Best bad idea ever? Why Putin’s nuclear-powered missile is possible… and awful, Nuclear-powered cruise missiles? The US worked on them in the 1950s. Ars Technica, SEAN GALLAGHER–In a March 1, 2018 speech before Russia’s Federal Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed new strategic weapons being developed to counter United States ballistic missile defenses. Two of these weapons are allegedly nuclear powered: a previously revealed intercontinental-range nuclear torpedo and a cruise missile. As Putin described them:
Russia’s advanced arms are based on the cutting-edge, unique achievements of our scientists, designers, and engineers. One of them is a small-scale, heavy-duty nuclear energy unit that can be installed in a missile like our latest X-101 air-launched missile or the American Tomahawk missile—a similar type but with a range dozens of times longer, dozens—basically an unlimited range. It is a low-flying stealth missile carrying a nuclear warhead, with almost an unlimited range, unpredictable trajectory and ability to bypass interception boundaries. It is invincible against all existing and prospective missile defense and counter-air defense systems.
Defense and nuclear disarmament experts did a double take. “I’m still kind of in shock,” Edward Geist, a Rand Corporation researcher specializing in Russia, told NPR. “My guess is they’re not bluffing, that they’ve flight-tested this thing. But that’s incredible.”
This is not the first time a government has worked on a nuclear-powered strategic weapon. Decades ago, the US developed engines first for a proposed nuclear-powered bomber and then for a hypersonic nuclear cruise missile. The US has also examined nuclear-powered rockets for space flight (that crazy Project Orion thing is a story for another time). These programs were all dropped, not because they didn’t work but because they were deemed impractical.
Oh… and there was always that small problem of radiation spewing from the engine exhaust.
So when Putin announced that Russia has tested the cruise missile engine successfully, it got us thinking about those past experiments in nuclear propulsion. Is it actually possible to create a nuclear reactor small enough and powerful enough to propel a cruise missile? We broke out our calculators, checked some engine ratings, and asked some experts in the field of nuclear physics.
Not everyone is sure that Russia is really this far along in developing a nuclear-powered cruise missile. But there’s plenty of evidence that they’re trying hard. An unnamed Defense Department source told Fox News recently that Russia had already crashed several test missiles in the Arctic. Other sources have suggested that the engines are still in testing and have thus far only been run with electric power.
Nuclear-powered flight is certainly possible, but it’s a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons. To understand how possible, yet horrible, it is, let’s consider the history of this absolutely insane but perfectly workable idea.
Blame Enrico FermiThe whole adventure into flying nuclear reactors began in 1942……………
The doomsday route
But even as nuclear-powered crewed aircraft were being abandoned, another bizarre chapter in nuclear aircraft propulsion was just getting started: Project Pluto…………….
At the same time Kennedy was scrapping the ANP program, the Livermore crew was finishing construction of a $1.2 million (in 1961 dollars) test facility at Jackass Flats, Nevada—Area 25 of the Nevada National Security Site. Jackass Flats has been home to all sorts of open-air testing of nuclear and ballistic missile systems, as well as depleted uranium weapons; it was also the proposed launch site for another bit of nuclear mad science, Project Orion—the idea of launching something into space using nuclear bombs as “pulse” propulsion.
Working with Vought, the aircraft company that built some of the US military’s earliest cruise missiles, Livermore researchers determined the requirements for the Pluto engine reactor:………..
The Soviet route
As with the US defense industry, the Soviets had competing design bureaus attempting to create nuclear aircraft. And just as with the US programs, the Soviets tried two different routes to nuclear-powered bombers. Neither design ever flew……….The only place the M-60 ever flew was on the pages of Aviation Week in 1958, where diagrams of the aircraft were run with an article claiming that a nuclear-powered supersonic bomber was being tested in the Soviet Union. It was an elaborate hoax………
Crawl out of the fallout
That wasn’t the end of nuclear-powered flight ideas, of course. NASA funded research into nuclear-powered thermal rockets in the 1960s and 1970s, and discussion of that sort of technology continues today as an option for interplanetary missions. But most people agreed that the risks of flying radiation-powered vehicles inside Earth’s atmosphere was too high even to consider testing them—that is, until the Russian Federation’s leadership decided the US was pushing the nuclear balance too far in its own favor.
It’s not clear whether the nuclear cruise missile engine Putin mentioned in his speech has been tested yet. Russian news outlet Vedomosti quoted a source in Russia’s military industry as saying that tests thus far have used “an electrical layout” to test the missile’s engine and not an actual nuclear reactor. But Russia does not appear to have been working hard on miniaturizing nuclear reactors.
Small-reactor technology has been advancing rapidly over the past decade. The US military has looked into using small modular reactors to power high-energy weapons and bases overseas. Other countries, including Russia, have continued research into molten-metal cooled reactors; it is rumored that the “Status-6” nuclear-powered “torpedo” Putin discussed in his speech is powered by a lead-bismuth reactor.
Putin said that the “innovative nuclear power unit” of Status-6 completed testing in December 2017 after a “test cycle that lasted many years.” Russia has been developing new reactors with lead-bismuth coolant for naval applications. Soviet “Alfa” class attack submarines were powered by lead-bismuth reactors, which are very tricky to maintain but deliver high power-to-weight ratios; the original test reactor for the “Alfa” class design (KM-1 in Sosnovy Bor) was decommissioned a year ago, and a new type of reactor was installed in its place.
A lead-bismuth reactor’s power-to-weight ratio may be perfect for a small drone submarine, but it may not be the ideal form for a missile’s engine. However, the thrust required to keep a cruise missile in flight is nowhere near what would be needed for a hypersonic missile or even a subsonic bomber.
The Williams F107 turbofan that powers the Tomahawk cruise missile puts out a thrust of 3.1 kiloNewtons (700 pounds). To fly the Tomahawk at its cruising speed of 550 mph (890 km/h), that means generating about 766 kilowatts of power. That’s well within the potential power range of a small modern nuclear reactor, according to Jeff Terry, professor of physics at Illinois Institute of Technology and an energy researcher. “One megawatt is certainly doable,” Terry said, since the core of the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is “the size of a beer keg.”
If the Russian designers of the engine for the as-of-yet-unnamed nuclear-powered cruise missile did not have any concerns about radiation shielding for anything other than the avionics, a small nuclear reactor could be incorporated into a cruise missile design. The missile could be launched with a booster and wait until it is at speed to take its reactor critical, as was planned with the SLAM.
From a deterrence standpoint, a nuclear-powered cruise missile is a destabilizing weapon. Its launch would not necessarily set off US early warning systems, and its flight path is unpredictable and long. It could be launched days or weeks before an intended attack, purposely avoiding areas where it could be detected and coming from directions that the US doesn’t watch for nuclear attacks. And if the missile uses a “direct” system like SLAM, it would spend that time spewing fallout wherever it flew, regardless of whether it ever executed its mission. In other words, just as US military planners in the 1960s found out, a nuclear cruise missile is a provocative weapon better suited to first strike than to deterrence.
Israel finally admitted it destroyed a Syrian reactor in 2007 — and set off a battle of egos, WP, By Ruth EglashMarch 22 JERUSALEM — Israel’s admission Wednesday that it was behind a mysterious attack on a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria more than a decade ago has caused a storm.
But not in the way one might think.
Within hours of the Israeli military censor permitting local media to publish most of the details of the 2007 air attack on a secret desert facility in northeastern Syria, as well as releasing blurry black-and-white video footage, former political and military leaders went to war over who should be credited for the operation.
In Israel’s eyes, the operation was a resounding success. It prevented its northern neighbor from obtaining nuclear capabilities. Ultimately, it also ensured that the Islamic State militant group would not possess nuclear weapons when it took over the region several years later.
But since Israel’s confirmation of its role in the airstrike, a battle has played out on Israeli television and radio and online, pitting two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak; a former Mossad chief; and a former military intelligence chief against one another.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman later said he regretted allowing the material to be published.
When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000American deaths from 1951 to 1973.
From 1951 to 1963, the US tested nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada. Weapons researchers, not understanding the risks—or simply ignoring them—exposed thousands of workers to radioactive fallout. The emissions from nuclear reactions are deadly to humans in high doses, and can cause cancer even in low doses. At one point, researchers had volunteers stand underneath an airburst nuclear weapon to prove how safe it was:
The emissions, however, did not just stay at the test site, and drifted in the atmosphere. Cancer rates spiked in nearby communities, and the US government could no longer pretend that fallout was anything but a silent killer.
The cost in dollars and lives
Congress eventually paid more than $2 billion to residents of nearby areas that were particularly exposed to radiation, as well as uranium miners. But attempts to measure the full extent of the test fallout were very uncertain, since they relied on extrapolating effects from the hardest-hit communities to the national level. One national estimate found the testing caused 49,000 cancer deaths.
Those measurements, however, did not capture the full range of effects over time and geography. Meyers created a broader picture by way of a macabre insight: When cows consumed radioactive fallout spread by atmospheric winds, their milk became a key channel to transmit radiation sickness to humans. Most milk production during this time was local, with cows eating at pasture and their milk being delivered to nearby communities, giving Meyers a way to trace radioactivity across the country.
The National Cancer Institute has records of the amount of Iodine 131—a dangerous isotope released in the Nevada tests—in milk, as well as broader data about radiation exposure. By comparing this data with county-level mortality records, Meyers came across a significant finding: “Exposure to fallout through milk leads to immediate and sustained increases in the crude death rate.” What’s more, these results were sustained over time. US nuclear testing likely killed seven to 14 times more people than we had thought, mostly in the midwest and northeast.
A weapon against its own people
When the US used nuclear weapons during World War II, bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conservative estimates suggest 250,000 people died in immediate aftermath. Even those horrified by the bombing didn’t realize that the US would deploy similar weapons against its own people, accidentally, and on a comparable scale.
And the cessation of nuclear testing helped save US lives—”the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty might have saved between 11.7 and 24.0 million American lives,” Meyers estimates. There was also some blind luck involved in reducing the number of poisoned people: The Nevada Test Site, compared to other potential testing facilities the US government considered at the time, produced the lowest atmospheric dispersal.
The lingering effects of these tests remain, as silent and as troublesome as the isotopes themselves. Millions of Americans who were exposed to fallout likely suffer illnesses related to these tests even today, as they retire and rely on the US government to fund their health care.
“This paper reveals that there are more casualties of the Cold War than previously thought, but the extent to which society still bears the costs of the Cold War remains an open question,” Meyers concludes.
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