Quote:
Originally Posted by mmartin798
Fission reactors would be very problematic. The reactions always involve highly energetic neutrons. These would require a great deal of shielding to make safe making a portable, high energy one virtually impossible. Even fusion requires us to be very selective of the reactants to eliminate the problem of high energy neutrons.
Both Russia and the US tried to make fission powered aircraft. The reason they never built one was they could not figure out a way to not have the crew suffer from severe radiation poisoning. The advent of ICBMs made both side abandon the idea.
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the shielding problem was solved during the feasibility testing. the problem they ran into with the nuclear just was the engine design caused it to irradiate the flight path due to the direct transfer heating system. also the idea of cooling the reactor with airflow from the engines meant that it would go Chernobyl if it were ever shut down.
granted this was the airforce during a time when MAD was thought to be a smart political move. one would think the Morrow Project would be wise enough to install another method of cooling the reactor that would also avoid the radioactive trail of destruction cause by direct air cooling.