Pamir-630D: Nuclear Power Plant On A Car Chassis - Alternative View

Pamir-630D: Nuclear Power Plant On A Car Chassis - Alternative View
Pamir-630D: Nuclear Power Plant On A Car Chassis - Alternative View

Video: Pamir-630D: Nuclear Power Plant On A Car Chassis - Alternative View

Video: Pamir-630D: Nuclear Power Plant On A Car Chassis - Alternative View
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"Incredible Mechanisms" have already written about the secret complex of a tracked transportable nuclear power plant TPP-3 (you can read it here). But it turns out there was a project for such a station and a car chassis. Its name was Pamir-630D floating power plant.

The design and development of the "Pamir" began in 1973, and a special design bureau was created for work at the Institute of Nuclear Power Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. I must say that the designers had to put in quite a lot of effort, because this had not been done anywhere in the world before. It took twelve years for the first floating power plant in the world to be launched in 1985.

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The Pamir station was originally supposed to be a more modern solution, it was significantly different from TPP-3. For example, instead of a pressurized water reactor with an air radiator and circulating water as a coolant, a different coolant was chosen - dinitrogen tetroxide. This made it possible to make the reactor much more compact, since it was single-circuit (and not double-circuit as in TPP-3). The thermal power of the reactor was five MW, and the electric power was six hundred and thirty kW.

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Dinitrogen tetroxide is a very aggressive and corrosive environment. By adding nitrogen monoxide, a slightly less aggressive nitrine solution was obtained. But, nevertheless, one of the big problems was the possibility of breaking through the contour. The leakage of the coolant was very dangerous for the maintenance personnel. The tests noted the death of one employee from nitrine vapors.

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The entire Pamir-630D installation consisted of four vehicles. The MAZ-7960 based on the MAZ-537 tractor was used to transport the reactor block, since this unit was the heaviest - about sixty-five tons. In addition to the reactor itself with a biological protection circuit, the tractor was dragging an emergency cooling system, a pair of diesel sixteen kilowatt generators and an electrical cabinet.

Promotional video:

MAZ-537
MAZ-537

MAZ-537.

The second MAZ-7960 was dragging a turbine generator unit and related equipment of the power plant itself. And two more auxiliary KRAZ were designed to transport two standby one hundred kilowatt generators and a control, protection and control system of the reactor. The station staff consisted of twenty-eight people. The installation could be transported by any type of transport. In total, two complete Pamir installations were manufactured.

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The Pamir floating nuclear power plant was launched on November 24, 1985, and the tests lasted almost a year. The installation worked in a load of about three and a half thousand hours, two times reaching the design capacity. The Chernobyl disaster first suspended further tests, and then they were stopped altogether in 1988 due to "insufficient scientific validity of the choice of the coolant."