US Air Force To Create Nuclear-Powered Drone Aircraft
By Drog, Section News Posted on Wed Feb 19, 2003 at 06:04:26 PM PST
New Scientist reported today that the US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered unmanned aircraft, which they believe will be able to fly for months without refuelling, striking enemy targets at will. There can be no doubt that such a project will raise serious concern. How wise is it to fly radioactive material in a combat aircraft? Shooting it down would be like detonating a dirty bomb. And having Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) almost constantly flying over a region would translate to a new form of military intimidation, especially if they were armed. But after the huge sucess of UAVs in Kosovo and Afghanistan, there seems to be no stopping their proliferation. Last week, the Pentagon allocated $1 billion of its 2004 budget for further development of UAVs, both armed and unarmed.
In the 1950s, both the US and the USSR tried to develop nuclear propulsion systems for piloted aircraft, but the plans were eventually scrapped because it would have cost too much to protect the crew from the on-board nuclear reactor, as well as making the aircraft too heavy. However, the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) now intends to abandon the conventional fission reactor design and instead focus on a new type of power generator called a quantum nucleonic reactor. In 1999, Carl Collins and colleagues from The Center for Quantum Electronics at the University of Texas at Dallas discovered that shining X-rays onto certain types of hafnium caused 60 times as much energy to be released as was put in. The X-rays encourage particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several energy levels, thus liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. These gamma rays could produce a jet of heated air, providing the thrust for the UAV.
The quantum nucleonic reactor is considered safer than a fission reactor because the reaction is very tightly controlled. "It's radioactive, but as soon as you take away the X-ray power source its gamma ray production is reduced dramatically, so it's not as dangerous," says Christopher Hamilton at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, who conducted the latest nuclear UAV study.
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