This Nuclear Outboard Motor Was a Really Terrible IdeaPodded atomic propulsion was leaky and noisy, as Steve Weintz explains
In the early 1960s the U.S. Navy could have gotten a disposable, atomic-powered outboard motor that would have made America’s warships a Hell of a lot more efficient. But there was the little problem of all that noise and radiation.
File this one under terrible, terrible weapons ideas of the Cold War alongside undersea bases, atomic artillery and ship-launched rocket planes.
The nuclear boat motor actually began life as airplane propulsion, if you can believe that. America’s two great aircraft engine-makers, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney, both hand their fingers in this particular radioactive pie.
Pratt & Whitney tinkered with a closed-loop system in which the radioactive components were kept isolated from the jet exhaust. GE, however, opted for the easier-to-develop open-loop system, which led to nearly flight-ready hardware … at the regrettable cost of highly-radioactive jet exhaust.
The safety issues alone doomed the nuke jet — to say nothing of the extraordinary cost. In 1961, after spending nearly 15 years and $1 billion — $7.7 billion in today’s dollars — the feds killed off the nuclear-powered aircraft program. But GE wasted no time looking for other uses for its designs.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/2966b898c5e9
