WHY DON'T THEY MAKE NUCLEAR POWERED WARPLANES?

>WHY DON'T THEY MAKE NUCLEAR POWERED WARPLANES?
They did and sound out it was pointless.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95LAL

>Wouldn't the strategic advantage of an aircraft with unlimited range, especially say in the case of a global thermal nuclear war scenario outweigh the potential hazard caused by the occasional training crash, etc.?
No

But you know that the jet fuel is used to raise the temperature of the compressed air by combustion, using the energy in the burning and heated gases to generate thrust. There will also be thrust from converting liquid fuel into gas by massive expansion

So you advocate compressing air and passing it over a hot reactor to try to generate thrust?

>Wouldn't the strategic advantage of an aircraft with unlimited range
No, it wouldn't, because aircraft endurance depends on a whole bunch of factors ranging from pieces wearout to running short on technical liquids. It's not just fuel.

I'm not trolling. The Russians now apparently have an intercontinetal nuclear powered cruise missile, proving that a compact nuclear generator can in fact be made to power a flight engine.

popularmechanics.com/military/research/a26214314/russia-new-test-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile/

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The exhaust alone would spread radiation everywhere.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)?wprov=sfla1

I'm not advocating that dumbass. That's exactly what they did. See and also Project Pluto.

Yes, it spews radiation everywhere. SAC considered that a feature, not a bug.

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That was 1955 though, technology has advanced dramatically. For example, now we have the fidget spinner.

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>I'm not advocating that dumbass. That's exactly what they did.
Then you are advocating exactly that. The ad hominem, however, demeans you. You're better than that.

1. Screeching about "ad hominem" on Jow Forums makes you a dumb fucking nigger faggot and nothing more.
2. You don't understand what the word advocate means.

Oh, like PLUTO SLAM did 60 years ago?

>crashes 1 plane during a training exercise
>irradiates the entire airbase

I've already seen you discard these points in the thread but that doesn't make them any less true. Your average nuclear reactor is far too heavy and generates energy (in terms of heat) to be useful as an aircraft propulsion system. The airforce's fast neutron molten salt reactors were close but still insufficient, the aircraft they were tested on were still weight down so much by shielding that they had essentially zero effective payload capacity. MSRs are also highly expensive pieces of technology, and their coolant/fuel mix is partially composed of a highly hazardous neurotoxic element Fluorine. In addition the reactor moderator is molten Beryllium, an extremely expensive and heavy element. Reactors designed for space might be just light enough but they use halfnium or halfnium carbide as neutron reflectors and halfnium is still heavy and expensive. An additional point is that nuclear reactors do unquestionably always have an attached risk of radioactive material being released when they're damaged, and while this danger is nowhere even in the same ballpark as anti-nuke hysterics claim it is, it's still more dangerous than the hazards posed by a non-nuclear engine failure. In addition there's an issue of exhaust shielding, direct cycle nuclear engines must draw cold air directly through the reactor, those channels have to be shielded to prevent exhaust from becoming irradiated, that means more weight and also inherent risk, if the shielding degrades your exhaust will irradiate the engine, aircraft, pilot and anything they fly over. Nuclear reactors lend themselves much better to applications as static large scale power producers or for applications in space propulsion where radiation shielding will already be a given for any long term projects.

>retard doesn't understand how nuclear propulsion works
>this guy gives him links
>he spergs out
Jesus Christ why is this board so full of rabid lunatics?

Be kind to him user, very few people know anything about nuclear energy period, much less a relatively niche field of nuclear technology which hasn't been brought to the public's attention in decades.

but he was literally given shit to read and he proceeded to make some schizophrenic ''rebuttal''
it's not just him, this board has a worrying number of outright lunatics
Armatard, Mandic, that retard who's in every thread about Russia and calls everyone a vatnik, previously it was battleship guy and glider guy...just off the top of my head

>cost is not a issue

all right, clearly you're an underage and have no idea how the real world works. please leave

Let me rephrase that then. I know that cost is an important factor in the U.S. military budget. If though you can afford to throw 2 billion a piece at an airplane, then the cost of a nuclear reactor should be the least of your issues. When the U.S. military wants an ultra expensive and high tech toy, it seems like they tend to find the money for it somewhere.

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Thank you for explaining that. That is precisely why I made this post, because I know next to nothing about nuclear technology and was hoping that more informed persons like yourself could explain why what seems like a great idea isn't in practice feasible.

It would make you think twice about shooting down the jet when its flying over your territory/city.

Within the bounds of reason you're correct, but something like a B-2 for example is bought and built for very exacting purposes and there are only 21 of them. F-22's cost 150 million, F-35's only 89 million (projected to continue dropping as more are made), the program to create aircraft nuclear turbojets cost upward of a billion dollars and turned out only a couple test reactors. I can't pin down a number with just a couple minutes searching but I don't think I'd be far off the mark to say that a fully mature nuclear turbojet would be in the $100 million range, that would make a nuclear F-35 cost more than an F-22, and a nuclear F-22 cost $350 million, more than the cost of two non-nuclear versions. B-2 bombers use four engines, that tacks on a significant $400 million dollar price tag to them. All of your pilots would need some level of retraining to operate their nuclear augmented aircraft because nuclear engines don't operate in the same way as gas turbine turbojets and the fighters would have to be maintained not only by the normal crews but also a bunch of specially trained nuclear technicians to care for, fuel, repair, and maintain their engines, they'd need storage facilities dedicated to them because of the inherent radiation hazard their engines pose to crew, technicians, and other equipment, a lot of populated areas would absolutely refuse to let the aircraft fly over them for any reason except an absolute emergency, plenty of countries would absolutely oppose allowing those fighters to operate in their airspace or train with them because they wouldn't want to risk an accident irradiating their territory or one of their own pilots or planes.

>wouldnt the added benefit of something that we already have worked around outweigh the potential mass disaster of the multiple crashes that it will inevitably have?
no.

a small nuclear reactor would cost so much that it would put the F-35s price to shame. the aircraft that contains it would cost just as much, if not more.

just one of these things would cost as much as an entire airwing, and have 10 times the maintenance.

1 fuck up and you have an international crisis

youtube.com/watch?v=xb7uZQ1_n4w
youtube.com/watch?v=w4MfrvMnnww
youtube.com/watch?v=0TzCPZyAmpQ
youtube.com/watch?v=udLJbSywzBM
youtube.com/watch?v=Dp-0Y8lQ-JQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quehanna_Wild_Area#Atoms_for_Peace

>requires rockets to get airborne
>requires additional items other than fuel to get airborne
>can not take off under its own power

Do you see where the issue is with this?

Aside from everyone else's points, mine is this:

What's the point?

What advantages are there with nuclear?

Functionally unlimited fuel, I get that, but it's not like you have any real reason to fly multiple circles around the world without stopping. Fighters make that worse, since the pilot is cooped up in a very compact space. Even with good waste management and plenty of amphetamines, it's just not very practical. You are also a massive spot on a radar, because of your excessive heat and radiation outputs.

About your only advantage would be to have a single fighter (or flight) able to escort long-range bombers. Except, the B-52 isn't the primary delivery method for nuclear hellfire. Sure, it can play a part, but ICBM's and SLBM's already fill that niche without pilots. You could make a nuclear airplane lighter and cheaper by making it into a drone, but now you have to worry about all sorts of electronic warfare losing you both the fighter drone and delivering it to an enemy state. That means it's not every-day functional.

>it's not just him, this board has a worrying number of outright lunatics
You are clearly one of them.

youtu.be/SCN59attPVU?t=48

Good name for the cruise missile because of the naval evasion thing. Detect and fly around radar pickets, under the horizon. There's a bit of a risk because of the low flight and the fragile engine. But you're a Petrel, a bird with a home in the most backwater parts of the ocean. Don't want a person in their they'll get irradiated and have to pee.

Yeah, I remeber seening that video. Is it for real though? Russia's operating on sort of a low budget these days though from what I hear. Do they even have the cash and capability to produce such a toy? It could just be all boastful hype and cool animation like America's SDI program of the 1980s. Did you know we had orbital anti-ICBM laser and missile platforms back in the 80s? Yeah right, good for conning the commies into throwing in the hat though.
youtube.com/watch?v=sMfmVzHZvkc

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They can

See: project Pluto - nuclear scram jet

Seems really dangerous though even if it didn’t kick out radioactive particles as part of its exhaust and more of a doomsday type weapon, when planes crash they burn and it would just kick nuclear material into the air

And planes crash, so you’d be asking for a mini fukishima by putting it into an aircraft

Not IOC , doubtful it works effectively...yet

To be fair, that 2 billion includes R&D costs; cost per bomber would have been a lot less if Congress hadn't changed their minds about how many to buy.

Yeah but that's never going to happen, congress will never operate above the level of the average lobotomy patient. The pathetic inefficiency of the government is a factor in cost which must simply be accepted as one of the fundamental forces of the universe.

Just like star wars, project pluto-slam was workable. Just not very efficient and way more ludicrous than even the most jingoistic hawks could stomach. But the vatniks bit and we out spent them, economically dooming them.

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Because air to air refueling means you already have practically unlimited range and can land at any friendly airport and take off again without anyone giving to shits. Plus unless you go full automated you're still limited by the pilots work rest cycle and no giving them a bunch of go pills doesn't improve performance it's just makes them think they aren't tired.

>is it possible
yes
>why don't they make them
They tried in the past actually, but don't do it anymore, because:
>size and weight
You can afford to put a big ass reactor on an aircraft carrier with a lot of shielding around it, not so much on a plane that needs to fly
>safety
crashing or getting shot down means a pile of radioactive material at the crash site, easily picked up and reverse engineered by people in whatever hostile territory you've crashed in
with boats that all sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is far more irritating to retrieve
>thrust
Your typical nuclear power plant actually just heats a bunch of water to drive a steam turbine to generate electricity. This doesn't fit on a plane, which means you have to do some fuckery like the nuclear scramjet thing they did with pluto to actually go anywhere. This has the added complication of making all your emissions radioactive, which is not what you want when you need to take off and land on your own base.

The upsides of ramjets several.
But first you've got to think like a pervitin addled kraut.

Low weight
Combine with an ejector duct, for turbofan type effect
Cat launch and skid land

>planes sit at the bottom of silos aimed into the sky with huge tracks for adjusting elevation and windage, like observatories
>pilots strap in and are shot out of a massive cannon as the ramjet spools up
>by the time the blackout ends and they wake up they are several thousand feet in the air and the engine is burning

I like this alternate future

It's too cool for school?

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Lol they dont have an active carrier or even a nuke carrier. The fuck they wasting money on a one way ticket bomb?

Cost of a conventional reactor will usually be north of $1bn usd. That and the weight of the coolant would make the aircraft unviable. It be either heavy demineralized water or more hilariously heavier molten lead and bismuth.

Shielding would be an issue.
Place a active fuel bundle at one end of a football field and run at it from the other endzone. Youd die probably just past the midfield.
While lead cooled reactors self cool the size is immense. That and thats just the reactor. Youd also need to convert the thermal energy to mechanical.
This is also ignoring what happens if a meltdown was to occur in the upper atmosphere and fills the world with cobalt 60 and other zany shit i dont want in my fucking thyroid and eyeballs.

Tldr
This is the size of a "portable" modern reactor sans turbine.

The nuke plane that flew in us testing was not active. Just in the plane.

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do you realize how big a nuclear reactor is? the equipment itself is too big, not even counting the concrete.

>So you advocate compressing air and passing it over a hot reactor to try to generate thrust?

The air is compressed by being heated. There's no need for pre-compression because there's no ignition or combustion, straight expansion engine.

>Firstly, do you know how nuclear energy works? The decaying isotopes generate heat, which in nuclear ships, submarines and power plants is used to turn water into steam and then use the energy in the steam to turn turbines, which, in turn either turn generator sets or propellers directly.
That's not true.
It's not decay heat in ships, and power plants. That's active fission.
The decay heat method is used for long term low power applications, like space probes and remote lighthouses.

Light and heavy water reactors are limited in max heat to the critical point of water, 372C which is the highest temperature water can stay liquid. The reactors need to keep the water liquid so it can act as a moderator and allow the fission chain reaction to happen. When it turns to steam you get two unwanted outcomes. First you lose your neutron moderation that ends the nuclear fission because nothing slows the neutrons down enough to allow them to be absorbed by the uranium. Second you lose most of your ability to absorb heat from your fuel elements which while no longer undergoing fission still have a bit of heat production; enough to melt the solid fuel containers.

So why do you care about 372C? That's a factor of your turbine design. In short the greater the difference between input and ambient temperature the greater your efficiency in converting heat into mechanical energy. Gas turbines need to compress the air first so that it have enough mass to turn the turbines and absorb the heat of the burning fuel. A normal gas turbine compresses air and heat it by compression to about 500C. Which is above the temperature a water reactor can run. That's why you can't use a gas turbine with a water reactor.

You can however use other reactor designs, like the molten salt reactor that allows temperatures up to 1200C. That was the reactor selected for the Project Fireball nuclear bomber program in the USA. The reactor used compressed air as the second stage cooling.

>highly hazardous neurotoxic element Fluorine
A fluoride salt.
It's as important a difference as the one between sodium and chlorine and sodium chloride.

>The air is compressed by being heated. There's no need for pre-compression because there's no ignition or combustion, straight expansion engine.
You still need to compress the air before passing it over the reactor heat exchange.

youtube.com/watch?v=2zD0m_ci-oo

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Read what I said dammit no combustion

The Russians tried doing this with thier bear bombers
Only one was made and they later abandoned it iirc

First off: Weight. Not factoring in the weight of the mechanisms needed to help the isotope generate electricity, most conventional isotopes used for power(Think Uranium, Plutonium) are considerably dense for the space they actually take up. Second is rate of generation. It would be very hard to generate enough energy using a nuclear reaction fast enough to power an engine that also goes fast enough for the aircraft to generate lift. Third, is the engine type. Since the energy nuclear reactions produce can only be utilized in electrical form, we would only be able to use a prop-based engine(Think turboprop/Piston) which would be greatly inefficient for a warbird. There's a reason all currently-used single-seat fighter aircraft are Jet-Powered

The shielding needed for a reactor of sufficient power is too heavy.

Let me put it this way. A nuclear reactor takes up a lot of room and not only are they big, but they are designed usually with safety factors of 3.

If you don’t understand what a factor of safety is, basically, solve a design problem to see what load something Can resist. Once you have that, multiple the load by the number and go with that resulting design.

Airplanes are designed at or very close to a safety factor of 1. So this big ass reactor is going to need to be safe and fly? This is just a really stupid idea

Too inefficient as fighters, mostly due to the fact that they ingest egregious amounts of fuel
Probably good for cruise missiles though

>Read what I said dammit no combustion
The compression is to have enough mass to make the turbine work efficiently.
You still need compression.

youtube.com/watch?v=DZHONQAMV48

>Is a nuclear powered aircraft possible and if so why don't they make them?
BREAKDOWN TIME
>How do planes work?
By burning a shitload of fuel to spin a prop to create thrust
>How do nuke botes/subs work
By using a nuclear reactor to generate electricity which is used to spin props
>What do nuclear botes/subs and regular nuclear power plants have in common?
They both generate energy by heating a shitload of water turning it into steam to drive a turbine on a generator, then use water cycled from the ocean to cool it back down and repeat the process

In this case, you can make a nuclear sub because they can just suck in as much water as you want for cooling.
Can't do that shit on a plane.
The most you could use is air for cooling, but that'd be much less efficient than using water
Not to mention you'd need a massive condenser chamber on the plane itself.
You can't just take liquid water, turn it to steam, and quickly back into water to feed into the reactor.
Without water, it all goes to shit.

There's a difference between something a human can fly in and something literally designed to be a nuclear bomb.
Sure, if you don't care what you've built is a fucking bomb, go for it.
Just don't expect it to make any flights after its maiden voyage

You can make reactors cooled by things other than water. Soviet Alfa-class SSNs used a liquid lead-bismuth mix, the first fast-neutron reactor built used mercury. One of the ideas pursued under the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was an indirect-cycle (as opposed to air-cooled direct cycle) reactor using liquid sodium. Never came close to being flight-ready, but they did make some interesting advances in liquid-metal turbopumps and lightweight heat exchangers.

Of course, liquid sodium metal brings its own issues, so the whole thing basically comes across as "how can we make a nuclear plane crash even worse?".

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They are possible, they did make them, and it wasn't worthwhile. Unlimited range isn't as much of an advantage as it was pre-ICBMs. It fills virtually no niche that isn't more safely done by a conventional airplane with aerial refueling.

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>shoot down enemy nuclear powered jet over your homeland
>town it crashes into is now an irradiated no mans land

Because, when pilots accidentally crash into populated areas today, they don't nuke the neighborhood.

>Lol they dont have an active carrier or even a nuke carrier. The fuck they wasting money on a one way ticket bomb?

There are two ways to fight against US. Asymmetrical or stupid. You just propose the second one.

There could be a turbine but I don't think its necessary. Subsonic Ramjets are an old thing that don't require turbines. There's a tradeoff between heat exchanger size (also possibly unwanted neutron moderation from jet gas) and simplicity. The old US ram engines had no turbines and a booster rocket can get Burevestnik up to a nice high subsonic easily.

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The ramjet gets compression by flying through the air fast enough to trap enough air to reach the required pressure. You still need compression.

Pic is of the nuclear engine.

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>"how can we make a nuclear plane crash even worse?".
Radioactive sodium makes everything better.

Possible? Yes
Practical? No
Nuclear reactors are heavy and what benefit you get from them is incredibly limited. Even if the fuel range is nearly unlimited, you still need to land for maintenance and get food and crew.
Nuclear drones might become a thing in a few years as spy planes that don't need to land, but not as a combat platform. Last thing you want is to irradiate the whole planet if it becomes a target

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if you just wanted a drone that never needed to land, you'd just make it a really light powered glider and throw a shitton of solar cells on the top, which is a thing that they have already done

Or you would make it a super sonic nuclear bomber designed to fly into enemy territory dropping bombs like Alex Jones drops truths. Then have it fly around at low altitude once it runs out of bombs knocking shit over with it's super sonic shockwave, while spewing radiation from an unshielded nuclear reactor.

Which do you think 1950s engineers would get behind? Solar powered ultralite or a supersonic nuclear powered ramjet of doom?

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As cool as the concept may be you don't need megawatts of energy on a fighter or plane (yet) as such little effort has been mad to implement something like a PBR on a plane and most efforts to implement a nuclear reactor are on propeller aircraft (hoping to electrically power the aircraft), actual nuclear propulsion (hoping to pollute the whole world and fuck everyone's steel production with high amount of atmospheric cobalt) or experimental (hoping to waste everybody's budget on useless tech).
Regardless even if they were useful now they'd not be used because all nuclear reactor and weapons that are not in movement are now locatable using the new advances in particles physics and the infrastructure that was developed for research, as such it's impossible to hide such a plane and would mean the enemy has a semi accurate count of the amount of plane and their position, not exactly a position that is envied.
>But user isn't there a higher need for energy due to energy weapon emerging
Yes and Lockheed already is working on a higher tech solution with their compact fusion reactor project which probably will take some time.
So yes nuclear powered aircraft will exist, odds are they won't use it for thrust just for other systems (FEL point defense, New higher velocity ramjet missile launch platforms and other funsies that use more than 1MW we can't play around with for now)
Also since that Lockheed project has "skunk works" slapped on top of it you know it's gonna be either a big switcharoo and never existed or it's gonna be real good.

>let jet nuke cities on its own
>shoot jet down, "nuke" countryside
hmm

In a word: shielding

cool vid man

i think biggest scare is the plane blwoing up and spreadng radiation but its a good idea in the 50's they had a plan for nuclear space ships

they said no cos it could escalate in to space war, they also did calculations that said how much cancer rates would increase if it was created and used and they calculated it would be huge

but the funny thing is there's a spike in radiation levels all over europe and usa and cancer rates have been going up.

The public have been against nuclear powerd space ships but not saying it's happening but saying it's is

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It was already done on the USSS Hillenkoeter.

>Muh projikt plootah
Useless piece of shit money sink that was never produced, finished or for that matter finalized and was cancelled for good after having been deemed obsolete.

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Because inevitably this shit happens. Where you don't want it to:
youtube.com/watch?v=182AepOJjMs

>weight of reactor
>weight of coolant/moderator
>weight of the radiation shielding, because if you don't shield it the pilot fucking dies
That thing isn't going up in the air.