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America’s very dangerous $multibillion plan for a nuclear-powered fighter plane

America Really Wanted A Nuclear-Powered Fighter (Flying Chernobyl, Anyone?) Does great reward really come with great risk? National Interest, by Steve Weintz 10 May 20, Here’s What You Need To Remember: Looking back a half century to an era of greater faith in nuclear energy, it’s easy to shake one’s head in wonder. What were they thinking? Surely crashes, combat and carelessness were going to keep it all from ending well.

Ah, the Atomic Age, when nuclear energy seemed the ticket to a future of limitless possibilities. For a generation after 1945 the United States explored all kinds of nuclear propulsion concepts. Some, like naval power plants for subs and ships, proved both revolutionary and effective. Others proved possible to develop but impractical to pursue.

Of these concepts the nuclear-powered aircraft now seems the most fanciful, but billions of dollars and years of top-flight research sunk into the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program chased the idea before its demise. Between the end of World War II and the dawn of Camelot American engineers figured out how to fit a reactor in an airplane and make it generate thrust without frying the crew. American leaders couldn’t figure out how to pay for it or why they needed it.

Today the ANP program is remembered as an Atomic Age boondoggle whose only remains consist of three-story-tall experimental units and giant hangars with six-foot-thick walls. ……. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/america-really-wanted-nuclear-powered-fighter-flying-chernobyl-anyone-152496

May 11, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war

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