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The expansion of space exploration requires the development of sufficiently powerful and reliable power facilities which can operate for a long time. Such facilities could be nuclear power systems and nuclear-powered propulsion systems with turbomachine energy conversion. The development of such systems at the present time is based on the results of work performed as part of the nuclear rocket motor program. The data presented in this article attest to the fact that our country plays a leading role in the construction of such of reactors. To maintain our leading position in space nuclear technologies, it is important to use and further develop the existing unique engineering and technological bases.The expansion of the scales and forms of space activity, the increased complexity of the problems solved by space means, the growing need for increasing the power of propulsion for operations in space, and the active service life of space vehicles make it vital to use atomic energy. In contrast to solar systems, space nuclear power systems do not depend on the orientation of the space vehicle and the distance to the sun. Nuclear power systems with electric power above 50 kW have higher specific mass and power, larger dimensions in the transport and deployment positions, better dynamical properties, radiation resistance and other characteristics than solar systems.The advantages of nuclear energy sources guarantee that they will play a chief role in the development in the future of transport-energy modules for near-Earth and interplanetary vehicles and interplanetary bases. The work performed in these directions will in many ways determine the prospects for developing space technologies, and their possibilities for solving scientific, defense, and socioeconomic problems.The 50-year history in using nuclear energy for assimilating space is characterized by the development and successful testing on Earth and in space the nuclear thermionic and thermoelectric energy systems SP-100 (USA), Romashka, BUK, Topaz, and Enisei (USSR) as well as isotopic systems in both countries. Our country is the only one in the world which possesses experience in developing, preflight preparation, and operation of nuclear power systems. We have conducted more than 30 launches of such systems into near-Earth orbits.In the 1950s, the USSR and the USA began work on nuclear rocket motors (NRM). In contrast to the American design, our concept of such motors provided for a heterogeneous structure of the NRM reactors, which made it possible to perform autonomous, using less money and time, development of the components of the core, including the most distressed fuel elements and fuel assemblies. Unique research reactors IGR and IVG-1, located on the Semipalatinsk test site, are being developed to test these systems according to the designs developed at the Research and Design Institute of Electrical Technology together with specialists from the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and PNITI. The first one -a heat capacity type reactor -was put ...

The utilization of the ship-propulsion nuclear power plant technology -for which there is a great deal of operating experience -in the national economy is now being actively discussed. In a climate of substantially increasing costs of fossil fuel and the cost of transporting it, especially to the remote eastern and northern regions of the country, the wave of the post-Chernobyl disenchantment with nuclear power industry is gradually being replaced by the realization that energy intensive fuel, such as nuclear fuel, has certain advantages. The ecological advantages of nuclear power plants for the vulnerable and virtually unrestorable environment of the northern parts of the country is also important.The present paper is a review of developments at NIKIt~T in this field of nuclear power in the period 1991-1994. The review is based on the results of previous and current investigations, which have shown that the industrial and social structure which has been erected in the main part of the territory of the regions of Russia mentioned above and the primitiveness of the roads and power linkages in these regions create a great demand for small nuclear power plants (mainly up to 30 MW(th)) which generate, as a rule, both electricity and heat. If nuclear power miniplants are considered as such sources, then the specific nature of the construction and operation of such plants determines the obvious basic properties which both the plants as a whole and their nuclear reactors must have: maximum factory assembly of all units of the nuclear power plant and minimum construction and assembly work at the plant site; ease of transport of the units to remote regions, both in delivering the units to the plant site and removing units after the plant ceases operation; high maneuverability of the characteristics of the nuclear reactor and complete automation of operation with a minimum number of skilled service personnel; possibility of operation of a nuclear power plant in regions with little or no water, including under conditions of large seasonal differences of the surrounding air temperature; operation of the plant over a long period of time without reloading the nuclear fuel; and, the nuclear fuel must be economically more advantageous than the traditional fuel. Of course, in addition to these properties, the power plants must meet current and the constantly improving safety standards.The experience, gained over many years of NIKIET in the field of nuclear power for ship propulsion and the principles, systematically developed by specialists at the institute in the course of these works, for increasing plant autonomy and plant safety, and especially the degree of plant integration, which has been implemented in recent years in designs of nuclear power plants with one-unit steam-generating plants, make it possible to propose, together with the long-term partner AO "Kaluga turbine plant", some of these designs as a basis for low-power nuclear power plants with capacities ranging from 0.5 to 12 MW(el).As one can see from Table 1, the...

To start -two citations. The first one is from an interview given by N. A. Dollezhal on the eve of his 100th birthday. The second one is from his book At the Sources of the Man-Made World published in 1989."…I do not like to be called simply a scientist and not a scientist-designer for whom knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature is especially important. I am a designer, an engineer, I create material value at a level that is most suitable for human needs...""…The problem could be solved (this concerned the development of the ÉI-2 reactor -author's remark) but it required mobilizing imagination and inventiveness. And this became the captivating component of design work, where inspiration, intense thinking, the joy of sudden insight all merged together…"These words express the life credo of one of the founders of the domestic production of reactors, and they are parting words for future generations of the creators of nuclear technology.An example of sudden insight after thinking was the 90°turn of the horizontal arrangement of a reactor, emerging, similarly to foreign designs, for the development of the first commercial nuclear reactor in the USSR. At the suggestion of the chief designer, not only the first reactor A, to design which I.V. Kurchatov recruited N. A. Dollezhal, who was the head of the Research Institute for Chemical Machines (NIIkhimmash), but also all subsequent reactors, and not only commercial water-graphite reactors, were built in the vertical implementation. Thus, the main work which Nikolai Antonovich and his colleagues, who formed a team that was put together at that time to develop an entirely new technology of the Hydrosector of the Research Institute of Chemical Machines (NIKIÉT) -the predecessor of NII-8 -Research and Design Institute of Electrical Technology -began their life's work at the beginning of 1946.The Institute -now named after its founder and first director -is 55 years old on September 9, 2007. On this day in 1952 the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which oversaw the development of NII-8 using as a base the reactor subdivisions of the Research Institute of Chemical Machines, announced a decision. By this time they developed, together with LIPAN, Laboratory V, and other organizations, the designs of not only the reactor A, work on which started in 1948, but also the first reactors in this class, the commercial reactors AI, I-1, and AM for the first nuclear power plant in the world, and the dual-purpose reactor ÉI-2 (weapons plutonium + electricity and heat). They laid the groundwork for subsequent high-power reactors, the task of designing which was already assigned to KB No. 92. The new Institute and its chief designer were left only the development of water-graphite reactors for producing electricity."…I always liked people who are not afraid of the unknown..." For this reason N. A. Dollezhal not only cultivated the intellectual potential of the hydrosector and then NII-8 but he also formulated their work portfolio. The Institute was being created as a complex instituti...

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