Nuclear Powered Plane Reborn.

Nuclear-powered drone aircraft on drawing board.

Found this at the NuclearSpace.com news catcher. The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights.

In another article I read that the Pentagon has put aside a billion dollars for this project. Radical sounding as it is there's nothing new about the idea.

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Convair NB-36H
"The Crusader"

Winged Atom.

At the dawn of the atomic age, when it seemed that nuclear power was capable of just about anything, the Airforce wanted to build an airplane powered by a reactor. The possibilities for success seemed limitless. But so did the possibilities for disaster.

 

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Be better for spying than attacking. What's the point of having a long term fueled plane when it has to keep coming back for ammunition? Plus you've got the potential for being shot down and having some radioactive fallout. Sure it's on the enemy (maybe) but wouldn't the world raise their eyebrows at the "dirty bomb" similarities? But anything long term has nuclear written all over it, especially in the military. It's easy to protest NASA...the military doesn't care.

Then again, it's seeming more and more the US can do whatever it wants, UN be damned.

* yes, it may be possible to make the reactor core crashproof, like the RPGs in NASA probes are. But given the hype, you know what the public would assume seeing a "Nuke plane shot down over..." headline.

 

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From a military perspective there are certain advantages. Reluctance on the part of the enemy to shoot down drones. Theft of technology is difficult. Anyone without a protective radiation suit is unlikely to approach a crashed vehicle.

Did you notice the radiation symbol on the tail of the Corsair? The only nuclear plane to have ever flewn. The history of the Airforce's past attempts to go nuclear is quite impressive. Shielding was always a major obstacle. A huge budget was blown in their failed attempts to build planes that could fly months on end. In the final days they even looked into the possibility of using only mature pilots. Men who had no plans of further children and therefore would be less bothered by the possibility of radiation poisoning screwing up their genes.

 

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Nuclear powered plane

This is a great post and as I am an old geezer it brings back a lot of memories.

Starting in the 1950's and not ending until the 1980's there were Strategic Air Command bombers in the air and headed towards Russia constantly. This was a 24/7 operation with a certain percentage of SAC bombers "on the way" at any given moment. When the planes recieved the command to "recall", usually near the Russian border, they would turn around and head back to their bases. It was commonly refered to as flying recon.

There was also a flying military command post in the air 24/7. The pilots of the flying command post were required to fly with a patch over one eye so that in case there was a blinding nuclear blast the pilot could uncover his good eye.

The nuclear B36 was to be used as a deterrent and to hopefully be less expensive than keeping hundreds of planes constantly flying back and forth. Sorry I seem to be rambling

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What do yo mean, "better for spying than for attacking"????, THIS is the ULTIMATE attack plane, just crash and contaminate some enemy area...

 

Paul Stares, an analyst with the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC, wonders what would happen if a nuclear UAV crashed. But Hamilton insists that although hafnium has a half-life of 31 years, which according to Britain's National Radiological Protection Board is equivalent to the highly radioactive caesium-137, the structural composition of hafnium hinders the release of this radiation.

"It's probably something you would want to stay away from but it's not going to kill you," claims Hamilton.

 

If they shot it down doesn't that mean if its encased and crash proof we just dropped a nice load of Nuclear material into enemy hands ^_^

 

A plane like this outfitted with good stealth technology would be a great attacker/spier. I mean think about it, thousands of feet up, small. Most AA guns can't see you, stealth stops most radar locks. Even if it were outfitted with a couple of hellfires it could tip a war into our favor.

 

What advantages does a nuclear spy plane have over a satalite?

 

A payload. Ability to conastantly scan a target. Instead of taking snapshots every time it orbits.

 

Maneuverability. Satellites couldn't match a spycraft for photos I imagine. Geosats sit at around 700 km up. They can pick up a square metre object but the military needs the best pictures possible. They'd like to be able to read over the shoulder of an Iraqui General as he opens his newspaper.

 

How about Project Pluto?

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A hypersonic, nuclear-ramjet powered missile that pukes out H-bombs as it flies over enemy territory, low enough to take your head off if you stand up! Its nuclear ramjet would activate after it was catapulted out to sea, whence it would go critical and spew exhaust gas rich in Cesium-137, enough to kill you quickly. The thinking was that it would easily reach the Soviet Union quickly after launch from California, then, after disgorging its nuclear bomb payload on various targets, it would expend its remaining fuel, tearing around enemy territory, contaminating everything underneath it.

It never made it out of concept stage.

 

I did some more reading about this quantum nucleonic reactor. This thing kicks tail. It's basically an X-Ray-pumped battery.

Awesome technology with great promise, but unfortunately it's already being contaminated with utter stupidity such as this in the second paragraph:

Not.

Hafnium-178 has a half life of 31 years and it's only a low-scale alpha emitter. It's not a heavy metal inasmuch as Uranium and Plutonium are. It's not healthy for your three year old daughter to eat, but it's far from material that could be used in a radiological bomb. Moreover it is not fissile material nor could it be transmuted into fissile material using a breeder reactor. In fact, this immunity to transmution is the reason why it's used in reactor components.

Duncan Graham-Rowe is a smart guy but he's capitalizing on the ignorance of the public. The shock-factor of this OMG NUCLEAR ATOMS R BAD knee-jerk reaction is what has kept this technology from being developed thus far. Mr. Duncan can proceed to choke and die for trying to propogate it here.

 

ability to land and be modded at will, itstead of spending a billion dollars to launcha shuttle mission to it, and rely on nasa to do it for you

 

i think they have it down to 7 inch resolution now