@cvbnet.prime.com:rcowles%edg.cv.co.uk@cvb.prime.com (roger cowles {cv-aec penn st x306}) (11/14/89)
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 <insert author as I forgot to check last
night>, 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 !!
RojMJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM (11/21/89)
From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM >From the posting by Roger Cowles, on /Steam Bird/ (fictionalized account of nuclear powered aircraft program): > 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, . . . What!? Hard to see how rolling would lead to significant, or any, compression. > . . .causing a fairly major nuclear explosion. Getting an implosion-type weapon to work is *hard*; there is no chance that suitable compression would occur by accident. > 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. Bombers need more to say aloft than fuel; maintenance comes to mind. Anyone know, for example, how long B-52s can be expected to stay airborne with unlimited in-flight refueling? Mark
jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky) (11/29/89)
From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky) Quite by chance I ran across an article on the nuclear powered airplane project, which comes up occassionally in this newsgroup. I've never seen anyone actually cite any references on this, so I thought it might be useful to pass this along. The article is: Ulrich Albrecht, "The Nuclear-Propelled Bomber --- A Faked Arms Race Between the US and USSR", pps. 127-164 in Hans Gunter Brauch, editor, MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, ARMAMENTS, DYNAMICS, AND DISARMAMENT MacMillan Press Ltd., London, 1989. I didn't read the article, but in the first paragraph the author says it was clear from the start the thing could never work. This article cites two other sources, which appear to be key references. The most important government report on the project was: REVIEW OF MANNED AIRCRAFT NUCLEAR PROPULSION PROGRAM, Report to Congress by the Comptroller General, Washington DC February 1963, GA 1.13 N8813 (this last looks like a Superintendent of Documents number, a cataloging system used for US government documents). There was something called the "Darley Memorandum" which gave the rationale for building the thing. It was reprinted in full in AVIATION WEEK, 16 March 1959. - Jonathan Jacky, University of Washington