Nuclear aircraft engines.....what's new?

I know that in the 50's and 60's the american's and russian's where both trying to develop nuclear engines for their bombers.

I know the american's flew a reactor in a modifed B 36 and the russian's actually had a Tu 95 Bear with two of its four engines replaced with two working nuclear powerplants (although the crew glowed in the dark afterwards due to inadquate shielding)

Due to the large amount of shielding required and the danger to the public the research was officially stopped but I wonder if anybody knows if there is any "black" program's running which has continued this research.

With the advancement in technology and materials I am sure most of the original problems (apart from the obvious dangers) have or could be solved.

There was a program on the discovery channel which finished with a statement that a nuclear powered Global Hawk might be on the drawing boards having unlimited endurance and range!

Anybody know anything?

Sv Out.......!

Duno.

Perhaps recon aircrafts like aurora may benefit from this, but It's unlikely this would be used for frontline fighters and bombers, sinse when they get show down..... chernobyl.

I would hope there aren't and weren't any black projects to develop this, I mean....to even test it you'd have to be many many many kilometres away from all civilization, and if the slighest thing goes wrong....

It's just extremely dangerous.
Nuclear power plants are shielded with layers of steel re-inforced concrete, able to take planes, missiles.....America puts SAM tanks all around nuclear power plants, and they have tight security.

So it makes zero sense to put one in a plane made of lightweight metal, and have it fly anywhere where it can be shot down...which is basically anywhere.


btw. did those russian pilots die of radiation illness?

Yes, there have been experiments with nuclear propulsion. But I've never heard of a nuclear Global Hawk, sounds very interesting!

I have a page about nuclear propulsion on my website: Nuclear Propulsion

I found this newscientist article that sais a nuclear Global Hawk is on hte drawing board!

I'm deffinately gonna look into this, and write a page about it for my website

manincloak, I think some of the crew of the Bear died of an overdose of radiation but in those days of the cold war human life came second to the arms race.

The american's were developing two types of engine, a "clean" engine which did not release any radiation out to the atmosphere and a "dirty" engine which spewed radioactive material out of the exhaust.

The "dirty" engine was the easiest to build and was the most efficient !!!!

When the manned bomber using the "clean" engine was scrapped a UAV was built using a "dirty" engine and was actually ready for flight testing but President JFK scrapped that to as it was inhumane!

The way the USAF saw it was if you are at war with somebody why not pollute the country you are attacking on the way in before you detonnate the atomic warhead!

Mainframe, thanks for that link to the nuclear Global Hawk it basically said what was said on the programme but what else is out there that has not been reported.......!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

On April 27, 1949, a conference was held at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee (ORNL), between NEPA contractors, the Air Force, and AEC personnel, with the intent to plan Oak Ridge participation in the NEPA project. The ORNL NEPA effort was called the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project (ANP) and was established under Air Materiel Command project officer Lt Col Clyde D. Gasser.

a nice thread all about he YB-60

Originally posted by Silentvulcan
When the manned bomber using the "clean" engine was scrapped a UAV was built using a "dirty" engine and was actually ready for flight testing but President JFK scrapped that to as it was inhumane!

Thank god lol.

Originally posted by SilentvulcanThe way the USAF saw it was if you are at war with somebody why not pollute the country you are attacking on the way in before you detonnate the atomic warhead!

Yeh true, but the plane would still have to take off at the base, on the homeland, so they would be polluting their own country?


Global Hawk looks good, but I just don't get how the US government would permit nuclear material just flying around...

And it's not even piloted, what if there's a programming error, and the thing crashes into the middle of a city?

There are also a million other things which could go wrong.

The idea ,was for the aircraft to take off using rockets , then at an altitude and distance deemed safe , the unshielded nuclear reactor would be started up.


One plan was for the aircraft to fly race track ovals around russia polluting the country until the aircraft was shot down

The UAV or cruise missile as I should of called was to be air launched by a B36 or B52 so the thing would not contaninate friendly soil!

We all know what could be the results of a nuclear A/C crash but I beleive there are some saterlite's and probes which are nuclear powered and the governments of the world fire them up all the time.....!

Sv Out.....!

Originally posted by Silentvulcan
We all know what could be the results of a nuclear A/C crash but I beleive there are some saterlite's and probes which are nuclear powered and the governments of the world fire them up all the time.....!

Sv Out.....!

Perhaps, but I'd expect them to be in high orbit.

Actually....I'm not so sure. You're not allowed to put nukes, or any type of weapon in fact into space, and perhaps nuclear powered sats could be considered as weapons?

Regards the linked B-60 thread, I feel I should point out (because it is not mentioned there which is a little misleading) that the YB-60 was not a programme aimed specifically at producing a nuclear powered bomber, it was Convairs rival to the B-52 for the USAF order which eventually went to Boeng of course. The Nuclear B-60 proposal was a variant of this aircraftthat was started after Convair lost the main order to the B-52.

[edit on 16-11-2005 by waynos]

Originally posted by Manincloak
nuclear powered sats could be considered as weapons?

The sats with nuclear power have Radio Isotope heating. It means that (I think) they have spent fuel in them which, when it decays, it heats up the powerplant and gives it power, therefore it is basically not a nuke.

With something Nuclear powered, couldn't say the U.S government have Fusion by now, therefore it wouldn't blow up/meltdown if it was destroyed?

Everything about nuclear aircrafts here.

It appears it was the B-36, not the B-60, that was going to recieve nuclear power, I always thought it was both of them?

Also, I was gobsmacked to see the diagram showing the Saro Princess with nuclear power. I have never heard of that before.

The Princess was going to be leased and used by the americans to mount a reactor in to continue developement of the layered shielding which was a way that was found to get an adequate level of shielding for the minimum weight!

I assume they opted for the Princess because of its large size or they could keep the reactor out of harms way out at sea for most of the development work. This makes sense as you would not have to fly over land if you've got your testbed in a seaplane!

Sv Out.....!

Nuclear engines would never work... it would be too hard... To protect the engine, the palne would weigh too much... The pilots couldn't get fast in the air... It would be a disaster... It works with large things, powerplants, subs... but engines... let's not over do it... I enen remember the thread with the "nuke nades"... Honestly... WTF...

Originally posted by matej
Everything about nuclear aircrafts here.

Pity that the link isn't in English...

wow! i think it's incredible how they tryed to do this.

I remember seeing a programme about it on discovery wings, and there was a big stand off with the usa and russia over it..and at the time they truly believed russia had some of these aircraft.

But then some intelligence said they didn't, and america dropped the idea,and the scary thing was in the 90's the russians actually admitted to haveing an operational one, but the shielding wasn't adequte enough.

I think it's insane how back then human life was expendable kind of...in this way..but i suppose if your at the brink of full out nuclear war, desperate times require desperate measures.

it's still amazing though that they got it to work,i wonder what other secrets will be revealed in the future.

I think a nuclear powered aircraft would be great...and the endurance would be amazing.

Just as long as when it flies or sits on the ground or crashes that it doesn't leak any radiation.

Many sites talk about a nuclear global Hawk...Popular Mechanics did a pretty big article on it a couple years ago.

heres some site that talks about it.
nuclear Hawk

would be usefull when the Fuel aircraf use is deplited
wounder how well this would work in space travel

All i have to say is project Pluto people, project pluto. It is a complete working nuclear propulsion engine. Here ya go.

Project Pluto

Train