| It has been done before. In the 1950s, both the US and USSR did some fairly extensive research into nuclear-powered aircraft, culminating in flight tests by a US NB-36H carrying an operational 3 MW air-cooled nuclear reactor and a Soviet Tu-119 with a reactor powering two of its engines. The US had progressed quite far in developing nuclear-powered engines, culminating in Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment-3 (HTRE-3), but the project was cancelled in 1961 before it could go much further, with the Soviet project being cancelled soon afterwards. [1] The program didn't solve all the problems that nuclear-powered aircraft could case, such as escaped radiation after crashes, but it did prove that crew shielding could be done safely at a low-enough weight that the concept remained feasible. Scientific American featured an article [2] a couple of years ago about some people's recent calls to resurrect the idea for commercial use. But the inherent safety risks remain a big issue. It's probably an inevitable development at some point, once the core problems have been solved. And with a new generation of high-temperature reactors emerging, such as South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, we may see reactors that are ideally suited to this sort of thing coming through. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft [2]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nuclear-pow... |
And oops ^^; should've checked for "nuclear aircraft" on wikipedia first. I dove into details without hunting for attempts first. Thanks for the summary!