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Originally Posted by Molon Labe
Heh, there's one patch of ground somewhere in the US where the nuclear engine for a sort-of drone/cruise missile aircraft was tested. It literally sprayed radioactive exhaust. Fortunately, it never left its concrete bunker in the desert.
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Actually, it was a nuclear jet engine. Thats right, a jet engine. It used a reactor to heat the air (hence the reactor was air cooled) instead of compressors, fuel cans and all that. Plan was for it to go airbourne and pretty much stay there till they dropped the bomb. They had plans for inflight crew change and everything. They were going to use the old B-36 PeaceMaker.
Check out
http://www.cowtown.net/proweb/nb36h.htm for a picture of the plane that actually carried a reactor on-board. Note: they NEVER actually flew the plane on atomic power, they only got as far as actually lighting one up in a bombay to test the thing while in flight.
Anyway, during a ground test of the actual engine, a thermocouple failed and they lost indication of ACCURATE core temperature. They had a material failure due to overheating and it SPEWED parts of the core out of the back. Luckily, someone had a clue and decided that these things spewing radiactive entrails over the U.S. would not be a polically correct thing to do and cancelled the whole project.