Nuclear énergy under socialism:

plants are big, safe and efficient

The Novoronezh Atomic

The Novovoronezh Atomic Power Station
is now part of the southern Russian land-
scape on the left bank of the Don River.
This station was built more than 10 years
ago ‘around a water-cooled, water-mod-
erated power reactor - (abbreviation
VVER). Having proved to be both effi-
cient .and safe, it is now series-produced
in the Soviet Union. In this type of reactor
water carries heat away from the atomic
“furnace’’ and moderates the overly high
speeds of neutrons when they fly out of
the decaying atomic nuclei.

From the very start the reactor could
build up and reduce output as desired, and
could be shut down at the first signal of
the control engineer — in short, it was
found to be very reliable.

The reactor of the Novovoronezh power
station is analogous to the nuclear ‘‘fur-

7 was obtained early this year; right, laboratory worker Kulesnov (top) and engineer Guzev,

Power Station was built ten years ago

: i

SS as

around a type of reactor that proved

& Tae OSS

Soviet Union.

nace” of the world’s first atomic-pow-
ered craft — the icebreaker Lenin. A
more improved new power plant, also of
the Novovoronezh type, has been installed
in the ship. The atomic icebreaker ex-
pends a miserly quantity of fuel — calcu-
lated in kilograms — on its trips and can
circumnavigate the globe several times
withoutout refueling.

The experience of the atomic icebreaker
Lenin and the Novovoronezh power plant
itself has demonstrated another advant-
age of VVER — environmental safety.

When nuclear power stations are planned
and built in the Soviet Union, every pre-
caution is taken to minimize the radia-
tion hazard. The Novovoronezh station is
sited in a densely populated and indus-
trially saturated region, in the center of
the European part of the USSR. Special

water purification plants are in operation
at the station. But even this carefully
purified water is not dumped into the Don
River but is recycled. The air from the
reactor zone is also thoroughly purified
and thrown up into the atmosphere via a
chimney stack 120 meters (390 feet) high.
Around the grounds where solid wastes
are buried, several control boreholes
have been drilled for continual measure-
ment of the radiation level.

The sanitary and dosimetric services
make constant observations not only in
the station but also around it within a ra-
dius of 25 kilometers (15 miles). Radia-
tion control workers measure the concen-
trations of radio active substances in the
atmosphere, the soil and plants, in the
Don water, algae and bottom sediments.

Scores of dosimetric posts were function-

itself safe in use. It is now being series produced in the

Photo by V. Shustov

ing long before the station began to oper-
ate in order to determine accurately just
how the state of the air, water and soil
would change. Data collected over many
years have demonstrated that the desnity
of radioactive fallout during the opera-
tion of the power plant at full capacity
does not increase at all. In other words, it
has no effect on the environment. More
than that, staff members of the USSR
Health Ministry’s Laboratory of Indus-
trial Hygiene and of the USSR Academy
of Sciences’ Institute of Biophysics meas-
ured the radiation level in farm crops
grown right by the station — in its sani-
tary protection zone. It was the same as
the natural radiation background, a fact
attributable to the design features of the
reactor.

—abridged from SOVIET LIFE

we

At the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy: left, the world’s largest thermonuclear installation on which stable thermonuclear reaction on deuterium

ces

‘Photos by A. Pushi

assemble the vacuum chamber of a thermonuclear installation.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 2, 1976—Page 3