The American portal The Drive recently published an article by Joseph Trevitnik The U. S. Military Wants Tiny Road Mobile Nuclear Reactors That Can Fit In A C-17. The article tells that the American Armed Forces decided to order the development of mobile nuclear power plants for their needs.
The Office of Strategic Capabilities and Support of the US Armed Forces asked potential developers to submit their proposals for mobile nuclear power plants for the Armed Forces in accordance with the stated requirements. They are needed, they say, to meet the ever-growing demand for electricity in the modern army when conducting operations in remote locations with harsh conditions. A notice of this was posted a week ago on one of the main "state-of-the-art" sites, in our terms, and a few days later the requirements for Project Dithulium, as they called it, were clarified.
They want to get a mobile nuclear power plant weighing about 40 tons, with a capacity of 1-10 MW, fit on a semi-trailer, capable of being transported by sea and in a military transport aircraft C-17A. This is, obviously, about containerized performance. Deployment time of the station after delivery is no more than 3 days, and the time of closing down - a week. Very gentle requirements, it should be noted. Within a year (although the start date for this period has not been approved), the management will wait for projects from interested corporations, then select one developer and wait for the finished prototype by 2025, if funding for this stage is eventually approved, and if the deadline is not disrupted - and then, and the other is possible.
The US military needs this mobile, or rather, transportable (because the container does not transport itself) nuclear power plant for the following reasons. Energy consumption in the leading armies of the world is constantly growing - more and more electronics, automated control systems of various levels, communication systems, radars, electronic warfare systems. An even greater need is expected due to the emergence of various means of protecting troops from small-sized UAVs, or, say, the development of weapons based on new physical principles, such as EMP weapons, electromagnetic accelerators, lasers, or, say, electric or hybrid vehicles requiring charging, electric UAVs or, say, ground-based robotic systems powered by power.
The US Armed Forces currently rely either on local power grids (which, by the way, is prohibited in a combat situation, it is supposed to switch to autonomous power supply), or on its diesel generators and diesel power plants of various levels. But in remote areas or in areas with a dangerous situation, there may be interruptions in the supply of fuels and lubricants, both in convoys and with the transfer of aviation. The Americans have not forgotten how they transported "fuel" in Afghanistan by helicopters, which turned into "gold" because they could not ensure the passage of the columns. This is when they had troops there, together with the allies, twice as many as the USSR, which for some reason almost did not experience such problems. Also, the Americans believe that in a war with a serious high-tech adversary, a situation can easily arise when you cannot transfer anything by air, because the enemy's air defense does not give, and not particularly on the ground. As a result, the requirements were born to ensure the possibility of conducting combat operations of a brigade combat group for a week without supplies. Obviously, the nuclear power plant comes from them too.
Holos mobile nuclear power plant project
At the moment, there are already several potential proposals on the topic, more precisely, there are several projects that, in general, could be suitable. So, there is the MegaPower project from LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory. It provides 1 MW of energy (here and above, we are talking about electrical energy, and not about thermal energy produced by the reactor) and meets the requirements put forward for mobility and deployment and folding time. There is the e-Vinci project from Westinghouse - this is a whole series of microreactors from 25 kW to 200 MW, but the deployment time is long - about a month. Both of these projects do not use water cooling and heat transfer, being air-cooled systems on so-called "flame tubes". There is also a project from Filippone and Associates LLC called Holos - a gas-cooled reactor, for which a capacity of 3 to 13 MW is declared (for an assembly of 4 modules that fits into a container) and a service life of allegedly as much as 60 years (versus 5-10 years from competitors). There are also projects from URENCO, but they are completely inadequate in terms of deployment and collapse times.
[media = https://www.youtube.com/embed/RPI8G6COc8g || Mobile NPP MegaPower from LANL]
[media = https://www.youtube.com/watch? v = NmQ9ku9ABCs || Scheme of the Holos reactor module]
It should be noted that the decision of the Americans to tackle this issue was influenced by the fact that such a mobile nuclear power plant will soon enter service with the RF Armed Forces. In about 2-3 years, a prototype of a land-based mobile nuclear power plant for the RF Armed Forces, intended primarily for Siberia and the Far North, should be ready. And by 2023. OKR can be completed, if, of course, the terms do not move either. But, unlike the Americans, we do not want a transported scheme and trailers. And realizing that everything can happen with our roads, and in the North it is often not at all, they preferred a modular scheme designed either for all-terrain self-propelled wheeled or tracked bases. The capacity is planned in three variants - 100 kW, 1 MW and 10 MW. Moreover, many analysts have a suspicion that the Peresvet laser combat complex, whose combat positions are gradually appearing in various missile divisions of the Strategic Missile Forces, may also have a small nuclear power source. Although these are only suspicions and rumors, it is quite possible that there is a common source of energy. But besides this, underwater small nuclear power plants are being created in Russia. Thus, the NIKIET Shelf project envisages the creation of both a surface and an underwater seabed version of the station with a capacity of 6.4 MW. Shelf is officially proposed for future work in the Arctic to create powerful seabed exploration and production complexes, and unofficially in the West, many suspect that it is also needed for a powerful new sonar underwater tracking network known as Harmony. ATGU (autonomous turbine generator set) "Shelf" has a mass, together with a strong outer casing for diving to the bottom of the order of 350 tons, and a power of about 44-50 kW, operating time without maintenance - 5000 hours.. There is also the "Iceberg" project from CDB MT "Rubin "and OKBM them. Afrikantov - with a capacity of up to 24 MW and an operating time without maintenance up to 8000 hours. But this project is proposed primarily for the peaceful development of the Arctic depths. There is also a project of "Africans" PNAEM, from 10 to 50 MW.
ATGU Shelf, module diagram.
PNAEM from OKBM "Afrikantov"
Of course, the guys from the Pentagon got offended, and they wanted to have something similar. But it should be noted that all of these our and American projects are based on a strong groundwork in both superpowers on this topic. Except perhaps for underwater nuclear power plants, but here the experience of building a nuclear submarine came in handy. Both in the USSR and in the USA, starting from the 50s, they actively worked on mobile small nuclear power plants, it seemed quite natural then, together with projects and even prototypes of nuclear locomotives, nuclear planes and even an atomic handle. And there were quite real results on this topic in the 50-60s, and later, in the 70-80s. But after the Chernobyl accident, the wave of "radiophobia" almost washed this topic down the drain. But decades passed, and nuclear mobile and transportable stations were needed again. Let's see if something really serial comes out this time and from whom, or, as in the past decades, the desire to save will turn out to be stronger.
The story will continue in another article about the results of past years.
