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Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

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41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#41
post #9

This is tangentially related: I came across this Reddit post a while back that I found very insightful. In the area of submarine design, the Soviets/Russians are actually much more innovative than Americans. They seem much more willing to try new ideas whereas Americans stuck to a more conservative try and true design. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bzekv/what_...

no doubt, the caterpillar drive was revolutionary and big source of fear in the West.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_October_(fictional_submari...

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#42
post #35
post #26

It was an experimental design and as the article says, it was very expensive. Titanium was not just expensive, but it was hard to use. Welding had to be done in an inert gas chamber. Imagine building an inert gas chamber for a submarine. More info about it here https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/russias-alfa-class-was-the... I think that's a better overall article than the original link. New reactor design was experim…

They don't have to weld in an inert gas chamber. Titanium welding is typically done by purging the air around the weld and/or pumping the inert gas into the parts being welded assuming they're tubes, etc.. A bunch of the gasses involved are heavier than air and that property can be used to come up with clever solutions. Maybe the Russians built a giant chamber but that seems like a very non-russian solution consideri…

Ah ok. They were showing people putting on what looked like moon suits and going into a chamber. I imagine that's for smaller scale welds. But I imagine pumping argon under pressure to displace oxygen in some areas would work as well. Then ventilate properly as it would settle and well ... suffocate people.

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#43
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we'll see non-pwr naval reactors anytime soon. A high temp reactor would allow using a supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle which would take up much less space. On another note, what would happen if a MSR powered ship would sink and the fuel salt would come into contact with sea water? Would the salts dissolve into the water? Much as I like MSR's as a concept, if so this would make them a quite bad idea on a s…

Not in the US Navy. Part of the reason the US Navy standardized on PWR is that while it's not the most efficient it is something you can restart at depth if necessary. The lesson of how much that matters was driven home by the loss of the USS Thresher.

It should be technically feasible to restart a liquid-metal cooled reactor at depth just as easily as a PWR, especially a Na- or NaK-cooled one. Certainly keeping the coolant liquid after shutdown can be a challenge but as long as the plant has operated for a while there should be significant decay heat to keep it warm, and trace heating in the pipes could be powered by auxiliary power if necessary.

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#44
post #22

These were among the only Lead-bismith cooled nuclear reactors ever operated. Sodium-potassium eutectic or pure sodium coolant is a better heat transfer fluid but in a water environment it's just a little crazy due to sodium-water chemistry. The US Navy tried sodium coolant in the USS Seawolf [1] and it was smaller, quieter, and more powerful, but they had problems with the steam generators. Not an unsolvable problem…

I wonder if we'll see non-pwr naval reactors anytime soon. A high temp reactor would allow using a supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle which would take up much less space. On another note, what would happen if a MSR powered ship would sink and the fuel salt would come into contact with sea water? Would the salts dissolve into the water? Much as I like MSR's as a concept, if so this would make them a quite bad idea on a s…

MSRs use either Th/U-FLiBe or U/Pu-NaCl and both of those would easily dissolve in water. But honestly radioactive inventory of these cores is small enough that one or two breached systems, while catastrophic, wouldn't have significant biological consequences as it disperses in the vast oceans. Certainly this wouldn't be acceptable for civilian operations but I wouldn't put it past an ambitious military. Problem with Molten Salt in a submarine is size. The fuel salt is very low density compared to metallic nuclear fuels, by about an order of magnitude. That would require more volume to be critical. Small thermal/epithermal solid fueled reactor cooled with water, liquid metal, or even solid fuel/salt cooled reactors (like the FHR) are appropriate for submarines but probably not full-on liquid-fueled MSRs.

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#45
post #32

It has an escape capsule. According to the article, only the Russians had that feature in their subs. I wonder why?

Here's a tiny bit of explanation second hand from USN about why the USN does not use them - too much chance for things to go wrong, although that's not surprisng they would say that considering that's what the Soviets said happened on the sunken submarine being discussed. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/04/world/rescue-capsule-save...

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#46
post #22

These were among the only Lead-bismith cooled nuclear reactors ever operated. Sodium-potassium eutectic or pure sodium coolant is a better heat transfer fluid but in a water environment it's just a little crazy due to sodium-water chemistry. The US Navy tried sodium coolant in the USS Seawolf [1] and it was smaller, quieter, and more powerful, but they had problems with the steam generators. Not an unsolvable problem…

I wonder if we'll see non-pwr naval reactors anytime soon. A high temp reactor would allow using a supercritical CO2 Brayton cycle which would take up much less space. On another note, what would happen if a MSR powered ship would sink and the fuel salt would come into contact with sea water? Would the salts dissolve into the water? Much as I like MSR's as a concept, if so this would make them a quite bad idea on a s…

The Uranium tetrafluoride itself is basically insoluble in water. But the fuel isn't really the issue, Uranium is a toxic heavy metal but in terms of irradiating the environment outside of a reactor it's not very radioactive at all. People always clamour over Uranium having a half life of billions of years but what that means is that Uranium basically doesn't decay on its own. It's fissile, so hit it with a neutron and you'll induce it to split, but once it leaves a reactor and is subcritical you don't have to worry about the radiation from Uranium.

What you do need to worry about is the radiation from the products of fission as those are the nasty components of nuclear waste. Not only do you have the direct products which have a tiny half life compared to Uranium, those direct products have a decay chain of their own and in most reactor designs out there those products stay in the reactor so not only do you have the decay to contend with, you also have additional fission since it's still being bombarded by neutrons. This is what leads to the toxic soup of radioactive waste, you get tons of isotopes of elements so while the fuel itself wouldn't be too terribly awful for the environment the partially burned fuel is dramatically more radioactive.

The fuel salt itself though if it's anything similar to what was used in the MSRE or FLiBe's new Thorium breeder reactor would actually be insoluble in water and would freeze, hopefully trapping the waste in the frozen salt just like vitrification of nuclear waste. I am not a chemist, and any knowledge I have on the subject is just the result of a hobbyist interest in the subject, but I would think that in the event of a MSR being sunk and breached that the frozen fuel salt would keep most all of the radioactive products dissolved in it safely contained.

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#47
The Alpha is truly impressive for its time. Fast, very advanced, and also its lines are kind of neat, beautiful curves that spell speed.

Also, if you want another design that was quite impressive for its time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XXI_submarine

(we are lucky that these didn't go into service 2 years earlier).

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#48
post #9

This is tangentially related: I came across this Reddit post a while back that I found very insightful. In the area of submarine design, the Soviets/Russians are actually much more innovative than Americans. They seem much more willing to try new ideas whereas Americans stuck to a more conservative try and true design. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bzekv/what_...

no doubt, the caterpillar drive was revolutionary and big source of fear in the West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_October_(fictional_submari...

Science fiction for working submarines.

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#49
post #32

It has an escape capsule. According to the article, only the Russians had that feature in their subs. I wonder why?

Here's a tiny bit of explanation second hand from USN about why the USN does not use them - too much chance for things to go wrong, although that's not surprisng they would say that considering that's what the Soviets said happened on the sunken submarine being discussed. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/04/world/rescue-capsule-save...

On the flip side between where you can get out in a survival suit, where rescue submarines can get to, and places where the people tank will go crunch before you hit the bottom, pretty much everything is covered for USN submarines; it's a very safety conscious community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_Escape_Immersion_Equ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Submarine_Rescue_System

Re: Russian ALFA Class interceptor submarine

#50
post #26

It was an experimental design and as the article says, it was very expensive. Titanium was not just expensive, but it was hard to use. Welding had to be done in an inert gas chamber. Imagine building an inert gas chamber for a submarine. More info about it here https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/russias-alfa-class-was-the... I think that's a better overall article than the original link. New reactor design was experim…

It gave the Russians a lead in Titanium manufacturing that still exists today.
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