nuclear powered aircraft

Maybe we have you just don;t know about it yet.

Nuclear power is still a pretty covert thing.

One big issue is the radiation from the reactor. You need a ton of shielding to protect people from it. If you plan on having a crew, it would be difficult to get that much weight off the ground. With a drone you only need to worry about the radiation when it lands though.

Nuclear reactors and their shielding is very heavy, which makes them unsuitable for planes.
Less so for trains, but trains already travel along stationary routes, so just put up electrical lines up along them, put a big, efficient, safe stationary reactor in a remote building and you have a nuclear powered train.

>>57601340
Because accidents happen and inevitably radiation would end up everywhere.

However I wouldn't put it past the Yanks or the Russians to have covertly tried such a thing already.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/10/01/why-doesnt-u-s-recycle-nuclear-fuel/#f34da4a7db4d
>jimmy carter banned the use of reusing nuclear material because "it could make muh bombs" and instead decided to bury nuclear waste instead
what a fucking idiot.

>>57601340
>why haven't we produced nuclear powered trains?
We could have a small nuclear power station on every train, which evaporates water into steam, which powers turbines to create electricity which is used to drive the motors of the train.

OR

We could have one big power nuclear power station, and send the energy down cables to the trains.

Putting a nuclear power station (even a small one) on wheels and tracks will be incredibly heavy. As you need tonnes of water, machinery and metal/concrete shielding. It will also be orders of magnitude more expensive, as well as less safe to have reactors travelling at 200mph.

There are literally no viable reasons why you would put a reactor on a train.

>>57601591
couldn't you easily house a ~~2mw~~ reactor, its cooling, and shielding in the size of a shipping container though? we really have progressed far in nuclear reactor designs.

after all we did successfully design and built nuclear powered air propulsion in the 50's. the aircraft themselves though were bulky and at the time, we where having a hard time overcoming it, but we slowly were advancing. Kennedy nixed it primarily because of ICBM's.

>>57601340
minovsky particles don't exist

>>57601681
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H
wasn't powered but it did successfully house a 3mw reactor that was powered and operating.

>>57601681
>couldn't you easily house a ~~2mw~~ reactor, its cooling, and shielding in the size of a shipping container though?

The shielding uses atomic nuclei to absorb gamma radiation. The heavier the nuclei, the better it is at absorbing radiation.
This means that even if it is possible to fit this all into the reactor, you will be using very heavy, and expensive elements such a lead, which will make that container insanely heavy.

It's probably possible, but the weight and cost of manufacture will make it unviable.
There are no real solutions for creating a small nuclear power station, as a key requirement is a lot of shielding. It's always going to be less economical than fuel or electric engines.

>>57601747
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
>Project Pluto was a United States government program to develop nuclear powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles.

whats awesome was that it was HIGHLY successful. it was only cancelled it because many in the pentagon became SCARED of the thing as there was no defense against it. we feared russia would start investing in a similar program.

>>57601747
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95LAL
russia had one too. they too axed it because of ICBM development. but they were progressing as we were.