Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft

[Konovalov]

Read this article (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5024190.ece)in the London Times today.


Nuclear-powered aircraft may sound like a concept from Thunderbirds, but they will be transporting millions of passengers around the world later this century, the leader of a Government-funded project to reduce environmental damage from aviation believes.

The consolation of sitting a few yards from a nuclear reactor will be non-stop flights from London to Australia or New Zealand, because the aircraft will no longer need to land to refuel. The flights will also produce no carbon emissions and therefore make no contribution to global warming.


What do you think? Far fetched or a viable future long term alternative for the civil aviation industry? :hmm:

Gotta admit that my first thought was no way. Imagine if the 9-11 suicide attackers had flown nuclear powered passenger jets into the WTC buildings. Add dirty bomb to the mix. Not good. :nope:

[August]

9-11 scenarios are horrifying to contemplate sure, but just your normal everyday aviation accident also becomes something far more deadly as well.

[Skybird]

Insane. Totally insane. Aircraft happen to fall off the sky sometimes. Imagine. It could lead to the wrong people getting nuclear material. It could lead to wars between nations when the wrong plane has an accident in the wrong place. It could lead to major contamination and damage to the population that minimises 9/11's scale.

Insane. That rocket-scientist figuring this one out should get fired and locked away. He is a danger to the public.

[Digital_Trucker]

Twice in one day:hmm:, ditto what Skybird said.

[Skybird]

Damn, second time we agree in just one day. Let's not make it a new habit, I hate to change my old ones. :sunny:

[Konovalov]

9-11 scenarios are horrifying to contemplate sure, but just your normal everyday aviation accident also becomes something far more deadly as well.
Indeed. :yep:

Might be a good time to open up a nuclear decontamination and cleaning business. :-?

[Digital_Trucker]

Damn, second time we agree in just one day. Let's not make it a new habit, I hate to change my old ones. :sunny:
Must be a full moon or something:D Actually, we agree every day, it's just some days we have to agree to disagree:rotfl:

Now, back to glow in the dark airplanes

[XabbaRus]

I'd love to see how big the wings are to hold the reactors....

[goldorak]

Insane. Totally insane. Aircraft happen to fall off the sky sometimes. Imagine. It could lead to the wrong people getting nuclear material. It could lead to wars between nations when the wrong plane has an accident in the wrong place. It could lead to major contamination and damage to the population that minimises 9/11's scale.

Insane. That rocket-scientist figuring this one out should get fired and locked away. He is a danger to the public.

Yeah, we should all go back living in the stone age. :|\\

[Skybird]

Insane. Totally insane. Aircraft happen to fall off the sky sometimes. Imagine. It could lead to the wrong people getting nuclear material. It could lead to wars between nations when the wrong plane has an accident in the wrong place. It could lead to major contamination and damage to the population that minimises 9/11's scale.

Insane. That rocket-scientist figuring this one out should get fired and locked away. He is a danger to the public.

Yeah, we should all go back living in the stone age. :|\\
Now, some more balance in your opinion forming would serve you well, don't you think? Where did I say something of banning flight machines alltogether, eh? Lobbing loads and loads of radioactive material over our heads and metropoles where many of such loads will navigate in close vicinity to each other just does not sound like a good idea. You know the difference between a radioactive contamination and the explosion of a planeload of fuel, yes?

[fatty]

There were once times when thunder was God speaking, the moon was made of cheese, and splitting atoms would certainly result in the destruction of the universe.

I won't slam it yet. Nuclear power has barely been around for 50 years. Give them another 100 as the article claims and we'll see where they can go for safety and scaling.

[Blacklight]

My father is a Pratt & Whitney employee and he actually was involved with some of the background stuff relating to the development of the nuclear jet engine (This was back durring the cold war).
They have an long underground tunnel with a railroad track in it that they used to run the engine through out at the factory. He said that it was VERY VERY top secret and they dropped the project because it was too expensive, and very unsafe in the event of a crash. He said they wasted years on the development of it.
He said that the engine was the size of a locomotive.

[Letum]

Gotta admit that my first thought was no way. Imagine if the 9-11 suicide attackers had flown nuclear powered passenger jets into the WTC buildings. Add dirty bomb to the mix. Not good. :nope:
Actually, perhaps not so bad.

Without all that aviation fuel burning, the WTC incident might not have been half as bad.

A light sprinkling of radiation isn't so bad. It is certainly preferable to the collapse.

[August]

Gotta admit that my first thought was no way. Imagine if the 9-11 suicide attackers had flown nuclear powered passenger jets into the WTC buildings. Add dirty bomb to the mix. Not good. :nope:
Actually, perhaps not so bad.

Without all that aviation fuel burning, the WTC incident might not have been half as bad.

A light sprinkling of radiation isn't so bad. It is certainly preferable to the collapse.

Good point.

[lesrae]

I'd love to see how big the wings are to hold the reactors....

That was my thought, get on at the back in London, walk to the front and get off in Paris - without ever leaving the ground :D

[Letum]

Anyhow, I would exspect a crash proof reactor to be standard. Especialy with all the
weight savings of having no fuel.

[lesrae]

Anyhow, I would exspect a crash proof reactor to be standard. Especialy with all the
weight savings of having no fuel.

Possibly offset by the shielding required ;)

[fatty]

I'd love to see how big the wings are to hold the reactors....

I bet you the reactor could just be held somewhere in the fuselage to send power to electric motors turning propellers.

[Skybird]

A light sprinkling of radiation isn't so bad. It is certainly preferable to the collapse.
Are you kidding? I prefer 9/11 to loosing a reactor over Manhatten and having it impacting on the ground and cracking open any day. even worse to poisening some tens of thousands of residents: loosing such a plane over a so-called rogue state with the reactor surviving the crash intact.

There are plenty of scenarios imaginable that are far worse than flying a gas-fueled airliner into a skyscraper.

[Letum]

A light sprinkling of radiation isn't so bad. It is certainly preferable to the collapse. Are you kidding? I prefer 9/11 to loosing a reactor over Manhatten and having it impacting on the ground and cracking open any day. even worse to poisening some tens of thousands of residents


I'm not convinced it would.
Even with a dirty bomb designed to become airborne, most damage estimates
are conservative.
The radioactive material in reactors is certainly not likely to become very airborne.



loosing such a plane over a so-called rogue state with the reactor surviving the crash intact.

Now thats more interesting.

There are plenty of scenarios imaginable that are far worse than flying a gas-fueled airliner into a skyscraper.

Well, thats the thing about imagination.

[Skybird]

Some use imagination to figure out how to safeguard against harm. Others use imagination to think they are already safe.

[Letum]

...and others stick to fact, reason and sound deduction.

[Skybird]

Aha. Well, the last time I read an estimation of a dirty bomb going off in a metropole like Manhatten, the casualty numbers ranged from 80,000 to 300,000 in i think six or twelve months. Of course after two years the number is even higher.

So much for your conservative estimation.

you may not understand it but I stick with describing a plane-load of cerosine going off and a building collapsing as the smaller event compared to a radiating reactor cracking open and surrounding heat and fire producing radioactive dust spreading over blocks and blocks of a city. Your imagination may be different, but fantasy is free.

Pewh, I cant believe that I am even discussing this.

[August]

It must be pointed out that such casualty rates caused by dirty bomb would involve the use of plutonium, something i'd think is not likely to be used in a propulsion reactor, and that it would be detonated in such a way to maximize dispersal of the radioactive material over the largest, most densely populated area possible, something that could only happen by the worst of luck in an accident.

Apples and oranges really.

[Letum]

Even when you try to disperse radioactive material in urban areas, the results are
minimal and unlikely to kill or seriously effect many (if any) people.

There was a excellent Belorussian study in Atmospheric Environment (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/246/description#description) by Vladimir
Reshetin that had a good crack at modeling such radioactive releases from 'dirty-
bombs'. Of course, it predicts very low resultant radiation, even in a worst case
scenario. Certainly not enough to kill out side the immediate blast zone.

In a solid reactor with safeguards and no designed means of dispersion; the risks
are minimal.

[Skybird]

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/7742/vogelstraussbj2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Letum]

RIS?

[bookworm_020]

It would make a interesting Crash investigaion! What brought down the plane? Bomb, airframe failure, China syndrome?:hmm:

As for cleaning up an air crash with a nuclear reactor, it isn't just the core you have to worry about, but coolent leaks would have to be delt with as well as the large mass of the reactor causing damage to anything in it path (it will go alot deeper and further than the airframe on impact.

[Blacklight]

Anyhow, I would exspect a crash proof reactor to be standard

My father said that was a major reason they quit development on it at Pratt & Whitney. They COULDN'T make it crash proof.


I'd love to see how big the wings are to hold the reactors....


As I said in my previous post, my father said that the engine was the size of a locomotive and ran on railroad tracks in a tunnel under the factory he worked at.

[TLAM Strike]

What about a Radio-Thermal Generator like on the Voyager probes? Not as powerful, Not as radioactive but power for a century of use?

If only we could build a plane that could stay airborne that long.

But I have to say using a nuclear reactor for a passager aircraft is just a waste of a good reactor use it for a reuseable launch platform for space plane launches like in 2001 (the novel not the movie).

[Rhodes]

"Nuclear-powered aircraft may sound like a concept from Thunderbirds" Well, it is:

http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/9333/71lj9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/71lj9.jpg/1/w720.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img357/71lj9.jpg/1/)

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/8335/312dn8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/312dn8.jpg/1/w720.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img247/312dn8.jpg/1/)

[Task Force]

Nuclear plane, give that guy the dum scientest award. We already have enough issues finding out what to do with the reactors and other Nuclear material.:yep: Everytime a plane crashes, anouther city is knocked off the face of the earth.