Flight After Oil?
- Thread starter Tombfyre
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Along with several tons of airframe and soil that's been contaminated by the spilled radioactive fuel. All of which will need to be stored for thousands of years in a nuclear waste storage facility that hasn't even been built yet (there will be long court fights over any proposed facilities too).
Minor problem with that notion. What happens if one crashes, as planes are sometimes wont to do?
Nuclear devices aren't like bombs where if you drop them they go off. It's a reaction that must take place. If you drop a nuclear device you simply pick it back up.
Don't forget that the power needs of the few nuclear powered interplanetary probes are a tiny fraction of what would be needed to propel a manned aircraft. A plane would need a much larger quantity of radioactive fuel and , unless separated by a wide gap from the plane's crew, a lot of heavy shielding. Seagoing vessels like submarines and aircraft carriers aren't quite so sensitive to carrying the weight of that shielding and protective distances around.
Proposals to produce fuels resembling biodiesel or jet fuel using algae instead of grain sound pretty feasible and probably safer to carry in a plane's tanks than either grain alcohols or especially hydrogen.
Yucca Mountain
Anyway, I don't think nuclear-powered autos or planes are a solution to anything. Hydrogen power generated from water through clean 'costless' enegry like solar or wind are the best bet.
Minor problem with that notion. What happens if one crashes, as planes are sometimes wont to do?
Nuclear devices aren't like bombs where if you drop them they go off. It's a reaction that must take place. If you drop a nuclear device you simply pick it back up.
Dropping a nuclear device from 5 feet is a far cry different from dropping one from around 35,000 feet. Drop an egg from about 6 inches, it may or may not crack. Drop it from 3 feet, it's gonna break.
Not even a black box can come out of that unharmed. Aren't you talking a nuclear reaction being involved to attain propulsion, anyway? So, yeah, there's going to be a nuclear reaction going on inside the device, anyway. How do you reconcile the notion of a nuclear device light enough to be used in aviation, but still able to come out of that kind of descent impact without contaminating the entire crash site and all of the victims/rescuers/innocent bystanders, cities in a five-mile radius?
And what would happen if an engine malfunctioned and began releasing radiation in-flight?
Granted, those are probably slim possibilities, but they're still things to be taken into account when designing such a thing.
I wanna see me some Mr. Fusion.
The US Air Force is moving toward the same (we have the world's largest coal reserves).
Along with several tons of airframe and soil that's been contaminated by the spilled radioactive fuel. All of which will need to be stored for thousands of years in a nuclear waste storage facility that hasn't even been built yetMinor problem with that notion. What happens if one crashes, as planes are sometimes wont to do?
Nuclear devices aren't like bombs where if you drop them they go off. It's a reaction that must take place. If you drop a nuclear device you simply pick it back up.
Possibly not. It's looking like we'll shortly have the capability to render radioactive materials inert via processing in specially-made fusion reactors (which still don't economically generate power, but appear likely to break down the waste products of nuclear power generation with economy).
And in any case, storing nuclear waste is a significantly smaller health hazard overall than storing things like internal combustion engine waste or plastic bags. In fact, it's almost trivial: even if we left all our old nuclear plants crumble where they lay, taking no safety measures, the total health and ecological effects (in the immediate future, let alone ten millennia from now) wouldn't come anywhere near those from the current use of coal and oil in energy production.
Still, fission reactors on aircraft are cumbersome things. Payload would be truly minimal (especially if it were to consist of things that have to be protected against radiation, such as people), which is the real reason any other alternative would be looked at first. Synthetic fuels would always be attractive as the minimum-effort solution.
Then again, aircraft might simply lose out to trains, which can use fuel-less propulsion systems, getting their power via a distribution grid. The airborne equivalent, a microwave-powered aircraft, would again be a cumbersome thing with some radiation hazards.
Timo Saloniemi
Still, fission reactors on aircraft are cumbersome things. Payload would be truly minimal (especially if it were to consist of things that have to be protected against radiation, such as people), which is the real reason any other alternative would be looked at first. Synthetic fuels would always be attractive as the minimum-effort solution.
Then again, aircraft might simply lose out to trains, which can use fuel-less propulsion systems, getting their power via a distribution grid. The airborne equivalent, a microwave-powered aircraft, would again be a cumbersome thing with some radiation hazards.
Timo Saloniemi
Minor problem with that notion. What happens if one crashes, as planes are sometimes wont to do?
Nuclear devices aren't like bombs where if you drop them they go off. It's a reaction that must take place. If you drop a nuclear device you simply pick it back up.
I'm sure TerriO was referring more to spreading radiation over a wide area with a reactor in a crash, and it is one of the reasons nuclear aircraft never became a widespread thing - to shield a reactor enough to make it safe it becomes too heavy to power a plane.
To make nuclear powered aircraft you would need a material with the same properties in regard to radiation as lead, but a fraction of the weight and enough strength to survive impact with the ground at 600mph.
Basically, it will not happen any time soon!
One possibility is helium-3 powered fusion reactors. I've read at least one prototype is being developed, maybe more. And if anyone needs one more reason to go back to the Moon, helium-3 was discovered there, and likely available in large quantities.
In combination with the above-referenced ion-thrusters.....?
In combination with the above-referenced ion-thrusters.....?
Hmm... perhaps a combination of solar panels and fuel cells? Without oil I think we're in serious trouble...
Helium shortage is coming soon, too. We could always fill them with hydrogen, but then we get the Hindenburg all over again.
I'm not an expert on chemistry, but helium is basically a gas, so if there's a shortage it probaly means more to party shops which won't have enough stock in cannisters to fill balloons. (Kidding.) There is a shortage of helium-3 on Earth, which may be the reason some countries are starting or reactivating their lunar landing programs, as it's a possible fuel for powering fusion reactors. (See above.)
Well, helium is on short supply on Earth overall, exactly because of its tendency to float. It's such a light gas that most of it has escaped to space already, and you can only get more by waiting for it to seep out of cracks on Earth.
Out there in space, helium is the second-most common thing floating around. But since nothing much is floating around there overall, second-most doesn't amount to anything useful.
If we had fusion, we would get plenty of helium, of course; it's a natural byproduct (if energy is the product). But it seems counterintuitive to go for helium-3 fusion when the fuel is insanely difficult to obtain, and when hydrogen-2 or hydrogen-2/3 fusion could rely on unlimited fuel within trivially easy reach here down on Earth. Mineable He-3 on the Moon will probably run out just as quickly as uranium and thorium on Earth. To get a lasting supply, we'd have to mine Jupiter, which adds another three degrees of insanity.
As for using hydrogen on airships, it doesn't seem there should be much of a risk. Hindenburg and her kin burned because they were flammable, not because they were filled with flammable gas. If airships are to be competitive haulers of air cargo, they'll probably be built of nonflammable hull materials (and perhaps be heavier than air, with the buoyancy of hydrogen inside helping matters a bit but not being responsible for all of the lift).
Timo Saloniemi
Out there in space, helium is the second-most common thing floating around. But since nothing much is floating around there overall, second-most doesn't amount to anything useful.
If we had fusion, we would get plenty of helium, of course; it's a natural byproduct (if energy is the product). But it seems counterintuitive to go for helium-3 fusion when the fuel is insanely difficult to obtain, and when hydrogen-2 or hydrogen-2/3 fusion could rely on unlimited fuel within trivially easy reach here down on Earth. Mineable He-3 on the Moon will probably run out just as quickly as uranium and thorium on Earth. To get a lasting supply, we'd have to mine Jupiter, which adds another three degrees of insanity.
As for using hydrogen on airships, it doesn't seem there should be much of a risk. Hindenburg and her kin burned because they were flammable, not because they were filled with flammable gas. If airships are to be competitive haulers of air cargo, they'll probably be built of nonflammable hull materials (and perhaps be heavier than air, with the buoyancy of hydrogen inside helping matters a bit but not being responsible for all of the lift).
Timo Saloniemi
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