(2 of 4)
The U.S.S.R. opened its first MHD plant, an experimental 200-kw installation only a few hundred yards from the Kremlin, back in 1963. It has since been joined by a larger plant at Sheindlin's institute on the outskirts of Moscow. Using a 40-ton magnet built by Argonne National Laboratory and lent by American scientists eager to test its properties, the impressive new plant generates 100,000 kw of electricity. Scientists at the institute say the plant has convinced them that MHD can make a significant contribution to Soviet energy.
Sheindlin and his colleagues predict that by the year 2000 the U.S.S.R. could have up to 20 MHD plants generating up to 2,000 Mw each of electricity, or enough to supply the needs of around 20 million people. But, with the pragmatism that seems to characterize Soviet energy policy, they acknowledge that even if their hopes are realized, MHD would provide but a fraction—no more than about 7%—of the Soviet Union's power. The major share, they conceded, will have to come from nukes.
Like the U.S., the U.S.S.R. is counting on thermonuclear fusion, which is cleaner and safer than fission, as the long-term answer to its power needs. But the scientific problems confronting both countries are enormous. Fusion—in which atoms are joined rather than split to produce energy—can take place only when a plasma made from hydrogen gas is confined, generally by a magnetic field, and then heated to tremendous temperatures. At present, concede physicists at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute, researchers at Princeton University are leading in the fusion race, having created temperatures of 60 million degrees Celsius. And, say the Soviets, the U.S. is likely to retain this edge for a while. Even when planned modifications are completed, the Kurchatov's T-10 fusion reactor is expected to do no more than equal the temperatures already attained at Princeton. "I think Princeton will achieve the first real fusion reaction," says Academician Boris Kadomtsev, director of the Kurcha-tov's Plasma Physics Division. "But I do not think this will happen tomorrow."
Until it does happen, the Soviets plan to increase their use of more conventional nuclear plants. At present, the U.S.S.R. gets only about 2% of its electricity from nukes, vs. about 13% for the U.S. But the Soviets hope to increase their figure quickly. The Kremlin's 1975 five-year plan committed the U.S.S.R. to build enough nukes to generate between 13,000 and 14,000 Mw, or about 8% of its electric power, and to derive much more of its electricity and home heat from the atom by the year 2000.
There is a long way to go before the Soviets can meet this goal. The U.S.S.R. switched on the world's first atomic power plant at the Institute of Physics at Obninsk, some 60 miles southwest of Moscow, in 1965—three years before the first American commercial reactor went on line at Shippingport, Pa. Since then, Soviet nuclear development has lagged, and while the U.S. and other countries built dozens of nuclear plants in the 1960s, the U.S.S.R. started up only six small reactors that generated 900 Mw, or enough to supply a city of some 400,000, during the same period.