiia in 1976, in which two Finnish researchers analyze the possibility of loading a VVER reactor with plutonium (Kaikkonen, 1976). If the Soviet Union had a clear policy on plutonium and were adamant about preventing its spread, it seems doubtful the publication of such an article would be permitted. The USSR is reported to have offered to sell uranium fuel to the Japanese (New York Times, 11 November 1977). It is possible that the story misinterprets the situation and that all that is being offered is toll enrichment. But one can understand that if uranium itself is being offered the Japanese would probably be pleased, like the Finns, to be able to send spent fuel back to the supplier. Despite past Soviet practice in not supplying domestic uranium to other countries (except in the case of Finland) there is a possible rationale for doing so. Soviet nuclear plans are counting heavily on a considerable supply of plutonium, and from that perspective it might be better to have uranium converted to plutonium in other people’s reactors rather than sitting at home.

The Czech A-1 reactor, described earlier, produces plutonium in significant quantities. I have seen no statement as to whether the spent fuel from that reactor must be returned to the USSR, nor do we know whether the fuel (in the form of unenriched metallic uranium) is prepared in Czechoslovakia (and hence owned by the Czechs) or is produced in the USSR from Czech uranium ore sold to the USSR. It is said that the new VVER stations being built in Czechoslovakia will use Czech raw material which will be processed “komplektno” (i.e., probably refined, enriched, and fabricated) in the USSR (Neumann, 1972). That statement might be interpreted as implying Czech ownership and toll enrichment, but does not have to mean that. An account by the former General Director of the Czech uranium mines (who left Czechoslovakia in 1970) says that the USSR has been adamant in refusing the Eastern Europeans the right to produce their own nuclear fuel (Bocek, 1974).

Finally, the anniversary survey (Atomnoi energetike XX let, 1974, p. 199) suggests that once the breeder is developed, such reactors will be used in the Eastern European countries along with the VVER. Moreover, the Soviet planners expect the Eastern Europeans to share in this technological development. As one source puts it “the most important goal of cooperative efforts to develop atomic power engineering should be the creation of breeder reactors” (Voprosy ekonomiki, 1976:6, pp. 70–79).

The most recent line is that the USSR supports the idea of regional reprocessing centers for spent fuel. In a report reacting to the U.S. efforts at the Salzburg conference in 1977 to win support for slowing down plutonium technology, A. M. Petrosiants supports such centers and says “we can cite as an example the region of member countries of CEMA where the majority of the problems of organizing the external fuel cycle have long been decided jointly with the participation of all interested countries” (Atomnaia energiia, August 1977, p. 85). Despite the hazards of being the depot for spent fuel, one can imagine that the USSR would accept this role both as a counter to spread of nuclear material and as a way of accumulating plutonium for fueling the breeder when it is ready. And it is surely in a strong enough position that “joint decisions with the participation of all interested countries” are unlikely to violate Soviet wishes.

It is not at all clear where the USSR now stands in the development of reprocessing technology. There must be some experience with processing wastes to recover plutonium. The “Siberian” reactor at Troitsk has apparently always been under the control of the military, and since it is an early version of the graphite moderated reactor, its role must have been, at least in part, plutonium production for military purposes. This implies some experience with reprocessing, though this technology would be unlikely to meet requirements for a commercially acceptable technology. One recent statement intended for external consumption is that “the search for reliable means of getting rid of the waste from atomic power stations is continuing in the USSR. Such waste is now being buried at great depths in limestone caves which are geologically sealed off and where there is no risk of water being contaminated” (Soviet News, 3 May 1977, p. 4). The answer as to why research work on reprocessing is being conducted jointly with the Comecon countries may be that the USSR needs the scientific and technological assistance of these countries. As one source says: “analysis shows the need for substantial cooperation in the process of integrating the external fuel cycle” (Vestnik ANSSSR, 1976:11, p. 60). It is really striking to see how little is said about nuclear processing technology, and it may be that this essential aspect of the overall breeder strategy has not been given the attention it deserves.

To summarize, it is probably true that the nuclear technologists have so far been able to make decisions with relatively little concern over safety aspects. There is no doubt some skepticism and opposition to nuclear power from various places in the bureaucracy, especially from people with vested interests in other energy forms and other R and D projects. The distinctive feature of the Soviet setting is that there is no public initiative or public forum that would raise safety and environmental objections or question the arguments and design approaches the nuclear power people offer in answer to safety concerns. The usual response from these people is that the dangers to health and personal safety from nuclear power are less than those from alternative energy sources, and this is a point not difficult to make when the argument is limited to wastes and emissions from routine plant operations. But the attitude is probably changing, and safety considerations are likely to come to have a more inhibiting effect in the future. It may be that an increasingly intimate involvement with Western specialists has heightened Soviet awareness of safety problems. The Finns insisted on fitting their VVER-440 reactor at the Loviisa plant with a containment structure, even though the layout of the Soviet reactor meant that the containment structure had to be much larger than for a Western reactor of equivalent capacity (Nuclear News, October 1977, p. 73). That kind of insistence must in the end be persuasive. The latest addition to the Novo-Voronezh plant (a 1,000 MW VVER reactor) will, unlike all previous VVER reactors, have a containment structure (ERDA, 1974, p. 7). In a recent statement describing the future growth of nuclear power, P. S. Neporozhnyi says that it is planned to increase safety measures, which will raise capital costs and thus make it imperative to achieve higher utilization (6,000 hrs/yr) to maintain the competitive standing of nuclear power (Elektricheskie stantsii, 1977:8, p. 3).

A recent Soviet article on safety concludes with a paragraph that I doubt could have appeared in earlier years. The reviewer endorses the position that nuclear plants are safe in operation but concludes by quoting approvingly a Western writer who says that the power plant itself is but the tip of an iceberg. He asserts that of the three main systems—the power plant, the external fuel cycle, and the handling of wastes—Soviet analysts have considered only the first. His final word is that “ecological analysis of the whole fuel cycle of nuclear power is the most important task of the upcoming years” (Atomnaia energiia, 1976: October, pp. 235–238). But so far this shift in attitude does not seem to have gone far enough to have any impact on three central features of the Soviet program. Current efforts are still solidly based on faith in the breeder. There is a serious development program and concrete plans for utilization of by-product heat and heat from specially designed reactors for both space heating and industrial processing. Nobody seems to find anything objectionable in the location of large plants near population concentrations.

CONCLUSIONS

Looking back over this review of nuclear development, what generalizations might be made? First, the nuclear program demonstrates unequivocally the Soviet capability to develop a new technology at the very forefront of scientific advance and bring it to successful commercialization. They have a working technology, and it seems to have been adapted to the specific Soviet economic conditions and goals. In general, Western visitors are impressed with what the Russians have accomplished. This comes through clearly in the two reports on Soviet power reactors produced by U.S. delegations sponsored by the AEC and ERDA (AEC, 1970, and ERDA, 1974), already cited. Moreover, the Soviet program is not merely derivative. I believe it is possible that the VVER reactors owe something to the inspiration of Western choices, but the RBMK is claimed by the Soviet authors, and acknowledged by Westerners, to represent a distinctive line of development and an original achievement. When the RBMK first came into use, Academician Dollezhal’ claimed that “no other country has solved this problem” (Atomnaia energiia, 1976:2, p. 117), and Westerners do not dispute this position. A story in The Financial Times (11 July 1975) says that British nuclear engineers who had toured the USSR nuclear installations were very impressed with the RBMK reactor and found a number of ideas and innovations that would be helpful in their own program. As indicated earlier, the USSR is one of the world leaders in breeder development. There has been a substantial interaction with the national programs of other countries, so that the Soviet breeder program does not represent a really independent direction. But the USSR appears to have come about as far as Great Britain or France in solving technical problems and embodying the technology in workable designs.

If there are doubts about the technical achievement, they are associated as usual with the more downstream stages of producing and mastering the technology in use. There is some indication that each of the plants so far built has had some element of being an experimental installation, in which problems not taken care of in the design or manufacturing process have to be taken care of in the construction of the plant. We also see indications of the failure to get the technology developed as an integrated process. For example, the turbines for these plants have so far been mostly standard or slightly modified designs, not really optimized or integrated into the station design. The Khar’kov turbine factory produced turbines for the various early stations on a more or less ad hoc basis making heavy use of subassemblies from standard series models (Elektricheskie slantsii, 1971:6, pp. 2–7). The BN-600 will use three standard K-200–130 turbines already widely used in conventional stations (ibid., pp. 118–119). I suppose that must be because it will have steam at much higher temperature and pressure.

A Western authority comments that it seems a sign of technical backwardness to equip a 440 MW reactor, as they do, with two turbines. U.S. reactors have for some time been connected to single turbines of 800 MW and more (Sporn, 1968, p. 35). The Leningrad station has two 500 MW turbines and generators for each 1,000 MW reactor. Only with the move to the 1,000 MW VVER will special turbines matched to the capacity of the reactor be designed. This turbine will have 1,500 RPM speed and at the beginning of the 10th Five Year Plan was in the process of being produced (Nekrasov and Pervukhin, 1977, p. 118).

As another indication that this technology has not been satisfactorily assimilated and mastered at the industrial level, the USSR is very interested in getting foreign assistance to build the new nuclear plants. At one point the West Germans were invited to consider building nuclear plants on Soviet territory with some of the power output going to Germany. This may only indicate a desire to export energy without letting uranium leave the country, but it seems more likely that it reflects great difficulties in building nuclear plants themselves. The USSR has asked the Japanese to supply control equipment and on one occasion sought to buy reactors built to Soviet specifications (Nuclear News, March 1976, p. 60). Czechoslovakia seems to have won for itself a significant role, not only in supplying for the VVER stations to be built in Eastern Europe equipment that has already been mastered, but also in developing the equipment for the succeeding generation of pressurized-water reactors, including the circulation pumps for the VVER-1,000. It also supplied items for the RBMK-1,000 (Neumann, 1972, p. 20). The Russians have expressed great interest in importing British nuclear equipment. The USSR has not tried to export its nuclear power technology, except to a captive market in Eastern Europe and to Finland. Offers have also been made to India, Libya, and the Philippines. It is thus impossible to appeal to the test of competition as a way of judging whether Soviet nuclear technology is on the same technical and commercial level as that achieved elsewhere, though my guess would be that it is not.

Nuclear R and D underlines some characteristic features of Soviet R and D already noted and suggests some clues as to what determines the degree of success of an innovation. As with other examples examined in earlier chapters, the Soviet approach in R and D is to move fairly early into expensive experimental facilities and to use them as a test bed to develop the technology. The experience of the Czech A-1 reactor seems to reflect this tendency to premature commitments. One American familiar with all the national breeder programs says that the Soviet Union “prefers to build the reactor first, then see if it can be made to work,” in contrast to the U.S. approach of testing many design variants and actual components (Science, 30 January 1976, p. 371). A British observer notes that construction of the BN-600 was started well before many of the design decisions had been made. An inclination to make expensive and far-reaching expenditures well in advance of clear-cut answers to technical uncertainties continues right on through all stages of the R and D process. Although the BN-600 is not yet in operation, the long lead times involved mean that work on the next generation, the commercial version, has already begun. The breeder will be economically competitive only if its size can be increased, and the present development work in the USSR envisages a very large upward jump to a 1,600 MW reactor for the commercial version. The French and British reactors of that generation will be 1,200 and 1,300 MW respectively (Science, 26 December 1975, p. 1281). One author claims that it is urgently necessary to begin actual widespread construction of such units in the immediate future. He acknowledges that more work must be done to make the steam generator reliable and that it needs more development work before it can be built to the scale required in a 1,600 MW reactor, but “we have no doubts that the difficulties in this area can be overcome” (Pravda, 27 March 1977, p. 2). It is the steam generator, of course, that presents the most troublesome uncertainty in all breeder programs.

One of the important features of all the R and D cases involving electric power, which tend to be more successful than what we have found for the coal industry, appears to be the power of Minenergo as the one big buyer. Minenergo also seems to have a rather intimate involvement in the R and D decision making and in the actual development of the technology. The ability to exert such influence seems to depend on how the responsibility passes between the R and D hierarchy and the client hierarchy as a program advances. Little is known about this in general, but some interesting features can be noted in the relationship between Minenergo and the organizations that have developed some of the new energy innovations. Minenergo seems to have had a close involvement with the nuclear program from the beginning. In 1951 its project-making organization, Teploenergoproekt, participated in designing the Obninsk station, the original test facility. It also did the design work for the first block at Novo-Voronezh (the first VVER) and the first block of the Beloiarsk station—both of which were still prototypes. In 1966 it became the general designer of all nuclear power stations (Teploenergetika, 1974:4, p. 5). In contrast to the cases of oil or gas or coal equipment, the R and D organizations in nuclear power were incapable of designing a test facility on their own, and a certain symbiosis between the developers and the client grew out of this dependence. It is said that in the development of the breeder, developmental responsibility passed to Minenergo with the decision to build the BN-600. The BN-350 was developed by the State Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. The BN-600 is still one step away from the form of the plant expected to be put into series production, and it is said that Minenergo is giving great attention to designing it to conform to its own concept of what is necessary in a commercial plant (Rippon, 1975, p. 572).

I suspect that Minenergo also had a strong influence on the development of the RBMK-1,000. It is a development from the Beloiarsk plant, which, according to the source just cited, is under the control of Minenergo. Also we know that the RBMK-1,000 was designed by Gidroproekt (the biggest project-making organization in Minenergo). When the existence of the RBMK in more or less fully developed form was disclosed, it came as a great surprise to American observers. An American delegation from AEC toured the Soviet power stations and test facilities in 1970 under the auspices of the State Committee for the Peaceful Utilization of Atomic Energy and were given no hints that this type of reactor was being developed. It thus came as a great surprise in 1971 when the Leningrad station was announced, not as a proposal but as a mature technology, embodied in a 1,000 MW reactor. Perhaps the reason the State Committee did not mention the RBMK at the time of the 1970 visit is that it was the model being developed by the competition.

We also know that Minenergo project-making organizations have played an important role in the forecasting studies that guide nuclear strategy. Academicians Dollezhal’ and Melent’ev say that their forecasts are based on work done at Energoset’proekt ( Vestnik ANSSSR, 1976:11, p. 51).

It is claimed that intimate cooperation has been the rule in the development of nuclear power. At the 25^th Party Congress, Aleksandrov cited the nuclear power case as an example that could show the way to such cooperation elsewhere in the economy, implying of course that such cooperation does not exist in other areas:

Branch institutes or plants with their own personnel should be included in the institutes’ projects at an early stage, and a significant part of the work—from initial exploration through the final application of the research-should be done jointly. The experience in the development of the nuclear energy industry shows that with this sort of work the complexities of industrial application disappear. Moreover, industry immediately obtains its own well-trained personnel who apply the innovations in practice. [Izvestiia, 27 February 1975]

The most distinctive peculiarity of the Soviet nuclear R and D program is probably the more casual position taken on nuclear safety. This has the effect of permitting numerous lines of research and development that are blocked in the United States. There is here a difference of policy and opinion with potentially very important consequences for the future. If the Soviet leaders are correct that the environmental and safety hazards are far less serious than many in the United States consider them to be, the USSR may well be in a position to exploit the potential of nuclear energy much more profitably than we can and to move well ahead of the United States in depth and variety of experience with this technology. I do not think there is anyway to judge which view regarding safety is correct, since we are talking about the uncertainties inherent in a new technology. It is a bit worrisome, however, to see how little thought appears to have been given in the USSR, even today, to alternative long-range strategies and to the relationship of fission power with fusion. The commitment to the breeder has the distinct flavor of a technological fix, decided on early in the game and transformed into dogma. It is also disturbing to see how little public discussion there is on any of these issues; these choices are announced ex cathedra as foregone conclusions.

I am not sure that we should worry much about the consequences if the Soviet view turns out to be right. If the USSR demonstrates the safety and economy of the breeder and accumulates long experience of safe operation with reactors that are less carefully engineered for safety than ours, then the United States can benefit from that demonstration and ought to be able to catch up very quickly, adapting Soviet experience. We might think of Soviet nuclear power policy as a kind of experiment inflicted on the Russian people that we would not choose to risk ourselves, but from which we can greatly benefit if the experiment is a success. And as long as the United States maintains an exploratory program at the frontier of breeder technology, we will have the base and industrial flexibility to move decisively ahead of the USSR when it is decided that the breeder is safe. When they have accumulated enough reactor hours so that it is possible to make better evaluations of hazards in reactors, we can make better-grounded decisions about how to design around these hazards. And in breeder technology it is not a U.S.-Soviet race that is taking place; the British and French are moving at more or less the same pace as the USSR, so that we need fear no commanding Soviet lead or Soviet monopoly in that area.

On the other hand, if the Russians are wrong and the dangers of their choices are demonstrated by some spectacular accidents or failures, we can congratulate ourselves on having avoided that mistake. Unfortunately, however, the correct interpretation of any such disaster in the USSR would probably be that it reflects mistaken design philosophy and engineering rather than inherent infeasibility. But that may be a hard case to make convincingly and any Soviet failure could choke off what might ultimately be seen to be the right way to go. Certainly the kind of failures I have in mind (such as a spectacular accident in a nuclear TETs on the edge of a major city) could not be concealed, and it would no doubt be very difficult for the advocates of nuclear power to quiet the internal opposition that such a failure would raise.

Regarding the matter of nuclear proliferation, there is probably less danger that the Soviet nuclear policymakers could make a major miscalculation that would redound to our misfortune. Except for the ambiguity in their handling of the reprocessing issue and their willingness to create large stocks of plutonium, they seem to be much more cautious on this score than most Western countries. In their external pronouncements, Soviet spokesmen are taking a hard line against the export of nuclear technology. They hang many extraneous issues on the point (such as the illegitimacy of commercial motives), but assert that “the widespread development of nuclear power conceals within itself the potential danger of nuclear arms” and that there should be strict limits on the export of the most dangerous element—i.e., the reprocessing technology (Pravda, 8 July 1977). They support the idea of regional processing centers and fuel banks. They emphasize use of the controls of the IAEA and indeed seem to have more faith in those controls than some Western observers do. And in the private efforts to control proliferation through the committee of exporters, they seem to be on the side of caution and restraints on exports.

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*Aleksandrov has long been the Director of the Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute and is now also the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His statements should be about as authoritative as it is possible to he.