ATOMIC PLANES IN THE WORKS?

The first line sure is juicy: “After more than six decades of research, the first atom-​​powered air­plane is cleared for take­off.“
And even if the sub­stance doesn’t quite back up the tan­ta­liz­ing intro in the cur­rent Popular Mechanics — which it doesn’t — this is still an inter­est­ing con­cept.
The attrac­tion of a nuclear plane is that it doesn’t run out of fuel. Convert a drone to atomic power, and it could stay aloft just about for­ever, the think­ing goes.
The nuclear drone wouldn’t have a tra­di­tional fis­sion reac­tor, run­ning on ura­nium or plu­to­nium. Instead, it would be pow­ered by hafnium-​​178.
“In the late 1990s, researchers at the University of Texas in Dallas made a remark­able and unex­pected dis­cov­ery about [halfnium],” the mag­a­zine says. “When they bom­barded the metal with ‘soft’ X-​​rays like those your den­tist uses to exam­ine your teeth, the metal released a burst of gamma rays 60 times more pow­er­ful than the X-​​rays.“
This reac­tion could be safer than con­ven­tional ones, the mag­a­zine argues.
“The gamma ray out­put drops pre­cip­i­tously the moment power to the X-​​ray machine is turned off… Since it pro­duces only gamma radi­a­tion, less shield­ing is required. And should an acci­dent occur, there is less of an envi­ron­men­tal con­cern than with fis­sion. Hafnium-​​178 has a half-​​life of only 31 years com­pared to thou­sands of years for other reac­tor fuels. In addi­tion, unlike ura­nium or plu­to­nium, hafnium-​​178 can­not sup­port a chain reac­tion, which means it can­not be used to make rogue nuclear weapons.“
But, despite the poten­tially attrac­tive fea­tures, an atomic drone is nowhere near take­off.
“Project man­agers for Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory tell Popular Mechanics they have begun dis­cus­sions that could lead to the con­ver­sion of a Global Hawk [drone] to a nuclear-​​powered air­craft They have not yet signed a con­tract to con­vert a Global Hawk to nuclear power, they are aware of dis­cus­sions tak­ing place within the Air Force.” (empha­sis mine)
THERE’S MORE: Some sci­en­tists are pour­ing cold water all over the halfnium idea, reader MS points out. “May not make phys­i­cal sense,” was the opin­ion of 5 of 12 Pentagon researchers appointed to look into halfnium bombs.
AND MORE: Defense Tech “deserves bet­ter than Popular Mechanics doing a fair imi­ta­tion of the National Inquirer,” says Los Alamos con­sul­tant and nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion expert Russell Seitz.
With so-​​called “iso­mers” like halfnium-​​178, he writes, “energy has both to be put in and got­ten out. The mere fact that more and bet­ter physi­cists using fiercer x-​​ray sources and more sen­si­tive gamma detec­tors can’t get any sig­nal out of the same iso­topes — even upon many exper­i­men­tal iter­a­tions and vari­a­tions — sat­is­fies me that [this] is just another exam­ple of the eco­nom­ics of desire.“
AND MORE: The Defense Department was look­ing at atomic planes back in the 1940’s, reader JM notes, with a project called “Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft,” or NEPA. And for a year or so, the Pentagon con­sid­ered irra­di­at­ing human test sub­jects, to see how much nuclear expo­sure pilots could take. After Manhattan Project sci­en­tist Dr. Joseph Hamilton pointed out that such exper­i­ments would have “a lit­tle of the Buchenwald touch,” the idea was finally, and thank­fully, dropped.

May 19th, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.