All of the Soviet Kosmos satellites, including the type to which 1402 belongs, are officially used "for scientific research." Then why does it need a 100 kW power plant? Why is it in low orbit?
Because it is a "targeting" satellite keeping exact track of US Navy ships and intended to target them in a first strike.
It needs the 100 kW for its powerful radar, and it is in low orbit for the same reason: the returned radar signal power varies inversely as the fourth power of the target distance (essentially a consequence of the square-law radiation and square-law radiation by the target). That means if the distance is doubled, the signal power drops to 1/16th of its former level; or if the orbit of these satellites were twice as high, they would need 16 times the power (and a little under a ton of uranium) to get the same result. And you don't get that kind of result by piddling round with solar panels.
These satellites stay in low orbit (about 150 miles above the earth) for about 4 months; it is not publicly known whether the limiting factor is the uranium fuel for the electrical power plant he combustion fuel needed to correct the satellite's orbit and eventually to "retire" it. On retirement, the nuclear reactor is separated and boosted to what the Soviets consider a nuclear junkyard
¾a belt at about 900 km (562 miles). There are at least 20 such nuclear reactors in this Soviet "waste disposal site" already. At that height it should take around 1,000 years before the nuclear waste sinks low enough to enter the atmosphere.Possibly the Soviet rationale for using this method of waste disposal is the fact that the high level radiation will have decayed by that time, while the long-lived radiation cannot be high-level (or it would soon spend itself). If that is the Soviet theory, it has two serious flaws. First, that belt of orbits is where much other space debris floats around, and the chances of evading collisions for many centuries is not good. Collisions would speed the re-entry of the wastes.
But far more serious is the low reliability of the material and equipment produced by the world's most advanced social system with the world's "most progressive" technology. The present case is being presented as the second (after the Canadian crash in 1978). Actually it is at least the third: On 25 April 1973, a Soviet satellite with a nuclear power plant failed to reach stable orbit and disintegrated north of Hawaii, where characteristic isotope mixes, including U 235, were detected by high flying US aircraft routinely taking air samples. There may well have been more such failed launches, but with the satellites lacking the good grace of disintegrating in places where US sampling aircraft would detect them.
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Vol. 10, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 10, No. 6 Date: November 23, 2004 04:35 PM Title: Nuclear wastes: law and reality
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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