Burevestnik test explosion in northern Russia

[hidetheelephants]

Any thoughts on what the russians are up to with this missile explosion that's nuclear, but not nuclear and it's all fine folks, no need to panic. The main cold war players played with this nonsense then abandoned it for the expensive madness it was. Why have the crazy ivans dusted off nuclear-fired gas turbines? I'm struggling to see this as militarily useful, more of a form of arms-trolling as firing the thing in anger probably contravenes the NPT, being in effect a crap dirty bomb.

Not funny for the deceased who are now getting lead-lined coffins though.

[Krikkit]

I believe the idea is that it's a fast-running nuclear reactor which heats incoming air, then expands it out of the back to create a rocket effect - like a ramjet, but more flexible with the reactor.

The size (i.e. fits into a cruise missile) would dictate that it's likely a sodium-cooled reactor as they can be made very small. A leak of the coolant would be an easy source of violent explosion - Sodium + sea water = bang.

A shame for the scientists running the tests though, surprising they were on a barge with an experimental engine like this.

Edited by Krikkit on Wednesday 14th August 12:56

[eharding]

Scott Manley on the subject

If you haven't read it already, I'd recommend Charlie Stross' short story A Tall Tail, which recounts the CIA deliberately leaking details of hideously toxic and unstable rocket fuels to the Soviets, with the aim of seeing if they would then try them out and explode/poison/dissolve their brightest and best rocket scientists in the process, only to find that the Soviets went one better and irradiated said hideously toxic and unstable rocket fuels, with unexpected results....

The Russians to seem to have been having a lot of problems recently, don't they? Fire on the secret nuclear spook sub, that massive arms dump explosion, and now this.

[hidetheelephants]

Perhaps if they stopped wazzing so much of their GDP on weaponry and embezzling the rest they'd have an economy capable of supporting a decent standard of living. Such a banana republic.

[Uncle John]

Watching Chernobyl at the moment.

Some things in Russia don’t change.