Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft
 

Read this article in the London Times today.

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:

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

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.

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

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:

Indeed. :yep:

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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