Soviet Union nuclear research

Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Research Council, Proliferation Concerns Assessing US. Efforts to Help Contain Nuclear and Other Dangerous Materials and Technologies in the Former Soviet Union, Washington,... 

The simple climate equilibrium models presented above provide, therefore, the essentials of the results of the more elaborate and accurate model of Turco et al. (1983). However, even this model is clearly limited as it is one-dimensional and averages globally over horizontal surfaces. To estimate the meteorological effects of a nuclear war it is necessary to use interactive multi-dimensional, dynamical models of the atmosphere. Simplified computations with such models have already been carried out at three research centers in the US and USSR. Some preliminary calculations with two-dimensional (McCracken, 1983) and three-dimensional climate models (Alexandrov, 1983 Covey et al., 1984) support the findings derived with the simpler models and point to the possibility that winter conditions may occur in July especially over North America, the Soviet Union, China and large parts of India. 

Nuclear research in the Soviet Union during this period was limited to skillful laboratory work. Two associates of Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov reported to the Physical Review in June 1940 that they had observed rare spontaneous fissioning in uranium. The complete lack of any American response to the publication of the discovery, writes the American physicist Herbert F. York, was one of the factors which convinced the Russians that there must be a big secret project under way in the United States. It was not yet big, but by then it had begun to be secret. 

ESR or Electron Spin Resonance is a spectroscopic method for studies of paramagnetic species. This method and the related NMR or nuclear magnetic resonance technique were both established around 1945 as a result of research in the Soviet Union and in the United States. Both methods make use of magnetic properties, in the first case of electrons in the second of nuclei. 

Kazakhstan has a nuclear scientific-industrial complex which was set up as a part of a nuclear infrastructure of the former USSR. More than 50% of the uranium resources of the former Soviet Union are in Kazakhstan, with seven uranium mines. Two UO2 plants produced up to 35% of the total uranium in the USSR in 1990. There are extensive facilities for producing UO2 pellets for VVER fuel elements from Russian enriched uranium. Kazakhstan has several research reactors and one operating nuclear power plant, the BN-350 fast reactor, which started operation in 1973 with a design life of 20 years. Work on its lifetime extension has the intention of bringing it into compliance with current safety standards. 1995 and 1996 were devoted to this work. In October 1996. experimental investigation on accident-proofdecay heat removal by natural circulation was carried out. The reactor BN-350 was restarted in February 4, 1997 at a power level of 420 MW(th). 

A great deal of research in the United States and in other countries, especially the former Soviet Union, has focused on controlled nuclear fusion reactions. The goal of controlled nuclear fusion has not yet been attained, although the required ignition temperature has been reached in several devices. Evidence to date leads us to believe... 

Aluminium clad spent nuclear fuel from research and test reactors worldwide is currently being stored in water filled basins while awaiting final disposition. Much of this fuel was provided to the various countries by the United States of America as part of the Atoms for Peace programme in the early 1950s. Other fuel was provided by the former Soviet Union. The spent fuel has been in water at the reactor sites for up to 40 years, in some cases, awaiting shipment back to the USA or to the Russian Federation. 

As already indicated, the early postwar decades saw an enormous growth of both basic and applied nuclear research. Almost everywhere, certainly in the USA, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, governments supported nuclear science on a scale never before experienced. At the first Atoms for Peace Conference convened in 1955 at Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations, a vast amount of previously classified information was publicly presented for the first time (PUAE 1956). This conference gave a considerable impetus to the dissemination of nuclear research and the worldwide use of nuclear technology. 

In the nuclear industry, stainless steel was used to clad the uranium dioxide fuel for the first-generation reactors. But by 1965, the force of neutron economy had made zirconium alloys the predominant cladding material for water-cooled reactors. There was a widespread effort to develop strong, corrosion-resistant zirconium alloys. Noticeably, the Ozhennite alloys were developed in the Soviet Union for use in pressurized water and stream. These alloys contain tin, iron, nickel, and niobium, with a total alloy content of 0.5-1.5%. The Zr-1% Nb alloy also is used in the Soviet Union for pressurized water and steam service. Researchers at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. took a lead from the Russians zirconium-niobium alloys and developed the Zr-2.5% Nb alloy. This alloy is strong and heat-treatable. It is used either in a cold-worked condition or a quenched-and-aged condition. 

While Volmer was not a follower of the Nazi system, and consequently e.g., his election to the Prussian Academy of Science was blocked, he had to spend 10 years in the Soviet Union after 1945. He was invited as several other German scientists to the USSR. He worked on deuterium production and nuclear waste processing in the research group of Gustav Hertz (1887-1975, Nobel prize 1925). As many other colleagues, he was released in 1955 and was permitted to return to GDR. He became professor of physical chemistry at Humboldt University (East-Berlin) and president of the East-German Academy of Sciences between 1956 and 1958. 

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