TES-3 – transportable nuclear power plant mounted on self-propelled tracked vehicles

Until the mid-1950s, scientists and engineers at the Obninsk Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) had worked out a number of unique projects that served as the foundation for the development of domestic and world nuclear power engineering. The list of these projects includes, in particular, TES-3, the first mobile nuclear power plant, which has become a symbol of small-scale nuclear power engineering, a historical achievement of Russian scientists, and part of the heritage of the City of Peaceful Atom. TES-3, a demonstration and experimental plant, being one of the possible nuclear power sources for remote areas, was a mobile power-generating unit consisting of four tracked platforms with a reactor unit equipped with a water-cooled and water-moderated reactor with a 1.5 MW turbogenerator. The “self-propelled uranium-fueled machine” was created in record-breaking time due to the scale and cooperation of the project participants under the scientific guidance of the Laboratory V staff. The plant showed reliability in operation, good controllability, safety and maintainability. Over the entire operating period in the power generation mode, TES-3 worked for about 1300 hours without any radiation accidents. After the completion of the first fuel campaign in 1965, the reactor was shut down, but the idea of mobile low-capacity large-component nuclear power plants was further developed in the form of mobile nuclear power plants of the next generation.