Very nice photos.

Here's another fine mess the old Soviets have gotten us into...

*snip*
Havoc in the Heavens: Soviet-Era Satellite's Leaky Reactor's Lethal Legacy
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 05:00 am ET
29 March 2004

Old Soviet nuclear powered satellites leaked a trail of menacing radioactive droplets that have become a debris threat to other spacecraft.

Tiny spheres of liquid sodium-potassium (NaK) reactor coolant dripped from the former Soviet Unions radar ocean reconnaissance satellites, known as RORSATs. This class of satellite -- no longer launched -- carried a nuclear reactor to power a large radar dish that enabled day/night snooping of EarthÂs oceans.

After a RORSATs tour-of-duty was over, the reactorÂs fuel core was shot high above Earth into a "disposal orbit". Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the EarthÂs atmosphere.


Ground-based radar first caught glimpse of an abnormally high concentration of objects drifting through space. The objects were later identified as droplets of reactor coolant that eked from leaking Russian space reactors. Shown here are Haystack and HAX radars located in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. These radars collect hundreds of hours of orbital debris data each per year. They are NASA's primary source of data on centimeter-size debris. Credit: NASA/JSC Orbital Debris Office

Earth is encircled by space debris, big and small bits of human-made flotsam. This computer generated image depicts orbital debris currently being tracked around the Earth. Menacing space litter includes over 100,000 tiny droplets of reactor coolant that escaped from Russian-built military spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JSC Orbital Debris Office



However, in ejecting the core from the main body of a RORSAT, a plumbing problem plagued the satellite design. Faulty seals permitted the NaK coolant to leak, leaving thouands upon thousands of droplets to spill freely in to space.

Hazard to spacecraft

RORSATs were orbited by the Soviets starting in 1967 and stopped in 1988.

There is evidence from ground-based radar measurements that 16 of a total of 31 RORSAT nuclear reactors orbited lost coolant following core ejection into disposal orbits.

Paula Krisko, a space debris specialist working for Lockheed Martin at NASAÂs Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, noted in a recent newsletter dedicated to orbital debris research that the NaK droplets have been observed over the last decade.

Not only have the spheres come under scrutiny by several NASA radars, Krisko explained, they were also found to have dinged the Long Duration Exposure Facility, better known in NASA lingo as LDEF. This school bus-sized spacecraft floated through space for well over 5 years before being plucked from orbit and returned to Earth by shuttle Columbia in 1990.

Krisko explained that a study of the NaK coolant droplets circling Earth, floating about in varying sizes, is estimated to be 110,000 to over 115,000 in number.

"This population represents an orbital debris hazard to spacecraft in low Earth orbit," she stated...

Full story below...

Yes, I know all about safety to be found in nuclear technology and all the way through disposal. Yes I do.

[BUT! BUT! the other guy is doin' it, not us. Within our borders, we take care of business. WHAT? You mean to say that major components of our fleets are nuclear powered?]

he he, hiya Marshall - my sentiments exactly! I just ducked over here from the Aussie gardenweb, having not visited for a very long time, actually since about October 2001, where the confusion, fear and then the us versus them stuff got the better of me, and I retreated to muse over the same stuff being'cultivated' by our own leadership. I guess VGKG's article wasn't the best place fro me to start, I will go ponder some of the other postings and learn and think and learn and think........

hope you are all feeling well in your own skins,
especially you Marshall - your patience is incredible!!
cheers, mudlark (formerly known as zero)

Quite a reallity check..........to what nuclear radiation can do. Sobering when you think about terrorism and the amount of Islamic hatred out there....let alone accidents.

When the Soviet Union was dismantled....those weapons are more dangerous than ever now it seems.

Hey zero! Welcome back. Do stay a while. Have to admit to having less patience now than earlier. Tought to get through and behind the prejudices and misinformative opinions of some.

I suspect you have hit upon the SOE at a moment of looming conflict over moles and perhaps other rodents.

Thanks for posting this KT. It took me a long time to go through all of the pages because of my 56k dialup, but at the end of the sequence I truly felt that I had been on an incredible, very moving journey. I hope Elana receives some kind of international honor for her work.

I've heard Chernobyl could very easily blow again because it is still active and the concrete encasement has become weathered. If this happens it could be at least as bad, if not worse than 1986.

I agree Althea, the pictures and her commentary just pulls you in especially the last few pages. I'm still trying to put my finger on just why it affected me so... her scenes of life and community abandoned and frozen in time almost harkens back to Pompeii. Her commentary on the trivia of life interrupted is so incredible: the apartment with full mailbox and calendar marked for a fishing trip, the election house where signs advertise free drinks to entice people to vote for their one party, the note at the kindergarten about the planned walk the day of the accident, her trip to the roof where villagers gathered to watch and marvel at the shining glow.

Wayne, I agree with you, but along with my concern about terror is an appreciation that more and more people around the world fear nuclear retribution from the US than any other country.

What an amazing site and photos, thanks for posting the link. Sobering indeed.

KT,

To what degree would you say that that fear of nuclear retribution by the US is fully rational and justified?

Personally I think that the US will be nuked [instead]. I prefer not to expound on the last statement because it gets into the "religous" field.

KT, do you think part of the reason it pulls us in is because it is so inimate and personal? We find out a lot about her life with only the briefest of statements - her fathers profession and how that ties in with the disaster, her grandparents, her passion for motorcycles which is what brought her to the dead zone. I also loved how she included, personal trivial details. Adding to those you've mentioned, the laundry hanging on the balcony for 18 years caused me to stop & look at other details more closely. I like her sense of humor too. Including the photos & commentary of the looted motorcycle shop brought a little comic relief from all of the scenes of disaster. She is a fantastic story-teller.

Wow!

Haunting, heart-breaking, sublime. She is one fearless bichin' camaro. Wry and funny as well. I pray that the motorcycle doesn't kill this bright star.

It's encouraging that large wild animals are flourishing; love that about the american bison that just had to go home.

For an explanation of the events at Chernobyl, search under
"Chernobyl Sequence." I don't think it is possible for what
remains of the reactor core to spontaneously heat up and
cause another release of radiation.

A most excellent post. My moto/ scooter trash group will have this in they're mailbox.... Gardeners,, scooter trash, who'd have thunk it? A quite timely post, loved it! , darlene

darlene,

What's a moto/scooter trash group? Let me guess...It's either a group that cleans up trash ....or.. .........

That motorcycle tour and the photos are quite remarkable. It would be interesting to find out more about how long the people on the roof stood watching the 'shining glow'. I was wondering if the glow had a color to it, and why it didn't blind the people watching it...

haunting...i stare into her eyes attempting to comprehend her despair

Wayne,, We are motorcycle enthuthiasts who happen to be committed to the environment. An organic bunch who love to go out and enjoy the turf of other areas and make our own areas as enjoyable as possible to others. We gather every weekend to survey the mountain flowers, enjoy a day ride, and hang with our scooter trash friends, have lunch,,, etc.. This story really appealed to me... What a ball-zz gal!! I think I'm hotshit when I'm crusin' This chick is breakin' environmental ground, the kind we haven't heard about in the evening news, God bless her!!

Althea, yes I think her commentary is personal but at the same time she doesn't overstate anything including her politics or her personal life though I think much can be read into the pictures she takes and what she says.

I'm amazed too like others that she would venture so close to danger. Her father is apparently more worried about her driving than her proximity to radiation. She drives a high performance Ninja motorcycle and clearly is drawn toward the wide open road that the dead zone offers where she can really open it up. Perhaps she feels the speed gives her some immunity - I think she feels a certain detachment - (because of her young age?) she mentions in one place that sometimes everything looks unreal like a picture.

Wayne, that's a delicate subject. I truly don't know if fear of nuclear weapons by other countries from the US is rational. I'm not going to debate who has the greater reason to be concerned USA or the rest of the world. I understand the obvious danger we face from terrorist directed dirty bombs and other small nuclear weapons. But, at the same time, its hard to counter the fear that others might have when you look at the situation from their point of view. Who has used nuclear weapons in the past, who has the largest arsenal pointed at other countries, who is expanding use of such weapons (including on conventional weapons), who is talking about deploying such weapons into space, who has hundreds of military bases in some of the most politically sensitive places in the world, and who is acting unilaterally and pre-emptively?

Like Althea, I've accessed the site with my old modem. Pretty stark. I am interested though in the young even-aged conifers (pines) I saw in neat rows in some of the pictures. Also, some of the curb-side trees in public areas seemed not to be particularly old -- perhaps these were recorded earlier among the archival images Elena mentioned. I saw relatively few dead trees unless many of the deciduous trees really were dead while the conifers persisted through the radiation.

Now they're making movies there.

I saw this too. Ironic. I recall reading that movie zombies symbolized American themes of loss of independent self and mass conformity - souless drudges unquestioning, mindlessly consuming, infecting, and destroying.

Hummm...a non-fiction KT? ;o).
vgkg

It works on so many levels. A parable of the modern world.

" I recall reading that movie zombies symbolized American themes of loss of independent self and mass conformity - souless drudges unquestioning, mindlessly consuming, infecting, and destroying."

Funny, I thought that was what automatically occured after college football games. Come to think of it, being a horror-movie fan, almost all zombie movies (except for Romero's first, which was caused by a meteorite, I think), are caused by evil corporations that have some, er, chemical "problems". Please see Return of the Living Dead, parts 1 (my favorite), 2, and you can skip 3. Also, the latest; 28 days later. Of course, I can easily lift your line and apply it to our standard work life: Pink Floyd's The Wall and Brazil come immediately to mind.

First: thanks KT for the post - but the link didn't work today, not here.

Kinda hard to dredge all the trash out of orbital space, ain't it, Vgkg?

"Who has used nuclear weapons in the past, who has the largest arsenal pointed at other countries, who is expanding use of such weapons (including on conventional weapons), who is talking about deploying such weapons into space, who has hundreds of military bases in some of the most politically sensitive places in the world, and who is acting unilaterally and pre-emptively?"

Why, al Qaeda and al Qaeda's helpers, of course.

Don't mistakenly exclude "tests" from "uses." And don't exclude "cells" from "bases." Never mind: NOTHING they hit is EVER a "holy site," is it? There goes "religion" again!

The "zombie themes" sound SO much more Soviet than American - but we're getting there, all in good time, my pretties, and our little dogs, too...

Gee, just like in Hollywood's movies, before long we can expect on our own continent - overdone dead zones. Maybe we should invite Elena over here for a "before" tour, with an open invite for an after tour of the same spots...eventually, some preacher will take up the cue and tell us all what we should do...and we'll do it...or else...again, never mind: preachin'z already happenin'.

You will all be happy to know, I'm sure, that "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" comes out on Sept. 10th. Better get your tickets now....

You absolutely must see the new version of Romero's "Dawn of the Dead"; it's been remade. Ving Rhames plays the policeman, and it's a very good zombie movie (if you're into that sort of thing). I'd give it a definite thumbs-up amongst horror movies.

Elena is on the road again, this time touring the Serpent's Wall. She writes another moving and poignant history of the the region with photos of her journey.

"Take a look at Elena's latest project, the Serpent's Wall. A fascinating look at Kiev's history of defending itself with the aid of a wall built most likely during the early 11th century at the request of King Yaroslav(he built upon the fortification work begun under the reign of Volodymyr Svyatoslavovich in the late 10th century). It includes photos documenting the WWII era bunkers that were built into the existing Serpent's Wall."