Nuclear-powered aircraft

thumb|right|The only US aircraft to carry a nuclear reactor was the [[Convair NB-36H|NB-36H. The reactor was never connected to the engines.

One inadequately solved design problem was the need for heavy shielding to protect the crew and those on the ground from radiation; other potential problems included dealing with crashes.

Some missile designs included nuclear-powered hypersonic cruise missiles.

However, the advent of ICBMs and nuclear submarines in the 1960s greatly diminished the strategic advantage of such aircraft, and respective projects were canceled.

The first operation of a nuclear aircraft engine occurred on January 31, 1956 using a modified General Electric J47 turbojet engine. The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was terminated by President Kennedy after his annual budget message to Congress in 1961.

Airships

There were several studies and proposals for nuclear-powered airships, starting with a 1954 study by F. W. Locke Jr. for US Navy. In 1957 Edwin J. Kirschner published the book The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age, which promoted the use of atomic airships. In 1959 Goodyear presented a plan for nuclear-powered airship for both military and commercial use. Several other proposals and papers were published during the next decades.

Soviet programs

Soviet nuclear bomber scare

The 1 December 1958 issue of Aviation Week included an article, "Soviets Flight Testing Nuclear Bomber", that claimed that the Soviets had greatly progressed a nuclear aircraft program: "[a] nuclear-powered bomber is being flight tested in the Soviet Union. Completed about six months ago, this aircraft has been flying in the Moscow area for at least two months. It has been observed both in flight and on the ground by a wide variety of foreign observers from Communist and non-Communist countries." Unlike the US designs of the same era, which were purely experimental, the article noted that "The Soviet aircraft is a prototype of a design to perform a military mission as a continuous airborne alert warning system and missile launching platform." Photographs illustrated the article, along with technical diagrams on the proposed layout; these were so widely seen that one company produced a plastic model aircraft based on the diagrams in the article. An editorial on the topic accompanied the article.

Concerns were soon expressed in Washington that "the Russians were from three to five years ahead of the US in the field of atomic aircraft engines and that they would move even further ahead unless the US pressed forward with its own program". These concerns caused continued but temporary funding of the US's own program.

The aircraft in the photographs was later revealed to be the conventional Myasishchev M-50 Bounder, a medium-range strategic bomber that performed like the United States Air Force-operated B-58 Hustler. The design was considered a failure, never entered service, and was revealed to the public on Soviet Aviation Day in 1963 at Monino, putting the issue to rest.

Tupolev Tu-119

The Soviet program of nuclear aircraft development resulted in the experimental Tupolev Tu-95LAL () which derived from the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, but with a reactor fitted in the bomb bay. The main purpose of the flight phase was examining the effectiveness of the radiation shielding. A follow-up design, the Tu-119, was planned to have two conventional turboprop engines and two direct-cycle nuclear jet engines, but was never completed. Several other projects, like the supersonic Tupolev Tu-120, reached only the design phase.

Russian programs

In February 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had developed a new, nuclear-powered cruise missile with nuclear warhead that can evade air and missile defenses and hit any point on the globe. To date there is no publicly available evidence to verify these statements. The Pentagon stated that it is aware of a Russian test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile but the system is still under development and had crashed in the Arctic in 2017.

A RAND Corporation researcher specializing in Russia said "My guess is they're not bluffing, that they've flight-tested this thing. But that's incredible." According to a CSIS fellow, such a nuclear-powered missile "has an almost unlimited range – you could have it flying around for long periods of time before you order it to hit something". Putin's statements and the video showing a concept of the missile in flight suggest that it is not a supersonic ramjet like Project Pluto but a subsonic vehicle with a nuclear-heated turbojet or turbofan engine.

The new cruise missile is named 9M730 Burevestnik (Russian: Буревестник; "Storm petrel").

Citations

General and cited sources

External links

Short overview of the NB-36 programme
Molten salt reactor experiment (initially intended for aircraft propulsion)
SOVİET TOP SECRET NUCLEAR AIRPLANE M-60 Akademi Portal by Akademi Portal web site (in English)
COMPREHENSHIVE TECHNICAL REPORT GE DIRECT AIR CYCLE AIRCRAFT NUCLEAR PROPULSION PROGRAM (in English)
"Flyable" Reactors & Neutron Coupling (in English)
Descriptions of the Tu-95 experiment: [http://vfk1.narod.ru/Tu-95LAL.htm] [http://www.testpilot.ru/russia/tupolev/95/lal/tu95lal.htm] (in Russian)

SOVİET TOP SECRET NUCLEAR AIRPLANE M-60 Akademi Portal by Akademi Portal web site (in English)
The Decay of the Atomic Powered Aircraft Program, retrieved 2009 Dec 21, includes a bibliography
Flying on Nuclear, The American Effort to a Nuclear Powered Bomber by Raul Colon, retrieved 2009 Dec 21
"A Scientist Preview: The First Atomic Airplane" by Gerald Wendt for 1951 a very good article with illustrations on the subject of using an atomic reactor to power an aircraft
"A Round Table Conference Looks At - The Atomic Airplane" Popular Mechanics, April 1957, pp. 100–105.