I just had to do a search.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-days-of-atomic-locomotives-in-america-1564623650
Mike.
Awesome kitbash just don’t operate it around me! You may want to glow in the dark but not me! [(-D] Seriously though praise the Lord almighty that guy failed with the real one! Think Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, SL-1, ect… were bad imagine if that thing derailed, yikes! [sigh] All those people with rad poisoning which equals [xx(] we’d probably all have four eyes or something! [(-D] or look like this guy! → [alien] That’s taking nuclear power to a new level!
I do admire the kitbash though I’m working on a boxcab diesel that has 16 axles! It will leave chewed up ties and twisted rails in its wake! [:-,]
No, the thing would not spew radiation. Like nuclear submarines, the reactor heats fluid that passes through a heat exchanger. And a very tiny reactor would be sufficient. See also the B-36 atomic energy experiments.
Now, there WAS the nuclear RAMJET in which the nuclear pile was almost completey unshielded and which was designed to spew hard radiation as it flew. But that’s another story.
With the advent of nuclear power, there were ideas for nuclear powered everything. Not just ships and submarines, but planes, trucks, trains, and spacecraft.
Practicality and safety issues won out, nuclear propulsion at sea was limited to the Navy, and the weight of the required shielding made most other uses impractical. The only space use that worked out is for unmanned craft (not 100% true), which is why something like the Voyager 1 and 2 probes are still functioning more than 40 years after launch.
Anyone remember the silly Big Bus movie from the 70’s, about the atomic powered bus? It later aired as I think a 2 parter on TV in 1980.
–Randy
TMI and SL-1 weren’t bad (aside from the three fellows killed). TMI never lost containment. SL-1’s reactor vessel wasn’t breached. They were practically clean, by comparison to even a routine nuclear weapons test.
Now, I read the paper about this here nuclear locomotive. The fuel load was a mere nine kilograms of uranium. Little Boy, for comparison, sported 64 kilograms. I couldn’t find, with good reason, the amount of nuclear material dispersed during the Palomares Incident, but it stands to reason they carried significantly more than nine kilograms. The two weapons contaminated an area of about a square mile. A Soviet Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyy, which is what Chernobyl is, has a whopping 192 tons.
The scale just isn’t there for a major accident, or even minor accident, with such little material.
Having some first hand experience with such things, space is a fantastic place for nuclear power. You don’t have to cool or shield or anything. Sometimes, you’re not even the most radioactive thing around! It wasn’t until a couple years ago that you could even build solar arrays capable of operating past Mars.
Even some solar powered probes carry nuclear heaters and there’s been some manned missions that carried nuclear material. Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package was powered by RTGs.
I wonder if Thorium reactors could provide an opportunity to make this a reality? I don’t know if there has been any studies done to show what a Thorium reactor would do in a collision, although it has been well documented the mess a Uranium or Plutonium reactor would cause in a collision.
As for some “atomic diesels” the Hanford Site has some ALCO’s on display outside one of the preserved B Reactor. The Nevada Southern also has two veteran diesels of the Jackass and Western which ran in the Nevada Test Site.
As a former owner of a model of this ship, I will have to disagree:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
Ed
I have vague recollections of a modeler who built a huge freelance locomotive somewhat resembling the very large U50 and of enormous pulling power because it was weighted with depleted uranium, likely at a time before experts began to express concern about the health effects of being exposed to even depleted uranium.
Dave Nelson
Jim Fitzgerald Cotton Brute N scale
Generally speaking, you can handle DU safety, because it isn’t a gamma emitter. Its toxicity comes from being a heavy metal more than a radiological hazard (like your tungsten, arsenic, mercury, and so on). That said, why would you ever think milling such material in a non-industrial setting was ever a good idea? That’s how you make it a threat to your health: turning it into small particles in the air for you to breath in.
Shoulda used platinum. It’s denser. Pretty non-reactive with just about anything. Easy to machine. Definitely not radioactive.
And, being N scale, pretty affordable. I’m estimating about $24,000.
When you die, your wife can have it reshaped into something she finds more useful. Cash comes to mind.
Ed
Yeah, the Fifties had some pretty gonzo stuff.
My PERSONAL favorite was a weapons system… the Davy Crockett. A suitcase-sized atomic weapon on a recoilless rifle.
Yes, the US Army was going to put nuclear weapons under the command of a second lieutenant with a map!
[:'(]
By Jim Fitzgeral from NTRak NewsletterSept/Oct 1983
The “Cotton Brute” and long trains.
The origional goal was a 500 car train based on a N&W 500 car train that ran from West Virginia to Ohio when remote co
How in the world did that guy get a hold of depleted uranium???
Also has anyone seen my Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator??? [(-D]
Even if the radioactive material in the machine was only nine grams, you still have heavy water/steam and then corium in the event of melt down…
The Davy Crockett system was part of the gung-ho nuke policy of the early atomic age, having recruits stand unshielded tp observe tests, having a bunch of scientists stand at ground zero of an airblast test to prove how “safe” it was, not to mention the hydrogen tests in the Pacific and the ships with full crews within the blast radius… goes to show you how when you know little about something you do dumb things…
The Cotton Brute is a cool idea just sand the DU…
Exactly. The ONLY one, no more ever made, nuclear propulsion was limited to Navy vessels only.
–Randy
Best part of that one was that the blast radius of the detonation was greater than the effective range of the weapon.
–Randy
Yes that is it: the Cotton Brute is exactly the locomotive I was remembering. It was pictured and described in MR but I do not think it was an actual full article, maybe just a photo in Trackside Photos.
Dave Nelson