The Atomic Airplane
whatisnuclear.com
whatisnuclear.com
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-8q8INxQEY
I also have a blog announcement of it if you just want to see some screenshots up front before deciding to dig in: [2]
[2] https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2025-02-03-declassified-nucle...
https://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/30938386375/from-the-cover-o...
https://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/30941448265/from-nuclear-pow...
https://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/30944519719/from-nuclear-pow...
https://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/30947450568/from-nuclear-pow...
https://xplanes.tumblr.com/post/30952419021/from-nuclear-pow...
"When you merely wish to bury bombs, there is no limit to the size"
For a real life example - Teller's Sundial design.
After dropping their bombs on Russia they were supposed to fly to North Africa and land on airstrips because England was expected to be gone.
A nuclear-powered airplane would most likely use a closed-cycle reactor with the heat replacing the combustion in otherwise fairly conventional jet engines. They’d be totally harmless in normal operation, with the radiological danger being if they crashed and scattered the contents of their reactor.
Similarly, nuclear thermal rockets like NERVA are closed cycle and pose no radiological danger unless they explode or crash.
And then there are open-cycle designs such as nuclear ramjets, fission-fragment rockets, and Orion. Those are bad news bears for anyone nearby, and possibly the entire planet.
" Specifically, he states "The reactor radiations, while intense, do not lead to problems with personnel who happen to be under such a power plant passing overhead at flight speed even for very low altitudes." In both documents, he describes calculations that prove the safety of the reactor and its negligible release of fission products compared to the background. Along the same vein of these calculations, the missile would be moving too quickly to expose any living things to prolonged radiation needed to induce radiation sickness. This is due to the relatively low population of neutrons that would make it to the ground per kilometer, for a vehicle traveling at several hundred meters per second. Any radioactive fuel elements within the reactor itself would be contained and not stripped by the air to reach the ground"
Orion is obviously incredibly bad due to the fact it uses actual nuclear detonations for prepulsion. But it's never been a very serious project, while SLAM has been built and tested.
It is pretty insane the power density you can get when you don’t shield a reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Nuclear_Aircraft_Labor...
my understanding is that the area is still a bit "hot" with radiation.
Yes, NASA&DARPA wanted to revive nuclear thermal propulsion and Lockheed Martin&BWXT were already building a demonstrator rocket for an in-space demo, but the Trump admin axed the funding...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonstration_Rocket_for_Agile...