Nuclear powered aeroplanes?

Links for Brit based nuclear a/c;-

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=ar&ie=UTF8&nv=1&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.castor.de/technik/atomkraft/08_1958/72.html&usg=ALkJrhgxjVPJVTQfSEERjKEpWphoNMu_zA

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,855.120.html

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,546.0.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_reactor

Miles aircraft went bankrupt in 1947 which was well before any interest in nuclear a/c.
Avro’s proposed a nuclear ramjet cruise missile similar to the US SLAM/Tory ii (better known as project Pluto)

Just ambling through the web and I came across this site selling downloads of various diagrams and plans of experimental aircraft.

On there, about halfway down the page is ‘Convairs nuclear-powered Saro “Princess” ‘
http://www.up-ship.com/drawndoc/drawndocair.htm
To me this looks like a contender for the project Pat Monk was working on, perhaps?

And judging by the various other nuclear aircraft scattered about this site Convair was quite prolific in designing nuclear aircraft schemes.

British work from approx mid 1950’s was undertaken by Avro, DeHav, Saro, Bristols (both engine and aircraft) and Rolls Royce. All aircraft work was paper based. On the nuclear side the Brits did a bit more with the high temp Dragon reactor at Winfirth but this was a very long way from anything which could fly. It probably showed the interest was more towards an indirect cycle engine. By the time Dragon went critical in 1962 all A/C work had ceased. There is a very good thread on secret project website which gives details of the Brit projects. Also I’ve seen a set of minutes from a conference in 1956 which was at attempt to get a Brit based project going but these were still marked as classified secret.

I tended to think that the main issue was lugging around the lead shielding to keep the crew safe. The Russians always seemed a little less concerned about that issue. However in the modern age of pilot-less drones, a power source for high range & endurance without the need to shield the pilot – could be interesting?

Protecting the crew in flight is only one of the issues. Reactors, even without shielding, are heavy. A direct-cycle engine spews radioactive superheated air, which is a non-starter in today’s environment. So you’d have to use a closed-cycle engine with a heat exchanger, probably liquid metal for efficiency, and that means even more weight – and space. So any sense it might make only works on a large aircraft where the reactor isn’t the majority of the mass-fraction of the craft – and drones are generally smaller for many reasons.

But even *if* you could make a practical case for it in flight, you have to land sometime. One of the issues with the NB-36H was that it was hot, radioactively, all the time. Even *with* the shielding they had the airframe around the reactor took high levels of radiation when the reactor was in operation. Even after the reactor was shut down the airframe remained radioactive with secondary activation. So the airframe had to be handled only by specially shielded ground equipment, and ground crew. And, of course, it was constantly irradiating everything around it so it made all of the gear radioactive over time too.

The costs of dealing with an atomic aircraft would be immense. Building and operating such an aircraft would make the B-2 Spirit look like a cheap child’s toy. And that’s without any accidents. Imagine an atomic drone crashing – especially on friendly soil. I expect nations would deny overflight permission just due to the risk.

Given the capabilities of today’s conventional drones, such as the Global Hawk and Reaper, and certainly ‘black’ projects like the RQ-170 Sentinel and others, there is no reason for an atomic drone. Mid-air refueling of drones is being developed to extend the range, at the same time engine and airframe efficiency continues to improve. And stealth shapes are maturing, as seen on the Sentinel, X-47B UCAS, and other project proposals from Boeing, Lockheed, et al.

Satellites cover the other end of the spectrum – long-endurance, wide field-of-view coverage. Dwelling coverage over one spot could be provided by rotating shifts of conventional drones (which is what is done today, termed ‘orbits’), or one of the many aborted plans to produce airships could finally proceed to completion.

The costs, operational complexity, and political environment would prevent the use of atomic drones.

I tended to think that the main issue was lugging around the lead shielding to keep the crew safe. The Russians always seemed a little less concerned about that issue. However in the modern age of pilot-less drones, a power source for high range & endurance without the need to shield the pilot – could be interesting?

I doubt this will ever happen with fission reactors due to the radiation risks involved, not just in the event of a crash but in everyday handling of isotopes. There is also the weight consideration of a) bio shielding and b) harnessing the heat energy from the reactor.
Even with fusion energy, the heat still needs to be captured and turned into motive power (steam driven electrical generators ? hot air turbines ? ) and although there are no nasty isotopes there would still be a need for a heavy bioshield to stop the nasty neutrons from frying the crew / pax.

All in all too dangerous, too heavy and too costly.

Precisely.

Can this work? Sure. Technically we could build an atomic powered aircraft. We had the ability to do so 50 years ago, and could certainly do so today.

But why? The motivation behind atomic power was range & endurance, primarily the desire to achieve unrefueled intercontinental range for bombers. (There were also nuclear fighter concepts which were even more radical and the focus there was to use the high energy density of a reactor for high speed.) But modern jet engines and routine mid-air refueling eliminated the motivation. With the ultra-high efficiency of modern engines like the RR Trent XWB, GE GEnx, P&W GTF, etc., and work on UHB turbofans and open-rotors, there is even less reason to consider radical concepts. Longer term work on electric aircraft, hydrogen fuels, biofuels, etc., eliminate any motivation to use atomic power in flight.

If you want to use atomic power in association with flight you’d better off building a fixed reactor and using atomic power to generate hydrogen from water, or to power biofuel reactors, or in the future to perhaps charge up an electric aircraft. Not to fly all of that mass around. That’s insanely inefficient, not to mention astoundingly dangerous. Even with modern air safety just one crash could be a major environmental disaster. Imagine what it would’ve been like if these designs had flown in the 50s or 60s with the higher levels of air crashes at the time. *shudder*

There were some concepts that made a little more sense, such as an ‘aerial tug’ concept. An atomic ‘prime mover’ would fly long term orbits along air routes, staying up nigh-indefinitely. It wouldn’t carry any cargo or passengers. Conventional aircraft would take off using normal power sources, then rendezvous with the tug and hook up, similar to mid-air refueling. The conventional aircraft would then shut down its engines and be towed by the tug, much like a glider. Approaching the destination the conventional aircraft would re-fire its engines, detach, and land. The concept was that a single tug could simultaneously tow an entire gaggle of other aircraft. But this raised the problem of maintaining separation between the towed aircraft. You’re talking about multiple airliners flying in close formation without their own power, being dragged along by the tug.

That’s a hair-raising proposition today. In the days before fly-by-wire and computerized flight controls it was tantamount to suicide. Computerized flight controls with datalinks and fly-by-wire might be able to automatically sustain a formation today, but 50-60 years ago it would’ve been white knuckle flight for the aircrews the entire time. Especially at night, or in adverse weather – or, worse, both.

Many ideas don’t survive their first encounter with reality.

A steam driven airplane? Sounds like something out of the goon show.

If you want to read a truly, truly awful novel about this concept, check out ‘Steambird’ by Hilbert Schenck.

Because of the paper I wrote in college and then posted online, some years ago someone mailed me a battered copy of this novel with a “You have got to read this” kind of angle. I did, and it was awful. The entire concept is so ludicrous it is like a bad accident scene. The idea is basically an aircraft powered by *steam turbines*, with the steam provided by a reactor, of course. The mass involved is just crazy. It is nothing at all like the actual atomic jet program concepts, which used direct heat or liquid metal heat exchangers to heat the air. This is more like an atomic steam locomotive, or nuclear submarine, with wings. On top of the concept being ludicrous, the writing itself is atrocious.

It is interesting primarily for the awfulness – like watching Manos: The Hands of Fate or Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Here are some more authoritative sources to read:
-snip-
http://www.megazone.org/ANP/tech.shtml

It is kind of amusing to see my old college paper cited as ‘authoritative’. 😉

To be more serious, it is an interesting subject and since I wrote that paper 20 years ago (sheesh) a lot more information has come out. And, of course, the modern Internet as we know it didn’t really exist at the time (Gopher, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, USENet, etc. ruled), so now it is easier to find more info and share what is found. I always thought the subject of atomic flight would make for a good book, covering all of the different programs. I’ve just never had the time and resources to write it myself. 🙂

The bibliography from the paper might make for interesting reading for those interested in the subject.

There are quite good diagrams explaining the planned method of converting nuclear-fuelled heat into motive force in the Aviation Historian issue pointed to up-thread.
Dave, remind me to show you the mag the next time we are somewhere with an internet connection (not that it addresses your question about British nuke projects).

But was it a British project they were talking about? I’m trying to pinpoint what it was that Pat might have worked on.

Hi All,
baloffski you are quite right I saw the same programme :eagerness:

Geoff.:D

Didn’t Discovery dedicate a ‘Planes that never flew’ episode to this? I remember something about High Pressure Steam being ejected from a ‘jet pipe’, though I may have dreamt that bit!

I doubt this will ever happen with fission reactors due to the radiation risks involved, not just in the event of a crash but in everyday handling of isotopes. There is also the weight consideration of a) bio shielding and b) harnessing the heat energy from the reactor.
Even with fusion energy, the heat still needs to be captured and turned into motive power (steam driven electrical generators ? hot air turbines ? ) and although there are no nasty isotopes there would still be a need for a heavy bioshield to stop the nasty neutrons from frying the crew / pax.

All in all too dangerous, too heavy and too costly.

At the risk of receiving scorn for quoting Wiki:

In May 1946, the Air Force began the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project which was followed in May 1951 by the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program. The ANP program required that Convair modify two B-36s under the MX-1589 project. One of the modified B-36s studied shielding requirements for an airborne reactor to determine whether a nuclear aircraft was feasible. The Nuclear Test Aircraft (NTA) was a B-36H-20-CF (serial number 51-5712) that had been damaged in a tornado at Carswell AFB on 1 September 1952. This aircraft, designated the XB-36H (and later NB-36H), was modified to carry a 1 MW, air-cooled nuclear reactor in the aft bomb bay, with a four-ton lead disc shield installed in the middle of the aircraft between the reactor and the cockpit. A number of large air intake and exhaust holes were installed in the sides and bottom of the aircraft’s rear fuselage to cool the reactor in flight.[44] On the ground, a crane would be utilized to remove the 35,000 pounds (16,000 kg) reactor from the aircraft. To protect the crew, the highly modified cockpit was encased in lead and rubber, with a 1-foot-thick (30 cm) leaded glass windshield.[44] The reactor was operational, but did not power the aircraft; its sole purpose was to investigate the effect of radiation on aircraft systems. [B]Between 1955 and 1957, the NB-36H completed 47 test flights and 215 hours of flight time, during 89 of which the reactor was critical.

[/B]

Here are some more authoritative sources to read:
Review of Manned Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program

Reactor Program of the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Project

http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/anp

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-powered-aircraft

http://www.megazone.org/ANP/tech.shtml

NB-36H in flight:

Yep, Wiki cites London as the source.

Whoops, danger of relying on memory!!!!!!! Just checked Peter London’s Saunders and Saro Aircraft, it says much the same.

Planemike

From Wikipedia’s Saunders-Roe Princess page:

“In 1958 information on the Princess was passed to the United States Navy who were looking at the possibility of converting the three stored aircraft to use nuclear power,[14] with a team from Saro visiting the US to discuss selling the Princesses. However, the plans came to nothing”

Hmm, maybe it was the Saunders Roe aircraft he worked on then, although I have no memory of him mentioning to me about working for them. Was Miles involved with Saunders Roe?

Apparently the project he was working on got the kibosh put on it because the Government decided it should not fly due to the risk of it crashing in a populated area.

Richard also said Pat reckoned he’d handled some sort of radioactive material personally, and had no ill effects from it.

I really wish Pat was still around, I’d love to talk to him about so much for his long career in aircraft design. he was a really fascinating man.

I don’t think the project was connected with SARO, well apart from using an an airframe they had built.

Planemike

I read this somewhere, but I don’t remember what in*. After WWII, Leonard Cheshire who has witnessed one of the Atomic Bombs on Japan, became so impressed with the power of the atom that he became convinced it was the way to power aircraft. To this end he lobbied the Prime Minister and others to build a prototype but his ideas were dismissed with a degree of embarassment. The idea was considered impracticable and his lobbying on the matter a mis-use of his celebrity status.

* Not sure, but it may have been his autobiography.

A steam driven airplane? Sounds like something out of the goon show.