AND SOVIET NUCLEAR PLANS

There are, however, other bits of news in the interview, introduced by Yuri Andropovs' statement made in a speech to a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party last June: "The future of our energy system lies above all in the use of the latest nuclear reactors."

What Andropov apparently had in mind is putting the electric power industry not just on a nuclear, but on a plutonium breeder foundation (there is no mention of the thorium cycle). The Soviets now have one 350 MW and one 600 MW breeder on line (both liquid metal types, as in the West), and are developing 800 MW and 1600 MW standardized units, though they do not yet plan to produce them in assembly line fashion. The rationale given for the breeder drive is the limited amount of rich, cheap uranium ore; with mixed plutonium-uranium fuel, low-grade uranium ore becomes economical for conventional reactors, and the USSR (like most countries) has plenty of that.

The Soviets also intend to put nuclear energy to other uses than electricity: hydrogen production and heat. Hydrogen and process heat (for use in the metal, chemical and other industries requiring high temperatures) will be supplied by high-temperature gas reactors running on helium (as in the West, see AtE Jan 81). Space heating will be supplied both from heat rejected by nuclear electric power plants and, more interestingly, by central nuclear heating plants, two of which are already under construction (near Voronezh and near Gorki). The Soviets consume more fossil fuel for space heating than for electric power; and it is interesting that the world's greatest storehouse of fossil fuels (producing far more oil than Saudi Arabia) is going nuclear even for space heating.

Of course Soviet plans come true only with years of delay, and large parts are never realized at all; but the tragedy is that if they were to fulfill but 10% of these plans, they would still come out far ahead of this country if it does not wake up.