With the escalating cost of fuel & no end in sight,are the railroads looking for alternatine means to power their locomotives??? Are any of the big manufacturers looking at solar power or even nuclear power. ?? Yeah, I know what you guys are thinking. Nuclear power. !!! there’s at least 1-2 derailments a day,what happens if one of these things goes off the tracks??? Just think of what the motion picture industry could do with a plot like this:: Nuclear train gets hijacked by terrorist. Is research & developement looking at other things??? Any thought??? thanks Easter
Actually I was going to post something very similar to this. Realistically it shouldn’t take too much nuclear material to accompli***his.
underworld
[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
Thread already has beaten this to death…totally not practical. Green Goat technology (hybrid) is the current technology under examination.
“Realistically” and “nuclear” don’t belong in the same sentence.
No existing (or contemplated) nuclear technology that ‘fails safe’ has the power density and packaging characteristics for mounting in locomotives. There is a technical exception for pure nuclear-electric sources – but, as an exercise, tell me the source of the quantity of isotopes that you would use, and how you would safeguard their ‘diversion’ to something other than controlled beta decay.
Don’t try to tell me that molten-salt reactors ‘could’ be used on locomotives – it’s an attractive lab technology, but not at all practical in normal, everyday railroading-at-the-lowest-cost. When do you want to discuss the ‘ballast’ characteristics of the necessary shielding and containment… or its dynamic stability when running.
Nuclear power for railroads is quite simple – either electrical generation from properly-sized, properly-secured facilities, through the regular AC power grid, or use of nuclear electricity or process heat to generate locomotive fuels for ‘conventional’ chemical consumption. Imho, both alternatives if properly engineered, implemented, and overseen could be quite useful – the nuclear-power industry has put up some very impressive quality performances in recent years.
But no… no bomb on wheels.
Additional reason not to try…
Reactors do not run by themselves, they need the constant attention of a highly trained, and very highly paid group of folks to keep them running…so your crew cost would so far exceed any savings in fuel as to make it useless.
Two, reactors require an on hand, dependable and constant supply of water…
if you have a worst case accident, a Loss Of Coolant Accident, (LOCA)you can draw upon that supply to keep the reactor cooled and stable.
In the case of land based reactors, you will note they all have either a man made lake or reservoir, or immediate access to a large, natural lake or body of water, for just that reason.
With a mobile reactor, such as those found in submarines, well, they do happen to be surrounded by water, so using sea water, although not a first choice, is always a option.
Last, can you name one single insurance company which would underwrite such a machine?
And before you decide we are condemming your idea out of hand…
Several major contractors did a few feasiblity studies on just such a concept, along with a nuc powered plane…and decided it was a no go idea.
We had a very interesting and detailed thread going about two years ago on just this very concept…several forum members, with many, many degrees in several different applications, also came to the conclusion that it just was not a good, workable idea…
Ed
So, if two nuclear-powered-loaded coal trains (wouldn’t that be ironic) were to hit head-on at 60mph, would there be sufficient force to initiate an uncontrolled fission reaction?[8D]
Reason #9 as to why this is a bad idea.
…Leave the nuclear power to generate electricity…and even with that many have reservations.
this has been covered many many times… the number 1 reason you will never see this…the tree huggers will have a meltdown if they have rolling nuclear reactors right behind thier back yard fence that keeps them from seeing the trains…second reason…size… do you any of you that thougth about it know how big a nuclear reactor is…and how heavy size wise… even if you can make a smaller one to fit into a locomotive…just the safty sheilding alone would cru***he rails the locomotive would sit on… not to mention how complicated they are to run in the first place… thier is a lot more stuff that can go wrong…cooling pump brakes down cooling water leak…and i guess since you want to put a reactor online…your going to make steam to turn a turbin to make what you realy want…electricity… now you have the added maitances issues involved with maintaing and running a steam turbin… think about it…your powerplant alone would be as long if not longer then the bigboy … it might have been a though in the 50s when atoms where all the rage… but its 50 years later…and atom power is not what the people of the 50s thought it was going to be…
csx engineer
oh yea…also… the movie industry did something along the lines in the 60s or 70s…dont know what year for sure…but it was called atomic bus…or something like that… it was a low buget B movie about some nuke bus that had some issues or something…i think it was ment more of a comidy then a drama…lol
csx engineer
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074205/
this is a link to the atomic bus…aka “the big bus” dated 1976
csx engineer
So, we won’t be seeing any Dash-9s with a “Mister Fusion” strapped on in the near future?
Yeah, If train “A” leaves Chicago at 3:30AM and Train “B” Leaves Memphis at 2:30:45PM, With train A moving at district speed and Train B running at restricted speed or 50 Mph, whichever is greater, farmer Jones’ Central Illinois cornfield is going to glow after it stops burning.[:D][:D][:D]
Ooooo, sounds like a cool idea… When can I get the kit for my trucks???
Adrianspeeder
Well, in terms of fuel efficiency and cost savings, the Green Goat engines are the best current technology. Despite the high infrastructure upgrade costs, probably the best long term propulsion method would be by electrification using electric locomotives such as the GG-1’s and Little Joe’s. The electricity could be produced by nuclear, coal, oil or wind-powered generators depending on what was most practical for each region of the country.
For nuclear several words Chernobyl & 3 Mile Island [:(]
Electric could be a good option though [:p][:D]
[quote]
Originally posted by easter
[
And the same goes for Hydrogen. Nobody seems to remember the Von Hindenburg disaster. (A dirigible using Hydrogen instead of Helium carries four times the load. So the Germans built one for trans-Atlantic passage. Whatever set it on fire nobody ever found out definitely, possibly just exhaust gas from the propeller gasoline engines heated enough of the Hydrogen to explode. It crashed in Lakewood, NJ in the middle of the 30’s.
I agree. Green Goat for non-electrified stop and go, improvements on today’s high-efficiency diesels for non-electrified long distance freight and passengers, and electrification wherever possible.
I have an old technical paper from the 1950s describing nuclear powered locomotive proposals, and indeed they had eight axles to carry the load of the reactor and shielding. I would expect that they would be steam turbine units (like submarines) possibly with direct geared drive. I understand that current submarine reactors are cooled by natural convection to reduce the risk of cooling pump failure causing a problem. It is almost impossible for a reactor to explode like a bomb, even if two were forced together. The design of a nuclear bomb involves bringing together a critical mass and retaining it in a compact mass until the chain reaction develops. Reactors, for very good reasons, don’t have the fissile material physically arranged to allow an explosion to occur. It is always possible to get a release of radiation, as occurred at Chernobyl, if enough things go wrong, and this can be dangerous to people close to the reactor. However, the danger is not significantly greater than the effects of dangerous goods currently hauled on US railroads, not that the recent record in that area would encourage adding anything else dangerous to the system. Power reactors and bombs are quite different devices, and the main problem is that using a power reactor in a particular way does allow the production of high grade radioactive material that can be removed and made into a bomb. This is what North Korea say they are doing, and what Iran says they are not doing, but, of course, they could…
Peter
I saw one about a train that actually blews up Denver [:(]
[quote]
Originally posted by csxengineer98
[
Yes Hydrogen would not be so good either but still not as powerful as the atom! [:o)][:D]
[quote]
Originally posted by daveklepper
That train that blew up Denver… could we send one to New Jersey?[}:)]
More seriously, I’m still holding out for the time when the price of diesel fuel makes a new coal burning steam locomotive a realistic possibility. I know it’s just a dream, but it’s MY dream and I’m sticking with it.