Look! Up In the Sky! A Nuclear Reactor!

[Subdeacon Joe]

A 12-ton lead-and-rubber-shielded cockpit with windows 10-12 inches thick protected the flight crew from the otherwise lethal amount of radiation emanating from the reactor hanging in the bomb bay. Special water pockets installed aft of the cockpit also absorbed radiation.

Among the most audaciously hazardous concepts of the 1950s was the notion of installing an operational nuclear reactor inside an aircraft, a venture pursued by both the Soviet Union and the USA. The NB-36 ‘Crusader’ epitomized this daunting venture, representing a potential ecological catastrophe each time it ascended. Nevertheless, it managed to execute 47 flights. Its purpose was to evaluate the viability of managing a nuclear reactor during flight, serving as a preliminary step towards creating a genuine atomic-powered aircraft.

The NB-36 carried a three-megawatt reactor into the skies, and due to the extensive shielding necessary to protect its crew, it became the aircraft with the highest quantity of lead integrated into its structure, with the cockpit’s rubber and lead shielding alone amounting to eleven tons.

 

[Pat Riot]

Thanks Joe. I wasn’t aware of this. 
 

Can you imagine the uproar if a nuclear powered plane crashed?

Or worse, a new “reactor buster” missile designed to take out the plane and pop open the reactor over a city?

Nuclear weapons are supposedly “single point safe”. If a shape charge or directed explosive charge is used to destroy the warhead, in theory, the warhead should not detonate but the explosion would scatter radioactive material. 
I’m sure that doesn’t work with a reactor. 

In the Navy I slept 80’, as the gamma ray flies, from a nuke reactor. I came out of it perfectly fine…or did I? 
 

[Cypress Sun]

1 hour ago, Pat Riot said:

Thanks Joe. I wasn’t aware of this. 
 

Can you imagine the uproar if a nuclear powered plane crashed?

Or worse, a new “reactor buster” missile designed to take out the plane and pop open the reactor over a city?

Nuclear weapons are supposedly “single point safe”. If a shape charge or directed explosive charge is used to destroy the warhead, in theory, the warhead should not detonate but the explosion would scatter radioactive material. 
I’m sure that doesn’t work with a reactor. 

In the Navy I slept 80’, as the gamma ray flies, from a nuke reactor. I came out of it perfectly fine…or did I? 
 

 

While I'm sure that you have a certain "aura" around you, you don't glow in the dark...at least not in the pictures I've seen of you.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

2 hours ago, Pat Riot said:

Thanks Joe. I wasn’t aware of this. 
 

Can you imagine the uproar if a nuclear powered plane crashed?

Or worse, a new “reactor buster” missile designed to take out the plane and pop open the reactor over a city?

Nuclear weapons are supposedly “single point safe”. If a shape charge or directed explosive charge is used to destroy the warhead, in theory, the warhead should not detonate but the explosion would scatter radioactive material. 
I’m sure that doesn’t work with a reactor. 

In the Navy I slept 80’, as the gamma ray flies, from a nuke reactor. I came out of it perfectly fine…or did I? 
 

Yeah!  There's nothing the matter with you with you with you with you.... 

 

I don't see what that thing would be worth except as an experiment,  With that much weight in couldn't have a usable capacity for a payload much over a couple of lunches and a Thermos full of coffee.

[Pat Riot]