Word: reactor
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...intrigue began when Tannoury, 37, a Paris-based entrepreneur, told Saudi Sheik Mezan Pharaon that Gaddafi had offered $1 billion to anyone who could supply certain "strategic materials," presumably parts for an atomic reactor. Tannoury said he could obtain the materials through Venezuelan associates, but that he first needed to come up with a $33 million down payment. For approximately $14 million in cash, Tannoury said, Pharaon could share in the profits of the operation. A short while later, the sheik gave Tannoury the $14 million...
Initially, Soviet officials brushed off Western concern about the satellite: But as evidence accumulated from tracking stations that Cosmos 1402 was falling, Moscow finally admitted that the satellite was in trouble. Although it insisted that the reactor, containing 100 Ibs. of nuclear fuel, would burn up in the atmosphere, U.S. officials said that some radioactive debris would reach the ground. As a precaution, they mobilized special teams to gather the "hot" material. Meanwhile, Soviet ground controllers were radioing a flood of signals to the errant craft, which is tumbling wildly through space at an altitude of about 150 miles...
...more a year. Their radars and other sensors are not run by electricity from solar panels or chemical fuel cells, the power sources used by American spy satellites like the Air Force's Big Bird. Instead, the Soviet satellites rely on a type of small, portable nuclear reactor called Topaz (after the gemstone), which uses as its fuel enriched uranium 235, the same highly radioactive material "burned" by nuclear power plants on the ground...
...rocket fuel after six or seven months. When that happens, the Soviet controllers radio commands that explode the satellite into nuclear and nonnuclear components. The nonnuclear parts are allowed to sink back into the atmosphere, where most of the metal burns up in the frictional heat of reentry. The reactor is lifted with one last spurt of rocket fuel to an altitude of 500 to 600 miles, where it can drift safely for hundreds of years...
...keep track of the more than 5,000 objects now in orbit, that Cosmos 1402 was not following this scenario. When it broke into three pieces on Dec. 28, all languished in the same orbit, perhaps because of a booster failure. With each swing around the earth, the nuclear reactor's orbit shrank a little more. Some U.S. officials speculate that the Soviets might be able to destroy the reactor with a remaining explosive charge, or even a burst from one of their killer satellites, a risky procedure that would leave a sinking radioactive cloud in orbit. Or they...