Other Post Wanna Fly with a freakin reactor in the back?

[TankBuster]

The NB-36H..A flying Reactor

The Convair X-6 was a proposed experimental aircraft which never left the drawing board. In May, 1946, the Nuclear Energy for the Populsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project was started by the USAF. Studies under this program were done until May, 1951 when NEPA was replaced by the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program. The ANP program contained plans for two B-36s to be modified by Convair under the MX-1589 project. One of the B-36s was to be used to study shielding requirements for an airborne reactor while the other was to be the X-6.
The first modified B-36 was called the Nuclear Test Aircraft (NTA), a B-36H-20-CF (Serial Number 51-5712) that had been damaged in a tornado at Carswell AFB on Sept. 1 1952. This plane was redesignated the XB-36H, then the NB-36H and was modified to carry a 1,000 Killowatt, air-cooled nuclear reactor (a nice accsesory). The reactor was operational but did not power the plane. Its sole purpose was to investigate the effect of radiation on aircraft systems. The NB-36H completed 47 test flights between 55' and 57'. Based on the results of the NB-36H, the X-6 and the entire nuclear aircraft program was abandoned in 1957.
In the 60's, the Soviet Union's Tupolev design bureau, conducted a similar experiment using a TU-119, which was a TU-95 Bear bomber modified to carry an operational reactor.Performance

• Maximum Speed: 390 mph (628 km/h)
• Service Ceiling: 40,000 ft (12,200 m)

 

[Reloader]

Good info TankBuster - BUT am I missing something here? What kind of engines would the plane have? How was the reactor going to provide the motive power for the plane to fly? To my mind, nuclear reactors provide HEAT to generate STEAM from a WATER SOURCE, which in turn drives turbines. Was this going to be a STEAM-POWERED AIRCRAFT, which needed to carry its own water supply?

 

[Bombardier]

Good info TankBuster - BUT am I missing something here? What kind of engines would the plane have? How was the reactor going to provide the motive power for the plane to fly? To my mind, nuclear reactors provide HEAT to generate STEAM from a WATER SOURCE, which in turn drives turbines. Was this going to be a STEAM-POWERED AIRCRAFT, which needed to carry its own water supply?

Some information mate

The reactor was operational but did not power the plane. Its sole purpose was to investigate the effect of radiation on aircraft systems.

 

[Reloader]

Thanks Bomber, but my question still stands - look at the names of the project. Firstly, Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft, later changed to Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion.
So, somebody must have thought that there was a way to fit a nuclear reactor into an aircraft for the purpose of using it as a source of power to drive the engines. I was just wondering what kind of engines these would have been? Or maybe they hadn't thought that far ahead?