Future of Nuclear Power

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>>34674866
>What are the implications of a future where nuclear power is made compact and reliable enough to power many military vehicles and equipment?
Thunderbirds, but with more guns

>>34674866
There's literally never going to be an atmospheric nuclear aircraft ever again.

unmanned solar UAV's like the UK's zypher will fulfill that role for less money, in a safer and more effective way.

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>>34674941

Solar power is quite limited beyond light recon roles.

Imagine strategic airlifters with massive thrust capabilites only needing to refuel every thirty years. Spooky gunships capable of raining down gigawatts of energy. Would military requisitionists be capable of resisting such possibilities?

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>>34674913

>Ramjets
>Ramjets everywhere

I'm not sure the illustrator knew what ramjets are. I love it regardless.

>>34674999
Nuclear power in aircraft does not equal unlimited thrust, only unlimited fuel.

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>>34674866
>tanks with compact fusion reactors capable of powering formidable directed energy or magnetic acceleration weapons, etc.?
>Compact fusion reactors
>Compact
>Fusion
>Reactor

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>>34675057

Indeed. This would be the main advantage.

>>34675068

Humor me.

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>>34675068
>Nuclear powered tanks
>"Compact nuclear reactors" are still massive
>Make massive unwieldy tanks
>Tank would normally sink to the ground under its own weight but we have space magic
40k in a nutshell

>>34675107
You know, I'm sensing a particular lack of...dakka in this picture.

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>>34675107

Boeing has claimed to have a fusion reactor that could fit inside a semi trailer in development that we could see to fruition in a couple decades.

Multiply that by an order of magnitude, and it may be in the realm of possibilities... and then, what's to keep the from getting smaller? Except for thermodynamics and material science and such.

>>34675039
Like 99% of the tech explanations in thunderbirds are hilariously wrong, though even TB2, the fat, slow thunderbird, has an insanely high speed (cruising 2000 mph, 5000 mph max) to justify IR being able to work the way they do, so oddly enough ramjets make sense.

On the other hand, the show was made in 1965, and the books are based on the models, so either ramjet tech may not have been widely known enough that the creators would know what they look like (and that they wouldn't have vented intakes and turbine blades), or they just went with vaguely right words, seeing as the models are basically untouchable - after all, they're the real stars of thunderbirds

>>34675137

*Multiply the time til technological maturity, I mean to say

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>>34675118
If you are willing to go to even more retarded designs you can always get a titan. This is an imperator class titan which basically fires tactical nukes from a huge ass gatling gun.
https://youtu.be/6z0klMZ7r8M?t=209
Walking cathedrals mang

>>34675039
>>34675143
nvm, I just had another look.
Literally everything is ramjets. Oh well, guess they just liked the word

>>34674866
the fallout universe

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>>34675205

With better writing, I'd hope.

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>>34675167

I like it almost as much as SCRAMJET

>>34674866
I'd wager that nuclear will really see it's glory days in space travel where Nuclear Thermal Rockets deliver enough high acceleration to get people to-and-fro quickly while still greatly surpassing chemical burning rockets in terms of efficiency. Nuclear scales well with increases in size but at the smaller scale it still demands large quantities of shielding and it requires steam turbines to produce electricity. This is why it probably won't be used to power directed energy weapons in tanks or planes, because the reactor gets it's power by circulating high pressure steam or coolant over turbines and the tanks of coolant, cooling systems, and turbines take up more space than the reactor itself. While nuclear jet engines do function they're extremely heavy (due to the necessary amounts of shielding to protect the lives of pilots and passengers) and expel plumes of radioactive exhaust which no civilian or military group would tolerate. Nuclear will almost certainly dominate electricity generation in the future because it's so dramatically superior to "green" energy or fossil fuel energy, and it will dominate space because the fuel is so light for the amounts of energy it can pump out plus it's useful applications for space based propulsion systems, however I don't believe tanks or aircraft will ever be powered by a nuclear reactor.

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This man's ghost won't allow it.