Nuclear propulsion includes a wide variety of propulsion methods that fulfil the promise of the Atomic Age by using some form of nuclear reaction as their primary power source.
Contents |
Many military submarines, aircraft carriers and, owing to crude oil prices and emissions, a growing number of large civilian surface ships, especially icebreakers, use nuclear reactors as their power plants.
The Ford Nucleon was a theoretical nuclear powered concept car design proposed by the Ford Motor Company in 1958. In 2009, Loren Kulesus proposed a design to General Motors for a Cadillac concept car powered by thorium.[1][2]
Many types of nuclear propulsion have been proposed, and some of them (eg NERVA) tested, for spacecraft applications:
Anatolij Perminov, head of Russian Space Agency announced that RKA is going to develop a nuclear powered spacecraft for deep space travel. Design will be done by 2012, and 9 more years for development (in space assembly). The price is set to 17 billion rubles (600 million dollars).[4] The nuclear propulsion would have mega-watt class, provided necessary funding, Roscosmos Head stated. According to him, the propulsion will be able to support human mission to Mars, with cosmonauts staying on the Red planet for 30 days. The journey to Mars is with nuclear propulsion with steady accelaration would take 6 weeks instead of 8 Month with chemical propulsion. The thrust would be 300 times higher than the chemical thrust. [5] [6]
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||