Uk. Nuclear Powered Aircraft Design Concepts ...

[TsrJoe]

... the development of a nuclear powered Saunders Roe Princess is relativly well documented, a joint UK./US. programme for an airborne powerplant testbed, the US. portion being managed by Martin Aircraft. All of which via the Convair NB.36/X.6 eventually utilised, leading to the design of the Convair NX.2 series of nuclear powered bomber designs...

... the Uk. side however were thinking of somat along more imaginative lines...

[TsrJoe]

and this one possibly to specification OR.330 ...

[TsrJoe]

'Low Altitude Tactical Bomber' ...


MDF. former with assembled vacuform shells ...

[Sisko]

I work with radiation for a living and the idea of a flying reactor scares the crap outta me!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great stuff BTW

[B777LR]

I work with radiation for a living and the idea of a flying reactor scares the crap outta me!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great stuff BTW

Da Glorious Soviet Union made a nuclear powered Tu-95 Bear  Of course, none of the crew lives today (i wonder why )

[Archibald]

it was the Tu-119. No survivor at all...    

[B777LR]

Found this one as well:

"Between 1946 and 1961, the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission spent more than $7 billion trying to develop a nuclear-powered aircraft. Although no airplane ever flew under nuclear power, the Air Force converted a B-36 bomber, known as the Nuclear Test Aircraft, to carry an operating three-megawatt air-cooled reactor to assess operational problems (it made 47 flights over Texas and New Mexico between July 1955 and March 1957). The NB-36H carried the reactor in its aft bomb bay and incorporated a new nose section, which housed a 12 ton lead and rubber shielded crew compartment with 10-12 inch (25-30 centimeters) thick leaded-glass windows. Water pockets in the fuselage and behind the crew compartment also absorbed radiation (due to weight constraints, nothing was done to shield the considerable emissions from the top, bottom or sides of the reactor)."

http://www.airbornegrafix.com/HistoricAirc.../nb36_title.jpg

[frank2056]

I knew one of the engineers who worked on the nuclear B-36 and he said one of the problems they encountered was radiation damage to the insulation on the wiring in the instruments they had monitoring the reactor.  

He mentioned that even then, they thought that the idea was more than a little nutty and he wasn't too sorry when the project was canceled.  

[Graham1973]

Firstly an apology for bumping an old thread. But one thing that has never been considered about Nuclear powered aircraft is the ground facilities, I think that the only country that got close to this was the US which built a specialised hanger in Idaho (& may have planned one for Edwards Airforce base) before the project was canceled.

See:

http://www.idahoptv.org/buildingbig/buildings/ineel.html

for a picture of the hangar under construction. a 5000m (15,000ft) long runway was also supposed to be constructed on site, but the X-6 project was canceled before it was completed.

[pyro-manic]

I seem to recall reading a little about the handling problems on aircraft carriers that were pondered at the time of the NX-2 recently - a complete nightmare seemed to be about the long-and-short of it! I don't think many crews would have been too keen to work on or around any nuclear-powered aircraft. To say nothing of the problems that would be caused in the event of a crash...

Did you ever finish your build, TSRJoe? And where did you get the drawings from?

[TsrJoe]

Hi there, the drawings came from the Avia files series papers on Nuclear Propulsion at the National Archives, Kew (the rebranded Public Records Office)

I had an interest in the concept as a nuclear powered low altitude tactical bomber was mooted around the Gor.339 spec which led to TSR.2, unfortunately the appendix which should have had a ga. of the design had been weeded and the file incomplete (a common issue with PRO. files)

The model i think is in a box 'somewhere', il dust it off and take some snaps of it


cheers, Joe

[PR19_Kit]

As a side issue on this, that page with the hangar being built says lower down that 'Arco, 18 miles west on highway 20, was the first city in the world to be lighted from electricity generated by nuclear power.'

I'd beg to differ on that as the first nuclear power station built to supply power to a grid is right opposite my house at Berkeley on the River Severn. That'd make Stroud or Dursley a good candidate for the above claim as they're the two nearest towns to the power station and the electricity would have got there first.