Atomic Aircraft

Let's see, all we need is a water tank, steam boiler, turbine, some
uranium 235 or plutonium 239, plenty of lead shielding, a condenser,
and the will to cope with the radiation hazard in the event of a
mishap. Containment? We don't need no stinkin' containment. :-)

But weight isn't an issue in the micro gravity of space ...



http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-aircraft.html

Atomic Aircraft
18 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service

ENTHUSIASM for the nuclear-powered bomber project in the United States
blows alternately hot and cold. Mr. R. E. Gross, chairman of Lockheed
Aircraft, one of the two companies with contracts to develop the
airframes (the other being Convair) has said recently that if the
American government were to give the "go ahead signal", Lockheed could
have an aircraft ready to make its first flight in the mid-1960s.

The type of aircraft the company has in mind would have the shielded
crew cabin in the nose, the reactor in the tail as far from the crew
as possible, a small tankage of conventional turbine fuel for take-off
and landing so that the reactor was only at full power in the air and
never near the ground, and thin straight wings free from the
encumbrances of fuel tanks, engines or undercarriage gear. The Air
Force wants atomic bombers of this kind for the same reason that the
Navy wanted atomic submarines: they could range the world without
refuelling.

But the Air Force faces one great technical difficulty that did not
trouble the Navy - weight. Even when the weight of reactor shielding
is cut to the minimum by concentrating on a radiation-proof cabin for
the crew rather than trying to block all escape of radiation from the
reactor, it still remains the biggest barrier to getting an atomic
aircraft off the ground. Mr. Donald Quarles, who was until recently
Secretary for Air, told a Congressional Committee earlier this summer
that reactor weight had increased so much above original estimates
that any plans for putting the aircraft themselves into production
should be dropped while designers went right back to what he called
"reactor fundamentals". And this was when the US Government was
spending roughly £70 millions a year on the project. This evidence
could be read as meaning that the aircraft companies will not get the
green light they want until there is a technical breakthrough leading
to lightweight reactor design.

These facts should be borne in mind when Britain is criticised for the
absence of a similar project here. In spite of the unlimited range
that only a nuclear plant can give, some scientists believe it is not
a development that should be undertaken at this stage. Mr. Cleveland,
who is in charge of Lockheed's atomic design, has himself suggested
there are serious health problems connected with the maintenance of
atomic aircraft because of the radiation leakage. Other experts have
pointed to the hazard that would follow the crash of an atomic
aircraft, whose reactor would almost inevitably be cracked open,
making rescue all but impossible and, if there were a fire, spreading
fission products downwind from the wreckage.

This article was originally published in New Scientist on 11 July 1957

Nuclear-powered drone aircraft on drawing board
a.. 19:00 19 February 2003 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition.


The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version
of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to
"loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a
target comes into its sights.

But the idea is bound to raise serious concerns about the wisdom of flying
radioactive material in a combat aircraft. If shot down, for instance, would
an anti-aircraft gunner in effect be detonating a dirty bomb?

It raises political questions, too. Having Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
almost constantly flying over a region would amount to a new form of
military intimidation, especially if they were armed, says Ian Bellamy, an
arms control expert at Lancaster University in Britain.

But right now, there seems no stopping the proliferation of UAVs, fuelled by
their runaway success in the Kosovo and Afghanistan conflicts. The big
attraction of UAVs is that they do not put pilots' lives at risk, and they
are now the norm for many reconnaissance and even attack missions.

The endurance of a future nuclear-powered UAV would offer military planners
an option they might find hard to turn down. Last week, the Pentagon
allocated $1 billion of its 2004 budget for further development of both
armed and unarmed UAVs.

Feasibility studies
The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has funded at least two
feasibility studies on nuclear-powered versions of the Northrop-Grumman
Global Hawk UAV (pictured). The latest study, revealed earlier in February
at an aerospace technology conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, concluded
that a nuclear engine could extend the UAV's flight time from hours to
months.

But nuclear-powered planes are not a new idea. In the 1950s, both the US and
the USSR tried to develop nuclear propulsion systems for piloted aircraft.
The plans were eventually scrapped because it would have cost too much to
protect the crew from the on-board nuclear reactor, as well as making the
aircraft too heavy.

The AFRL now has other ideas, though. Instead of a conventional fission
reactor, it is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum
nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage
particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several
energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV
would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a
jet of heated air.

The military interest was triggered by research published in 1999 by Carl
Collins and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas. They found that
by shining X-rays onto certain types of hafnium they could get it to release
60 times as much energy as they put in (New Scientist print edition, 3 July
1999).

Tightly controlled reaction
The reaction works because a proportion of the hafnium nuclei are "isomers"
in which some neutrons and protons sit in higher energy levels than normal.
X-ray bombardment makes them release this energy and drop down to a more
stable energy level.

So the AFRL has since been looking at ways in which quantum nucleonics could
be used for propulsion. "Our directorate is being cautious about it. Right
now they want to understand the physics," says Christopher Hamilton at the
Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, who conducted the latest nuclear
UAV study.

The AFRL says the quantum nucleonic reactor is considered safer than a
fission one because the reaction is very tightly controlled. "It's
radioactive, but as soon as you take away the X-ray power source its gamma
ray production is reduced dramatically, so it's not as dangerous [as when
it's active]," says Hamilton.

Paul Stares, an analyst with the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC,
wonders what would happen if a nuclear UAV crashed. But Hamilton insists
that although hafnium has a half-life of 31 years, which according to
Britain's National Radiological Protection Board is equivalent to the highly
radioactive caesium-137, the structural composition of hafnium hinders the
release of this radiation.

"It's probably something you would want to stay away from but it's not going
to kill you," claims Hamilton.





"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

Let's see, all we need is a water tank, steam boiler, turbine, some
uranium 235 or plutonium 239, plenty of lead shielding, a condenser,
and the will to cope with the radiation hazard in the event of a
mishap. Containment? We don't need no stinkin' containment. :-)

But weight isn't an issue in the micro gravity of space ...


SNIP

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:56:40 -0600, "Gig 601XL Builder"
wrDOTgiaconaATcox.net wrote in :

Instead of a conventional fission
reactor, it is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum
nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage
particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several
energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV
would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a
jet of heated air.

Interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium

So, it seems hafnium-178m2 is radioactive with a half-life of 31
years, equivalent to cesium-137. Are the byproducts subsequent to
X-ray bombardment radioactive also?

It would appear that the whole DARPA hafnium fandango is bunkum:


Conflicting Results on a Long-Lived Nuclear Isomer of Hafnium Have
Wider Implications
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-5/p21.html



Scary Things Come in Small Packages
The Pentagon says what Carl Collins is cooking up in his lab could
power the most devastating bomb this side of a nuke. A long list
of heavyweight physicists calls that dangerous bunk.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true



Ultimately, even the mavens’ attempts to repeat their earlier
favorable experiment were disappointing. In time – perhaps too
much time, it was only last year – annoyed scientists and aghast
politicians delivered a coup de grace. Bang! The lifeless body of
Pentagon-funded hafnium isomer research slumped to the laboratory
floor, its white coat sullied by Texas dust and latté spills. It
had breathed its last. Maybe.

http://agonist.org/20060709/a_journe...c_underw orld

Larry Dighera wrote:
ENTHUSIASM for the nuclear-powered bomber project in the United States
blows alternately hot and cold. Mr. R. E. Gross, chairman of Lockheed
Aircraft, one of the two companies with contracts to develop the
airframes (the other being Convair) has said recently that if the
American government were to give the "go ahead signal", Lockheed could
have an aircraft ready to make its first flight in the mid-1960s.

This article was originally published in New Scientist on 11 July 1957

Yep, when I was a kid, I remember building a (Revell?) model of a
prototype atomic bomber. We were so convinced back then that we'd
have atomic-powered everything... both automobiles and rocket ships to
the moon.

Thanks for the memories!
Kev

"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...

Larry Dighera wrote:
ENTHUSIASM for the nuclear-powered bomber project in the United States
blows alternately hot and cold. Mr. R. E. Gross, chairman of Lockheed
Aircraft, one of the two companies with contracts to develop the
airframes (the other being Convair) has said recently that if the
American government were to give the "go ahead signal", Lockheed could
have an aircraft ready to make its first flight in the mid-1960s.

This article was originally published in New Scientist on 11 July 1957

Yep, when I was a kid, I remember building a (Revell?) model of a
prototype atomic bomber. We were so convinced back then that we'd
have atomic-powered everything... both automobiles and rocket ships to
the moon.

Thanks for the memories!
Kev


Didn't the USAF take a working (albeit small) reactor aloft in a B29 "back
in the day?"

Jay B

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:25:14 -0700, Jay Beckman wrote:

Didn't the USAF take a working (albeit small) reactor aloft in a B29 "back
in the day?"

It was a B-36, not a B-29. One B-36H was modified to carry a 1
megawatt air-cooled nuclear reactor in its aft bomb bay. The
aircraft (redesignated NB-36H) made 47 test flights between
1955 and 1957, totalling 215 hours of flight time, with the
reactor critical for 89 of those hours.

The reactor did not provide power to the aircraft -- the
purpose of this program was to test shielding and radiation
effects on aircraft systems, and to demonstrate that it was
possible to fly a nuclear reactor around without irradiating
the aircraft's crew or the surrounding area.

The NB-36 was scrapped in 1958 after the USAF's nuclear-
powered aircraft program was abandoned.


ljd

Kev wrote:
Yep, when I was a kid, I remember building a (Revell?) model of a
prototype atomic bomber. We were so convinced back then that we'd
have atomic-powered everything... both automobiles and rocket ships to
the moon.

Circa 1960 I built two different atomic-powered bomber models. One was
by Aurora and had a single engine and a parasitic fighter for defense;
the other, by Hawk, had two engines on the wingtips, canard stabilators
and a pair of parasitic fighters. The closest anyone came to building
a real one was when a working reactor was flown in the bomb-bay of a
B-36 in 1955 to test the feasibility of a lightweight reactor with
minimal shielding. That was when little was known about the long-term
effects of even low radiation doses; atomic bombs were also being
considered for use in massive excavation projects such as dams and
canals. Imagine the fallout!

"quietguy" wrote in message
oups.com...

Kev wrote:
Yep, when I was a kid, I remember building a (Revell?) model of a
prototype atomic bomber. We were so convinced back then that we'd
have atomic-powered everything... both automobiles and rocket ships to
the moon.

Circa 1960 I built two different atomic-powered bomber models. One was
by Aurora and had a single engine and a parasitic fighter for defense;
the other, by Hawk, had two engines on the wingtips, canard stabilators
and a pair of parasitic fighters. The closest anyone came to building
a real one was when a working reactor was flown in the bomb-bay of a
B-36 in 1955 to test the feasibility of a lightweight reactor with
minimal shielding. That was when little was known about the long-term
effects of even low radiation doses; atomic bombs were also being
considered for use in massive excavation projects such as dams and
canals. Imagine the fallout!


I stand corrected, it was a B36 not a B29...

Jay B

"quietguy" wrote in message
oups.com...


Circa 1960 I built two different atomic-powered bomber models.

Shouldn't that read, "Circa 1960 I built two different models of
atomic-powered bombers." Otherwise I have to ask, do you glow in the dark
now?

("Gig 601XL Builder" wrote)
Shouldn't that read, "Circa 1960 I built two different models of
atomic-powered bombers." Otherwise I have to ask, do you glow in the dark
now?


"Let's go up to the schoolyard and blow up models with firecrackers."

"Naw, we'll simply shut off the reactor core's main 'coolant valve' in my
B-36, then sit back and watch what happens."

Ok, but if I get radiation sickness, I'm telling mom!"

(...you could still do that kind of thing in the 60's, and early 70's.
Actually it was encouraged - "Don't blow those things off around here, the
baby's sleeping. Why don't you run on up to the schoolyard if you're going
to be making a racket!")


Montblack