Nuclear powered passenger planes.

Tu95-LAL

http://www.history-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/evolution%20of%20technology/nuke.htm

There’s an interesting follow up to the Times article here at the Register.

“I spoke to the Times for an hour and a half,” he told the Reg. “I did mention the American tests – I said the idea of nuclear powered planes is not forbidden by the laws of physics, and it’s the sort of thing which could happen beyond 2050, maybe. That was it, two minutes. But it’s the only thing they wrote about.”

Ok not the most reliable source and the author, Lewis Page, is known for his less than partisan views of the British defense industry but interesting nonetheless…

I’ll let someone else answer the Tu95 nuke question…!

Zeb

While I am an advocate for government controlled public nuclear utility electrical grid power generation for the US and most major responsible governments; I am think it is absolutely irresponsible for a nuclear powered aircraft be developed or licensed. Flying aircraft is risky, inevitably almost always some of them crash, a crash of a nuclear powered aircraft would almost certainly involve an environmental catastrophe. I’m against nuclear powered aircraft. I think it’s a horrible idea. It was a horrible idea back in the 50s when they researched it, fortunately cooler more intelligent heads prevailed. I hate to see this horrible idea resurrected from the dead.

The Russians flew a nuclear powered Tu95. The crew all died in the following years.

I think you are mistaken. I think it was a different type of aircraft, and it was a prototype nuclear aircraft and I don’t think it ever flew in the nuclear ( hot) configuration. Much like the nuclear version of the B-36 I think it only flew in simulated modes. To the best of my knowledge no country has flown with a live nuclear power plant as a power source. To the best of my knowledge the only nuclear powered aircraft that flew were flown in a simulated nonnuclear powered fashion.

(I seem to stand corrected, it seems the Soviets may have flown a few hot live nuclear powered Tu-95 flights):eek:

One of the reasons I don’t trust nuclear fueled aircraft is I think a mishap might compare to the Palomares hydrogen bombs mishap. It was a major embarrassment, a thorn in the side of and ally, the cleanup took a major effort, cost a fortune, and yet there still seems to be some possibly threatening contamination left.

This is one of the many reasons that I wouldn’t trust a parachute for a nuclear reactor.

NASA Orion Parachute Crash Shuttle Replacement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt3YTXneWVE

Another reason a parachute might not work is if there was a reactor or overheat/meltdown incident, that might disable the parachute. If a reactor is breached in flight the contaminated area could dwarf the Palomares mishap.

The Russians flew a nuclear powered Tu95. The crew all died in the following years.

I just found this vision from the late 50s this on a site which sells vintage plastic model kits. It’s a bit before my time and had never seen it before…
Its description mentions the small single seat booster rocket to help it get off the ground.
No safety issues there…:) but I’m sure I would feel better if International Rescue were available for help should the need arise.

Sadly, the anti-nuke greens will have us with horse & buggys (pitting them in a pitched battle with PETA? :D) before a nuke airliner ever flies.

It will no doubt be something that happens in the future, I suppose its just a case of ‘when’.

Nuclear-powered aircraft may sound like a concept from Thunderbirds, but they will be transporting millions of passengers around the world later this century

I believe I have mentioned this before in a previous thread a while back, but if we had something like Fireflash in operation today, a flight from London to New York would take under an hour (:cool:), which is a significant improvement on the length of flights nowadays, and will obviously help to keep the environmentalists happy because the aircraft will not be polluting the sky for as long as they do now!

When they do come round to it, all designers will need to do is to look at the spec of this a/c…and hey presto!:D