Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: @cvbnet.prime.com:rcowles%edg.cv.co.uk@cvb.prime.com (roger cowles {cv-aec penn st x306}) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: re: Nuclear Powered aircraft? Message-ID: <11369@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 13 Nov 89 16:11:25 GMT Sender: news@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 80 Approved: military@att.att.com From: roger cowles {cv-aec penn st x306} <@cvbnet.prime.com:rcowles%edg.cv.co.uk@cvb.prime.com> A good place to look for more information on nuclear powered aircraft is the book 'Steam Bird' by , sort of engineering faction, as opposed to science fiction. The author worked for Pratt and Whitney as part of a group designing a nuclear powered bomber, late 50's early 60's. The plane in the story has the following configuration, presumably based on the authors work, A basically unshielded reactor, with a small shield between it and the crew. This causes certain problems for the ground crew but it does reduce the need for a tail gunner :-) the reactor heats water into steam which drives 6 steam turbines linked to ducted fans in the wings. The wings are basically very large condensers, to condense the steam to water, the rejected heat being carried away by the airflow from the fans, pumps powered by steam bled from the main steam circuit to return the water to the reactor ( If this is hard to visualise, my apologies, I used to work for a steam turbine manufacturer, so this is fairly familiar to me ) The book goes into some detail about the problems starting, flying, and landing such an aircraft, some of which were, starting: without the fans providing airflow through the condenser the condenser pressure will rise until they explode the reactor will rapidly run out of liquid water and melt down This can be got round by some form of ground start facility for the fans or a one shot instant steam generator to get the pumps going. Roll up. If the plane crashes on take off, the reactor, being a dense piece of kit, will exit from the nose of the plane and roll down the runway. This rolling action was calculated to be sufficient to compress the reactor body and core to a critical density, causing a fairly major nuclear explosion. flying: If the condenser tubes are ruptured, the plane will loose cooling water, eventually leading to an airborne meltdown, anybody going out on the wing to plug the tubes off, or seal the leak, will leave the protection of the biological shield- ing exposing themselves to the reactor. Landing: Where ? JFK, Heathrow, a seaborne ditch ? Considering the objections to 50lb of fairly inert plutonium oxide onboard Gallileo, imagine the Hoo Haw about 2 tons of highly enriched, unshielded, Uranium and assorted fission products, drifting down out of the sky, accompanied by a few hundred tons of bomber. For any rational length of runway you will need reverse thrust from the fans, which means your condensers will stop working for a short period, which means the pressure in your condensers is going to peak at several times its normally working pressure, which means you may blow up your condenser, loose all your coolant and procede calmly to a meltdown scenario. Roll up, again. Apparently this was actually a serious proposal for a USAF bomber, computer simulations showed that it would have flown with an effectively unlimited range, at around 300 mph. The engineer in me is sort of sorry that these things were never built, the rest of me, however, is infinitely grateful !! Roj