Evacuations after failed Russian rocket test leads to radiation spikes.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://cbc.ca/news/world/russia-missil ... -1.5245081

Russian authorities have recommended residents of Nyonoksa leave their village while cleanup work is carried out nearby following a rocket engine accident that caused a spike in radiation last week, Interfax news agency reported citing local officials.

"We have received a notification … about the planned activities of the military authorities. In this regard, residents of Nyonoksa were asked to leave the territory of the village from Aug. 14," authorities in Severodvinsk were quoted as saying.

Russia's state weather service said radiation levels spiked in nearby Severodvinsk — a city of some 190,000 — by up to 16 times on Aug. 8 after what officials say was an explosion during a rocket engine test on a White Sea platform.

Nyonoksa hosts a navy facility that serves as a base for testing intercontinental ballistic missiles intended for nuclear submarines, and it is believed several hundred people are currently posted there.

The Kremlin boasted Tuesday it was winning the race to develop new cutting edge nuclear weapons despite the mysterious rocket accident in northern Russia last week, which killed at least five and injured three more.

It has pledged to keep developing new weapons regardless, portraying the men who died in the test as heroes.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Monday the United States was "learning much" from the explosion which he suggested happened during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile vaunted by President Vladimir Putin last year.

'Not good!': Trump takes note
Russia, which has said the missile will have an "unlimited range" and be able to overcome any defences, calls the missile the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel). The NATO alliance has designated it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

Trump said on Twitter that the United States had "similar, though more advanced, technology" and said Russians were worried about the air quality around the facility and far beyond, a situation he described as "Not good!"

But when asked about his comments on Tuesday, the Kremlin said it, not the United States, was out in front when it came to developing new nuclear weapons.

"Our president has repeatedly said that Russian engineering in this sector significantly outstrips the level that other countries have managed to reach for the moment, and it is fairly unique," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

Putin used his state-of-the nation speech in 2018 to unveil what he described as a raft of invincible new nuclear weapons, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile, an underwater nuclear-powered drone and a laser weapon.

Tensions between Moscow and Washington over arms control have been exacerbated by the demise this month of a landmark nuclear treaty. Russia says it is also concerned that another landmark arms control treaty will soon expire.

Medics who treated victims of last week's accident have been sent to Moscow for a medical examination, the TASS news agency reported.

It said the medics had signed non-disclosure agreements about the nature of the accident.

The prevailing theory seems to be that it was a failed test of a new experimental nuclear-powered rocket.

[Elheru Aran]

Meh. Unfortunate for the Russians, interesting scientifically to the rest of us, or the space/rocket nuts anyway. I don't know how many nuclear-powered rockets we've (as in, Earth in general, not just the US) have actually developed to the 'set it on fire and see what happens' stage. I suspect this very occurrence is a pretty good illustration of exactly why it doesn't usually get this far... people are too paranoid of the risks.

[TimothyC]

Meh. Unfortunate for the Russians, interesting scientifically to the rest of us, or the space/rocket nuts anyway. I don't know how many nuclear-powered rockets we've (as in, Earth in general, not just the US) have actually developed to the 'set it on fire and see what happens' stage. I suspect this very occurrence is a pretty good illustration of exactly why it doesn't usually get this far... people are too paranoid of the risks.

The US did work on nuclear jet engines in the early 1960s under Project PLUTO. We decided that they were a bad idea. If this is what many people are presuming, it's not a rocket, but a jet engine where the combustion of fuel with oxygen in the air has been replaced by heat coming off of an open nuclear reactor core. Because the core is open, and active, it would be not unlike the The Windscale fire, but smaller, and mobile.

The prevailing theory seems to be that it was a failed test of a new experimental nuclear-powered rocket.

It's not a rocket like an ICBM, but a cruise missile. Air is the reaction mass, and the nuclear material is the energy source. In conventional rocketry the energy source and the reaction mass are one and the same.

[TimothyC]

First, sorry for the double post. After a solid night's rest, I came back to this part of my post and would like to offer a change:

It's not a rocket like an ICBM, but a cruise missile. Air is the reaction mass, and the nuclear material is the energy source. In conventional rocketry the energy source and the reaction mass are one and the same.

Instead of saying that the energy source and reaction mass were one and the same, it would be more accurate to say that a rocket carries its reaction mass with it. This would include nuclear powered rockets like NERVA powered vehicles, electric ion-powered rockets, and even things like arc and resistojets that use electricity to heat the fuel that is expelled.

Now, The Russian Ministry of Defense has called it a “isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine” which would be a nuclear thermal rocket (or NTR), but a NTR doesn't have the functionally unlimited range that they've claimed for 9M730 Burevestnik (NATO SSC-X-9 SKYFALL). As a side note, while Projet Pluto did die in 1964, and NASA worked on NTRs into the early 1970s, there was one program in the US that worked on NTRs in the late 1980s and early 1990s - Project TIMBERWIND. TIMBERWIND was a technology development program to establish the systems that would be needed for a lightweight and high thrust NTRs as a part of the SDI program. The concept was that a number of interceptors in Alaska, built with MX Peacekeeper first stages and NTR powered upper stages would be able to launch ICBM interceptors that would have relatively short time of flight, and be able shoot down Soviet missiles early in flight. TIMBERWIND was great at working on the fuel and pump systems for lightweight high-thrust NTRs, but little else.