Flying machine that relies on thrust generated from nuclear energy
This article is about aircraft nuclear propulsion. For the US Air Force program, see Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion. For the crystallographic feature known as an atomic plane, see crystallography.
The only US aircraft to carry a nuclear reactor was the NB-36H. The reactor was never actually connected to the engines. The program was canceled in 1958.
A nuclear-powered aircraft is a concept for an aircraft intended to be powered by nuclear energy. The intention was to produce a jet engine that would heat compressed air with heat from fission, instead of heat from burning fuel.[1] During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union researched nuclear-powered bomber aircraft, the greater endurance of which could enhance nuclear deterrence, but neither country created any such operational aircraft.[2]
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.[1][3]
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.[1]
In May 1946, the United States Army Air Forces started the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project, which conducted studies until the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program replaced NEPA in 1951. The ANP program included provisions for studying two different types of nuclear-powered jet engines: General Electric's Direct Air Cycle and Pratt & Whitney's Indirect Air Cycle. ANP planned for Convair to modify two B-36s under the MX-1589 project. One of the B-36s, the NB-36H, was to be used for studying shielding requirements for an airborne reactor, while the other was to be the X-6; however, the program was canceled before the X-6 was completed.[citation needed][4]
The first operation of a nuclear aircraft engine occurred on January 31, 1956 using a modified General Electric J47turbojet engine.[5] The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program was terminated by President Kennedy after his annual budget message to Congress in 1961.[1]
The U.S. designed these engines for use in a new, specially-designed nuclear bomber, the WS-125. Although President Eisenhower eventually terminated it by cutting NEPA and telling Congress that the program was not urgent, he backed a small program for developing high-temperature materials and high-performance reactors; that program was terminated early in the Kennedy administration.[citation needed]
In 1957, the Air Force and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission contracted with the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory to study the feasibility of applying heat from nuclear reactors to ramjet engines.[1] This research became known as Project Pluto. This program was to provide engines for an unmanned cruise missile, called SLAM, for Supersonic Low Altitude Missile.[1] The program succeeded in producing two test engines, which were operated on the ground. On May 14, 1961, the world's first nuclear ramjet engine, "Tory-IIA," mounted on a railroad car, roared to life for just a few seconds. On July 1, 1964, seven years and six months after it was born, "Project Pluto" was canceled.[6]
Airships
There were several studies and proposals for nuclear-powered airships, starting with a 1954 study by F. W. Locke Jr. for US Navy.[7] In 1957 Edwin J. Kirschner published the book The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age,[8] 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.[9]
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:[10] "[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.[11]
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".[12] These concerns caused continued but temporary funding of the US's own program.[citation needed]
The aircraft in the photographs was later revealed to be the conventional Myasishchev M-50Bounder, 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.[13]
The Soviet program of nuclear aircraft development resulted in the experimental Tupolev Tu-95LAL (Russian: LAL- Летающая Атомная Лаборатория, lit.'Flying Nuclear Laboratory') which derived from the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, but with a reactor fitted in the bomb bay.[1] The aircraft is reported to have been flown up to 40 times from 1961 to 1969.[14] 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,[15] reached only the design phase.[16][17]
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.[1] According to the statements, its first flight test occurred in 2017. The missile was said to feature "a small-size super-powerful power plant that can be placed inside the hull of a cruise missile and guarantee a range of flight ten times greater than that of other missiles." The video showed the missile evading defense systems over the Atlantic, flying over Cape Horn and finally north towards Hawaii.[18][19][20][21] 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.[22][23][24]
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."[25] 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"[26] 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.[citation needed]
↑ Thornton, G. (February 26–28, 1963). Introduction to nuclear propulsion: Lecture 1: Introduction and background. NASA Technical Report Server (Report). hdl:2060/19640019868.
↑ Atomic Airships by John J. Geoghegan. Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Aviation History magazine.
↑ The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age: The Past, Present, and Future of the Rigid Lighter-Than-Air Aircraft, Kirschner, Edwin J. Published by University of Illinois Press (1957)
↑ JURICH, LEO (1 January 1960). "The Nuclear Powered Airship". SAE Mobilus. SAE Technical Paper Series. SAE International. 1. doi:10.4271/600278.
↑ Soviets Flight Testing Nuclear Bomber, Aviation Week, 1 December 1958, p. 27.
↑ Aitken, A. (producer), Kerevan, G. (writer/executive producer), "The 'Planes That Never Flew': The Nuclear Bomber", Alba Communications (for Discovery Europe), 2003
A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets, that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at an approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high precision. Modern cruise missiles are capable of traveling at high subsonic, supersonic, or hypersonic speeds, are self-navigating, and are able to fly on a non-ballistic, extremely low-altitude trajectory.
A ramjet is a form of airbreathing jet engine that requires forward motion of the engine to provide air for combustion. Ramjets work most efficiently at supersonic speeds around Mach 3 and can operate up to Mach 6.
A jet aircraft is an aircraft propelled by one or more jet engines.
The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie is a retired prototype version of the planned B-70 nuclear-armed, deep-penetration supersonic strategic bomber for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command. Designed in the late 1950s by North American Aviation (NAA) to replace the aging B-52 Stratofortress and B-58 Hustler, the six-engined, delta-winged Valkyrie could cruise for thousands of miles at Mach 3+ while flying at 70,000 feet (21,000 m).
The Tupolev Tu-16 is a twin-engined jet strategic heavy bomber used by the Soviet Union. It has been flown for almost 70 years, and the Chinese license-built version Xian H-6 remains in service with the People's Liberation Army Air Force, with more being built as of 2020.
Nuclear propulsion includes a wide variety of propulsion methods that use some form of nuclear reaction as their primary power source. The idea of using nuclear material for propulsion dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. In 1903 it was hypothesized that radioactive material, radium, might be a suitable fuel for engines to propel cars, planes, and boats. H. G. Wells picked up this idea in his 1914 fiction work The World Set Free. Many aircraft carriers and submarines currently use uranium fueled nuclear reactors that can provide propulsion for long periods without refueling. There are also applications in the space sector with nuclear thermal and nuclear electric engines which could be more efficient than conventional rocket engines.
Tupolev, officially Public Joint Stock Company Tupolev, is a Russian aerospace and defence company headquartered in Basmanny District, Moscow.
The Tupolev Tu-160 is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing nuclear-capable heavy strategic bomber and airborne missile platform designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. It is the largest and heaviest Mach 2+ supersonic military aircraft ever built and second to the experimental XB-70 Valkyrie in overall length and top speed. As of 2024, it is the largest and heaviest combat aircraft, the fastest bomber in use and the largest and heaviest variable-sweep wing airplane ever flown. The Tu-160 is operated by the Long Range Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
The Supersonic Low Altitude Missile or SLAM was a U.S. Air Force nuclear weapons project conceived around 1955, and cancelled in 1964. SLAMs were conceived of as unmanned nuclear-powered ramjets capable of delivering thermonuclear warheads deep into enemy territory. The development of ICBMs in the 1950s rendered the concept of SLAMs obsolete. Advances in defensive ground radar also made the stratagem of low-altitude evasion ineffective. Although it never proceeded beyond the initial design and testing phase before being declared obsolete, the design contained several radical innovations as a nuclear delivery system.
The Myasishchev M-4 Molot was a four-engined strategic bomber designed by Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasishchev and manufactured by the Soviet Union in the 1950s to provide a Long Range Aviation bomber capable of attacking targets in North America.
The Convair X-6 was a proposed experimental aircraft project to develop and evaluate a nuclear-powered jet aircraft. The project was to use a Convair B-36 bomber as a testbed aircraft, and though one NB-36H was modified during the early stages of the project, the program was canceled before the actual X-6 and its nuclear reactor engines were completed. The X-6 was part of a larger series of programs, costing US$7 billion in all, that ran from 1946 through 1961. Because such an aircraft's range would not have been limited by liquid jet fuel, it was theorized that nuclear-powered strategic bombers would be able to stay airborne for weeks at a time.
The Tupolev Tu-95 is a large, four-engine turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform. First flown in 1952, the Tu-95 entered service with the Long-Range Aviation of the Soviet Air Forces in 1956 and was first used in combat in 2015. It is expected to serve the Russian Aerospace Forces until at least 2040.
The Myasishchev M-50 is a Soviet prototype four-jet engine supersonic strategic bomber which never attained service. Only one flightworthy prototype was built, which was first flown in October 1959. The M-50 was constructed by the Myasishchev design bureau.
The Tupolev Tu-95LAL experimental aircraft which flew from 1961 to 1965 was a modified Tupolev Tu-95 Soviet bomber aircraft, analogous to the United States' earlier Convair NB-36H. It was intended to see whether a nuclear reactor could be used to power an aircraft, primarily testing airborne operation of a reactor and shielding for components and crew. The reactor did not actually power the aircraft.
The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program and the preceding Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project worked to develop a nuclear propulsion system for aircraft. The United States Army Air Forces initiated Project NEPA on May 28, 1946. NEPA operated until May 1951, when the project was transferred to the joint Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)/USAF ANP. The USAF pursued two different systems for nuclear-powered jet engines, the Direct Air Cycle concept, which was developed by General Electric, and Indirect Air Cycle, which was assigned to Pratt & Whitney. The program was intended to develop and test the Convair X-6, but was canceled in 1961 before that aircraft was built. The total cost of the program from 1946 to 1961 was about $1 billion.
The Xi'an H-6 is a twin-engine jet bomber of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The H-6 is a license-built version of the Soviet Tupolev Tu-16 and remains the primary bomber aircraft of the People's Republic of China.
The WS-125 was an American super-long-range strategic bomber project during the Cold War to develop a nuclear-powered aircraft.
The Convair NB-36H was an experimental aircraft that carried a nuclear reactor to test its protective radiation shielding for the crew, but did not use it to power the aircraft. Nicknamed "The Crusader", it was created for the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program, to show the feasibility of a nuclear-powered bomber. Its development ended with the cancellation of the ANP program.
The 9M730 Burevestnik is a Russian nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile under development for the Russian Armed Forces. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the missile has an essentially unlimited range.
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