Deadly Soviet nuclear battery caused death and destruction

Decades of electricity day and night, who wouldn’t want that? For certain applications, such as in a Mars rover, a space probe or an autonomous station that can continue to function for decades, thermonuclear generators are ideal. But then you shouldn’t have a bunch of reckless Soviet engineers fooling around.

Decades of electricity, if you use it wisely

A thermonuclear generator is basically a chunk of radioactive material with a safe cap around it, coupled to a thermoelectric generator. This is a device that uses the so-called Seebeck effect. With some materials, a voltage difference arises when there is a temperature difference between one side of the material and the other.

The big advantage of this is that if you make a little smart choice with the radioactive material, you have a battery that can last for decades, if not hundreds of years. The disadvantage is that you have to prevent this radioactive material from being released into the environment at all costs.

In general, this works quite well in the rest of the world. For example, NASA uses thermonuclear generators in its spacecraft that travel to the outer planets of the solar system (such as the Pioneer and Voyager missions) and relatively safe chunks of plutonium-238 in the Mars robot Sojourner.

Solution for harsh environment

Now large parts of Russia also look a bit like Mars. For example, almost no people live on the icy coasts in the very north of Russia. Yet the Soviets wanted to keep an eye on this, because on the other side of the Arctic Ocean are the NATO countries Canada and the United States.

For that you need things like autonomous radio beacons and the like. There is only one energy source that can last for decades if necessary, is not dependent on weather conditions and is also very compact. Nuclear energy. Of course, setting up an entire nuclear power station to keep a few watts of radio going was overkill, even for the Soviets.

Strontium-90, extremely nasty stuff

So they used a thermonuclear battery. In itself a logical choice, but they had made some extremely stupid design mistakes. First, they chose an extremely nasty radioactive material for their Beta-M: strontium-90. Strontium 90 is notorious for being chemically very similar to calcium. It settles in your bones and stays there for decades, causing massive radiation damage, destroying your bone marrow and putting you at high risk of leukemia.

However, strontium-90 is released in large quantities in nuclear power plants (6% of nuclear waste is strontium-90), making it much cheaper than less unsafe materials such as plutonium-238 (Pu-238 currently costs around 8 million euros). per kilo). A second disastrous decision was to fasten the capsule containing strontium-90 with simple nuts and bolts, instead of welding the deadly content cylinder shut. Furthermore, the device was open, this to allow the cooling fins to work better. Because as an energy source, the stuff is otherwise ideal. One watt of power is released per gram of strontium-90 over decades.

The Soviets were very pleased with this genius invention and had thousands of them produced. These were scattered over the vast territory of the Soviet Union. During the existence of the Soviet Union, this went fairly well. Every few years, a maintenance crew came by to check the nuclear batteries. But then came 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of the nuclear batteries were left to fend for themselves.

Lia’s drama

Three lumberjacks found something strange in the mountains of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Two metal cylinders, around which the snow had melted more than a meter away. It hissed and bubbled around the cylinders. Handling, of course, such a thing in a poor country where fuel is not affordable. Happy with their discovery, the trio took these trophies to the hideout where they had a barbecue with clandestinely distilled vodka and spent the night. They would keep the cylinders warm.

The latter turned out to be a bit disappointing. One of the three men, the one who was one meter away from the “heat source”, woke up after a few hours with chills. Was the vodka poisoned? He lay down again, with the heat source close to him, but the symptoms got worse. The other two men also started to suffer. Back in their village Lia, they went to the doctor. Because the complaints got worse, they were admitted to the hospital. There, acute radiation poisoning was diagnosed in all three.

One man did not survive and died three years later from the consequences. The remaining two were eventually declared cured after intensive therapy. The international nuclear agency IAEA organized the disposal of the radiation sources in cooperation with the Georgian authorities.

A total of 300 similar radioactive sources in Georgia were defused. But in the rest of the former Soviet Union, especially in Russia itself, thousands of these life-threatening devices are still active. And it seems that the Russian army wants to build a new series…