Russia and Belarus are developing a mobile nuclear power plant project

Rosatom and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus are working on creating a project for a mobile nuclear reactor. It can be used in remote regions of Russia.

Image source generated by the DALL•E 3 neural network

Sergey Shcherbakov, Academic Secretary of the Department of Physical and Technical Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, told journalists about the cooperation between Moscow and Minsk in this direction on the sidelines of Atomexpo-2024. According to BELTA, Belarusian scientists hope that together the scientific world will be able to advance in the creation of a research reactor in the country.

The Belarusian-Russian megascience project, which we have been discussing for a long time and which is important for us, is the construction of a mobile nuclear reactor. Belarus had such developments back in Soviet times. However, the project was curtailed. Nevertheless, the station was then created, it provided energy. Now there are other technological platforms and opportunities. And we are working with Rosatom to create a mobile nuclear reactor based on new technologies. This is very important for Russia with its remote regions. Belarus, namely the Sosny Joint Institute for Energy and Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences, can share its unique experience and expertise in the study of various types of nuclear reactors in this project. In addition to the standard ones that are now generally recognized, our scientists can develop various combinations of coolant, fuel elements of various shapes. These competencies are unique. They know how to work with non-standard reactors. In addition, they have the ability to deeply physically and mathematically model these processes.

Academic Secretary of the Department of Physical and Technical Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Sergey Shcherbakov

The station that Shcherbakov is talking about is the Pamir-630D mobile nuclear power plant project, developed at the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR.

"Pamir-630D"

Some information on the project is still classified, but something about it is still known. According to data from open sources, twenty years were spent on the development of the project: they started it in 1965, but the first two machines were finally assembled only in 1985.

A single-circuit reactor with a coolant based on dinitrogen tetroxide was located on the wheeled base of MAZ to get to the most remote corners of the USSR.

Automatic control of the system and its safety were assigned to three copies of the computer, but live personnel were still required to service this mobile nuclear power plant. It was assumed that there would be about thirty people, mostly military personnel.

The lifespan of the Pamir-630D at full power was three years, and ten years when mothballed. Of the two assembled complexes, only one worked in the field - in the spring of 1986 there was an accident at the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A few months after this tragedy, this nuclear project was closed, and both copies of the installations were destroyed.