They look to nukes for more and more power
The future of nuclear power is an issue that bedevils America and excites the Soviet Union. While perfervid demonstrators, dallying bureaucrats and well-paid lawyers are holding back the development of U.S. atomic power, the U.S.S.R. is moving ahead rapidly with its own nuclear programs. TIME Correspondent Peter Staler recently spent two weeks visiting Soviet nuclear installations and filed this report:
MAY THE ATOM BE A WORKER, NOT A SOLDIER is spelled out in foot-high Cyrillic letters on a wall just inside the main gate of the huge nuclear power complex at Novovoronezh. The slogan seems at first to be no different from the exhortations that decorate buildings throughout the U.S.S.R. Unlike many of the others, however, the slogan at Novovoronezh, some 300 miles south of Moscow, reflects as much realism as rhetoric. The Soviet Union is by no means ready to beat all of its nuclear swords into plowshares. But it is moving vigorously to put the atom to work as a civilian.
Hampered by an inefficient industrial system and a ponderous bureaucracy, Soviet nuclear development is still years behind that of the U.S. and Western European countries. Still, the Soviets, caught between increasing demands for energy and declining supplies of fossil fuels, are catching up. They are not only expanding their use of established nuclear technologies and plants but, with a speed sure to cause concern on the western side of the Iron Curtain, they are moving into new—and not wholly proven—ways of harnessing the atom.
Their decision, Soviet energy experts told a group of U.S. journalists visiting their power plants and physics laboratories, has not been taken casually. As they see it, the U.S.S.R. has no choice. Though the country's coal reserves are the world's largest, they lie mostly in Siberia. Mining this coal is costly; transporting it thousands of miles to the main cities is difficult; burning it in large amounts will cause environmental problems. Oil is not the answer either; the U.S.S.R. is so desperate for hard currency that it sells much of its oil abroad. It is also running low and has resorted to costly tertiary recovery methods in some of its fields. Solar energy, which Americans hope eventually will ease their energy problems, is not taken seriously by Soviet scientists, who, for the most part, seem not only highly competent but almost aggressively realistic. Explains Academician Alexander Sheindlin, director of the Soviet Union's High Temperature Institute: "The U.S.S.R. is a northern country. We cannot rely on the sun for energy."
The Soviets are trying to improve the efficiency of their coal and natural gas power plants through magnetohydrodynamics, or the use of powerful magnets to help generate electricity. In the process, a current-conducting plasma, or superheated gas, is passed through a powerful magnetic field that heats it even further, and then is used to generate steam to drive a turbine.