Author Topic: Nuclear powered airplanes.....  (Read 6801 times)

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Offline Kosh

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
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So you'll have a hard time to convince me that it would be possible to build an reactor to withstand such accelerations and keep an airplane airworthy.

I think you've got your terminology a bit mixed up there.

"The reason for this is that the original Fortran got so convoluted and extensive (10's of millions of lines of code) that no-one can actually figure out how it works, there's a massive project going on to decode the original Fortran and write a more modern system, but until then, the UK communication network is actually relying heavily on 35 year old Fortran that nobody understands." - Flipside

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Offline Mika

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
Quote
So you'll have a hard time to convince me that it would be possible to build an reactor to withstand such accelerations and keep an airplane airworthy.

That should have been along the lines:
You'll have a hard time to convince me that it would be possible to both build a reactor to withstand such accelerations and to allow the airplane to be airworthy.

Meaning that if such reactor is constructed, the weight of the encasing is so high that the aircraft will never take off, or, that the encasing will not withstand the acceleration without compromising structural failure of reactor containment.

Mika

EDIT: Damn typos.
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Offline Scuddie

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
I would say that if the airliner would be built to withstand the pressure, it could easily hold whatever encasing.  However, it would have a much denser mass over volume compared to liquid fuel.  This could be very detrimental to stability control, as the center of gravity would be far more concentrated.

But then again, I'm no pilot, so I don't know :p.
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Offline Mika

  • 28
Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
In the Convair B-36 related article it is actually mentioned that the crew protection is divided along the larger section of the fuselage because of the controlling reasons and flight dynamics. Aircrafts tend to create larger forces than submarines and marine vessels.

I'm not sure about the pressure withstandability; you can have a fighter colliding with the reactor wall, but what about when the reactor containment vessel itself is moving and the stress is applied only on a small surface area (its own weight basically)? This would be expected of a crash.

Mika
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
The official output is classified. It's enough to drive more than a thousand/two thousand tons of metal at better than 30 knots through water, though, plus various electronics including an active sonar capable of killing fish too close to it when it's on, so you have to figure it's perhaps half as powerful as a civilian plant. This means at least 20 megawatts, possibly more.

The thing is, yes, we've not had something crash an airplane, but you have to remember, submarines have been sunk with active reactors aboard. The Scorpion and the Thresher, and the Russians have lost a few too. As far as is possible to determine, none of them breached their containment vessels. The Scorpion and Thresher were both lost in deep water in the mid-Atlantic, and neither of them was capable of diving deeper than about 900 feet. (Furthermore, they wouldn't be that deep willingly, because that deep you can't tell what's going on on the surface because the thermocline layer over your head is in the way.) The water where they were lost was at least five times that. What is often forgotten about ships sinking is that they more or less fall the rest of the way to the ocean floor. It's not like dropping them from equivalent altitude, maybe a quarter of that. A ship hitting a rock bottom can look every bit as crumpled as if it had fallen onto a concrete surface from the air.

Scorpion's reactor containment vessel was confirmed to be undamaged when it was found...because the sub had hit the bottom hard enough it more or less pancaked and the reactor was forced out the top of the hull. Scorpion was, of course, brand new, and it is known that after ten years or so reactor containment vessels become very brittle because of constant radiation exposure. Nonetheless, it effectively fell the surface equivalent of 1000+ feet onto a rock surface without sustaining damage sufficent to breach the containment vessel.
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Offline MarkN

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
Quote
half as powerful as a civilian plant. This means at least 20 megawatts, possibly more.
I hoppe you realise that the majority of civilian nuclear plants are over 1,000 megawatts, and the largest civilian turbines are rated at 1,700 megawatts (and there are two of them off that reactor).
Compared with vehicle engines (even large ship ones) they aren't even the same order of magnitude.

 

Offline Mika

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
NGTM-1R, I really had to read your message several times during several days and I still have problems with understanding the information content in there. Could you clarify a couple of points:

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It's not like dropping them from equivalent altitude, maybe a quarter of that. A ship hitting a rock bottom can look every bit as crumpled as if it had fallen onto a concrete surface from the air.


Should I understand this as a statement that the energy released in dropping to the ground from 2 km height is about four times higher than when the same object drops 2 kms in water?
Again, I'm not sure if I understood correctly, but is it really stated that form defects of the ship have occured only when the hull hits the bottom?

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Scorpion's reactor containment vessel was confirmed to be undamaged when it was found...because the sub had hit the bottom hard enough it more or less pancaked and the reactor was forced out the top of the hull. Scorpion was, of course, brand new, and it is known that after ten years or so reactor containment vessels become very brittle because of constant radiation exposure. Nonetheless, it effectively fell the surface equivalent of 1000+ feet onto a rock surface without sustaining damage sufficent to breach the containment vessel.

Again, is it stated that the reactor was within the hull when the hull hit the ocean floor? Also, how it is deduced that the hull was pancaked after it struck the ocean bottom?

How is this related to nuclear powered aircraft? I believe the stress factors are radically different in submarine reactor shielding and in airplane, and the results of marine reactors cannot be compared to hypothetical airborne reactors - but I need to make sure I understood your post correctly before that.

Mika
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Offline Mars

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
Okay, I'll leave my opinion at this:

If it can be shown that a nuclear powered plane can be cheaper to run than other alternative fuels (such as hydrogen and bio fuel), will never loose containment as a result of a crash (even in say, a hijacking), and still be light enough to allow for a safe plane... then I'll agree it's a good idea.

BTW... good luck selling that to (silly) Americans, who won't even allow nuclear waste to be shipped in (indestructible) containers on freeways.

  

Offline Kosh

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
Quote
even in say, a hijacking

Actually in a hijacking it might be even better because you can just scram it by remote control.
"The reason for this is that the original Fortran got so convoluted and extensive (10's of millions of lines of code) that no-one can actually figure out how it works, there's a massive project going on to decode the original Fortran and write a more modern system, but until then, the UK communication network is actually relying heavily on 35 year old Fortran that nobody understands." - Flipside

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Re: Nuclear powered airplanes.....
Hey,

I've read the first two pages and skimed over the second two, so forgive me if I go over stuff that's already been said, but I thought I would add my $0.02 to this conversation.

A few things have come up here.

As already mentioned, with current technology the biggest problem with placing a reactor in an aircraft is weight. You can't just consider the weight of the reactor and its containment vessel, either. You also have to consider the weight of its support equipment. Nuclear reactors work by converting fission reactions into heat. That heat is then converted into power by means of a steam turbine. So you would need a turbine large enough to generate enough power to support 4+ engines. In order to do that safely, you need at least two separate enclosed systems (one for the heated reactor coolant and another for the turbine). You also need some way to cool the turbine water. Simply running it around the airframe probably wouldn't provide enough area to bleed the heat, especially at lower altitudes and slower airspeeds. You also would need a type of regulator equipment to handle the power conversion/transfer/etc.

The second issue with weight is the power-to-weight ratio of the motors. Piston and jet engines are very powerful for their weight. Electric engines generally cannot output the same amount of power for their size -and the ones that can require massive amounts of power. It would be more efficient putting a large diesel generator in a plane and run it like a diesel-electric locomotive. It hasn't been done because it's less efficient than current piston and jet engines, and weighs a godawful amount.

Also, in line of safety. If the reactor shuts down, that airliner now has NO engine power. If one engine shuts down... the airplane still has power to the remaining engines. Most jetlines are able to fly with only half their engines operational. Not well, but they'll stay airborn.

Someone else brought up the fact that props are not as fast as jet engines. This isn't exactly true. The Tupolev Tu-114 was turboprop powered and could fly as fast as all of the jet liners of the day (around 550 mph in the mid 1950's). Granted, today it's probably unlikely that even modern props will be able to reach high subsonic speeds, but they're not as slow as a lot of people seem to think.

Lastly, you'll see a lot of other kinds of transportation convert to nuclear or some other power before aircraft. There are so many more ways to make aircraft more efficient through engine and airframe refinements (anyone who's interested should look at what was done for the A380) that it's not financially feasible in any way to convert them to another fuel source. Automobiles burn far more fuel far less efficiently than aircraft.