U.S. pushing ahead with space-war technology

Press, 1 July 1983, Page 13

U.S. pushing ahead with space-war technology

From

BARTON REPPERT,

Associated

Press, in Washington

Despite worries over nuclear safety, the United States is pressing ahead with an ambitious programme to develop spaceborne atomic reactors that could play a key role in the nation’s future military strategy.

When a nuclear-fuelled Soviet spy satellite tumbled to Earth in 1978, scattering radioactive debris over northern Canada, President Jimmy Carter said he would favour a total prohibition against launching reactors into orbit. Today, by contrast, Reagan Administration officials are mapping a long-range effort to design and build advanced nuclear power plants for deployment in space. Spaceborne reactors now envisioned by American specialists would power orbiting radars and, eventually, a missile-killing beam weapons; and would dwarf those aboard ill-fated Cosmos 954 and Cosmos 1402, another Soviet reconnaissance craft which came down early this year. Richard Cooper, director of the Defence Department’s advanced research projects agency, has testified on Capitol Hill that a variety of critical missions of the future may well depend on the successful development of space nuclear power systems.

Likely military applications of space-based reactors, he said, range from high-power sensors and propulsion systems to space weapons systems. At recent House of Representatives hearings, United' States officials also described an aray of

potential civilian uses for nuclear energy in space, ranging from manned orbital stations to futuristic schemes for producing oxygen from ore mined on the moon. Critics, however, contend that the real impetus behind the space reactors program is military — and that the long-term dangers of hurling jumbo-sized radioactive payloads into space are not being dealt with adequately. So far, the public has been lucky, says John Clewett, of the Critical Mass Energy Project, a Washing-ton-based group opposed to nuclear power. The radioactive debris from Cosmos 1402 fell into the Indian Ocean; and the thousands of square kilometres of land contaminated with radiation from Cosmos 954 were up in the Canadian tundra. Mr Clewett adds that if the military puts larger reactors into space, it will dramatically increase the public risk, both from re-entry of radioactive debris and from malfunction on launch.

In recent years the Soviet Union has put into orbit 18 nuclearpowered spy satellites, including a series of radar ocean surveillance craft that use uranium-fuelled reactors generating about 20,000 watts of power.

The United States so far has launched only one reactor, a 500watt device rocketed into high

orbit in 1965. It still circles the earth and is not expected to come down for about 4000 years.

More than 20 other United States spacecraft, many of them interplanetary probes, have carried small power sources which are not reactors but instead use heat produced by the natural decay of radioactive isotopes.

Most American earth satellites now operate using the relatively limited power supply obtainable from solar-electric panels and chemical batteries.

During the 1950 s and 19605, the United States experimented with attempts to develop atomic aeroplane and rocket engines, none of which ever flew. Funding for aerospace nuclear projects, including space reactors, was sharply curtailed in 1973. The revived United States effort took shape in February when Cooper’s Agency at the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, quietly formed the SP-100 programme. The preliminary phase of the project, up through fiscal year 1985, has been budgeted at $44.1 million, but it is expected that fullscale development work later in this decade would require outlays in the billion-dollar range. The SP-100 programme’s initial goal is development of multi-pur-

pose reactors generating about 100 kilowatts of power, designed to be carried into orbit aboard the space shuttle.

Officials testified before a House of Representatives science and technology sub-committee that the programme also would involve preliminary evaluation of nuclear systems in the power range of one to 100 megawatts. One megawatt equals 1 million watts. A 100-megawatt space reactor would generate electric power approximately equivalent to that consumed by a city of 100,000 people. United States research on beam weapons was highlighted by Mr Reagan’s “star wars” speech on March 23, in which the President called for an intensified spacedefence effort aimed at eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles.

Cooper, in his congressional testimony, noted that laser and particle-beam weapons now being developed would pose the need for space nuclear reactor systems that will produce hundreds of megawatts of power. N.A.S.A. and Energy Department officials told the sub-committee that safety considerations would be an important component of the space reactor program. “Risks can be minimised,” they said, “through improved reactor design, loading atomic fuel by remote control in space, and boosting spent reactors into very high orbit, so most of their radioactivity is gone by the time they fall to earth.’