Rosatom has manufactured fuel elements for a spacecraft nuclear reactor

At TVEL's Mashinostroitelny Zavod enterprise (PJSC MSZ, Elektrostal), the first experimental batch of fuel elements (fuel rods) of a nuclear power propulsion system for long-distance space flights was accepted . During acceptance, we checked the documentation and the condition of the fuel rods themselves - dimensions, appearance, tightness, etc.

The development of the megawatt class power propulsion system began in 2010, and the design allows manufacturing 10 MW engines using this technology. The Rosatom intends to submit a prototype of the nuclear power plant that has no analogues in the world in 2018.

A new site for the manufacture of "cosmic" fuel rods in the MSZ was created in just one and a half years. “Now we can safely say that the new section makes it possible to manufacture fuel rods that are unique in their design and technology for the RUGK [gas space reactor] test core,” said Andrei Frolov, process engineer at PJSC MSZ.
')
Russian experts believe that the nuclear engine is best suited for sending spacecraft to Mars and to other planets, as well as for orbital missions, etc.

The nuclear reactor of the transport and energy installation heats the gas, it turns the turbine, generating electricity for an engine with specific gravity 20 times higher than the chemical one. The power propulsion unit consists of a power unit with turbomachine energy conversion based on the Brighton gas-dynamic cycle and a bunch of electric propulsion engines. The power unit is a single-circuit nuclear power plant based on a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor.

The use of a nuclear reactor as an energy source increases the power of spacecraft 30 times and reduces fuel consumption per unit of weight by an order of magnitude, said Anatoly Koroteyev, general director of the Keldysh Center.

Previously it was supposed to release a prototype in 2017. “Rosatom is currently developing a nuclear reactor, we (Roscosmos) - the rest of it. I think that we will come out to the prototype in 2017, and there it will already be necessary to make a decision whether to make the flight vehicle or not. But for the time being it is necessary to make a prototype and work it on the ground, ” said Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roskosmos, in 2012. - Russia is the leader here, despite the fact that it was stagnant, but a lot was done during the Soviet era. This, for example, power plants "Topaz" ".

In the 1970s, the USSR launched three dozen satellites equipped with low-power nuclear power plants. At the same time in Semipalatinsk, tests of a high-power nuclear reactor - IVG-1 were conducted.


IVG-1 Reactor and Component Supply Systems

Now work in this direction is being resumed. In Russia, for the first time in the world, a technology has been developed for creating single-crystal long tubes of high-temperature alloys; other original elements have been developed for a unique engine. The chief designer of the nuclear power plant is the Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET) named after N.A.Dlelezhal.