US draws up plans for nuclear drones

[kpete]

Source: Guardian UK

US draws up plans for nuclear drones
Technology is designed to increase flying time 'from days to months', along with power available for weapons systems

American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling.

The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the US government's principal nuclear research and development agency – and defence contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time "from days to months" while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia.

"It's pretty terrifying prospect," said Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK, which campaigns against the increasing use of drones for both military and civilian purposes. "Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot. There is a major push by this industry to increase the use of drones and both the public and government are struggling to keep up with the implications."

The highly sensitive research into what is termed "ultra-persistence technologies" set out to solve three problems associated with drones: insufficient "hang time" over a potential target; lack of power for running sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems; and lack of communications capacity.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/02/us-plans-nuclear-drones

[Remmah2]

1. Good design, keep the whole idea on paper where it belongs.

Machine without a conscience, bad idea.

[harun]

2. What could possibly go wrong?

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

6. There's no way anyone could make a mistake

B-52 carried nuclear missiles over US by mistake: military

Sep 5, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US military said on Wednesday it was investigating an alarming security lapse when a B-52 bomber flew the length of the country last week loaded with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

link

[Diclotican]

3. kpete

kpete

What is wrong with conventional drones?.. They can fly over a designated area for days at end - and with refueling, (who I believe they is able to do?) they can even fly for days, maybe weeks... Some of the more advanced ones, can fly alone more or less. Even go back to base alone, and ask for more fuel if need arise (I'm told that, not sure if it is true).. The most advanced ones, is the size of a 737 aircraft, packed with most advanced tech ever build into any flying aircraft

What we Doesn't need, is nuclear powered drones, as long as the drones is prone to crash and burn - or to be shot down, it is just not safe to assume that a nuclear powered drone is safer than an conventional one...

Let the blue prints, for nuclear powered drones be in the draws - for another decade or two, because I serious doubt that nuclear powered drones is the best.. Not as long as they can crash or be shoot down..

But Im not suprised if they wil try to build it - as they once build a nuclear powered aircraft who in fact was flying!

Diclotican

[hack89]

4. This is 50 year old technology

don't necessarily think it is a good idea to fly these things over land but here some technical info for those that are interested:

Radioisotope systems - RTGs

So far, radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have been the main power source for US space work over nearly 50 years, since 1961. The high decay heat of Plutonium-238 (0.56 W/g) enables its use as an electricity source in the RTGs of spacecraft, satellites, navigation beacons, etc and its alpha decay process calls for minimal shielding. Heat from the oxide fuel is converted to electricity through static thermoelectric elements (solid-state thermocouples), with no moving parts. RTGs are safe, reliable and maintenance-free and can provide heat or electricity for decades under very harsh conditions, particularly where solar power is not feasible.

So far 45 RTGs have powered 25 US space vehicles including Apollo, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Ulysses and New Horizons space missions as well as many civil and military satellites. The Cassini spacecraft carries three RTGs providing 870 watts of power as it explores Saturn. Voyager spacecraft which have sent back pictures of distant planets have already operated for over 20 years and are expected to send back signals powered by their RTGs for another 15-25 years. Galileo, launched in 1989, carried a 570-watt RTG. The Viking and Rover landers on Mars in 1975 depended on RTG power sources, as will the Mars Science Laboratory Rover launched in 2011 (the two Mars Rovers operating 2004-09 use solar panels and batteries).

The latest RTG is a 290-watt system known as the GPHS RTG. The thermal power for this system is from 18 General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) units. Each GPHS contains four iridium-clad ceramic Pu-238 fuel pellets, stands 5 cm tall, 10 cm square and weighs 1.44 kg. The Multi-Mission RTG (MMRTG) will use 8 GPHS units with a total of 4.8 kg of plutonium oxide producing 2 kW thermal which can be used to generate some 110 watts of electric power, 2.7 kWh/day. It is being used in the Mars Science Laboratory, a large mobile laboratory - the rover Curiosity, which at 890 kg is about five times the mass of previous Mars rovers

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf82.html

[bananas]

7. The Federation of American Scientists is against using RTG's in orbit

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x80815

Fifty Years of Space Nuclear Power - with a comment by James Oberg

<snip>

A good deal of effort has been invested to make today’s RTGs more or less impervious to the most likely launch accident scenarios. But they will be never be perfectly safe. In order to minimize the health and safety risks involved in space nuclear power while still taking advantage of the benefits it can offer for space exploration, the Federation of American Scientists years ago proposed (pdf) that nuclear power — both plutonium-fueled RTGs and uranium-fueled reactors — be used only for deep space missions and not in Earth orbit.

Although this proposal was never officially adopted, it represents the de facto policy of spacefaring nations today.

<snip>

1. Jim Oberg Says:
June 29th, 2011 at 5:42 pm

One of the other controversial space nuclear power accidents was the loss of the Russian ‘Mars-95? probe, as described in my 1999 article in ‘New Scientist’ linked here:
http://www.jamesoberg.com/plutonium.html

The saddest part was how the Russian government and the Clinton administration promoted the false notion — at first a mistake, and later a convenient camouflage — that the craft’s nuclear batteries had safely sunk in the deep Pacific Ocean. Much more likely was that they fell over the Atacama Desert near the Chile-Bolivia border, where local residents were never alerted to watch out for them. Political pretense may have taken a human toll, because nobody seems to have ever even looked for the hazardous objects.

Jim O

[bananas]

8. I don't think that's correct.

"World Nuclear" is not a scientific organization, it is a PR organization for the nuclear industry.
Anything you read there should be taken with a grain of salt.

The first sentence in your excerpt is wrong, it says:
"So far, radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have been the main power source for US space work over nearly 50 years, since 1961."

The main power source has been chemical (propellant and fuel cells),
and I think solar has provided much more power than nuclear.

[hack89]

9. Just pointing out what is meant by nuclear power in this particular context.

I suspect very few are familiar with the technology.

[bananas]

11. Sure, but I see another error in the article

It says that Apollo was powered by RTG's, I think that's wrong,
IIRC Apollo used fuel cells to generate electricity.
They carried some experiments that used RTG's,
but they weren't used to power the spacecraft.

[hack89]

12. The Apollos RTGs were used to power the experiments left on the moon.

In addition, RTGs were used to power the two Viking landers and for the scientific experiments left on the Moon by the crews of Apollo 12 through 17 (SNAP 27s). Because Apollo 13 was aborted, its RTG now rests in the South Pacific ocean, in the vicinity of the Tonga Trench.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I think they contemplate nuclear fission power sources too

This was for more than just electrical power; it talked about changing the refuelling necessary, which implies enough heat to run a jet turbine. As The Guardian says:

Northrop Grumman is known to have patented a drone equipped with a helium-cooled nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986, and has previously worked on nuclear projects with the US air force research laboratory. Designs for nuclear-powered aircraft are known to go back as far as the 1950s.

Or even:

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has funded at least two feasibility studies on nuclear-powered versions of the Northrop-Grumman Global Hawk UAV (pictured). The latest study, revealed earlier in February at an aerospace technology conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, concluded that a nuclear engine could extend the UAV's flight time from hours to months.

But nuclear-powered planes are not a new idea. In the 1950s, both the US and the USSR tried to develop nuclear propulsion systems for piloted aircraft. The plans were eventually scrapped because it would have cost too much to protect the crew from the on-board nuclear reactor, as well as making the aircraft too heavy.

The AFRL now has other ideas, though. Instead of a conventional fission reactor, it is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear UAV would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to produce a jet of heated air.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3406-nuclearpowered-drone-aircraft-on-drawing-board.html

[bananas]

18. That's neither fission nor rtg - as Monty Python used to say, it's something completely different.

helium-cooled nuclear reactor is fission,
but quantum nucleonic is completely different

edit to add:
more info at http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=101338

[bemildred]

5. Oh good Lord, don't they have any brains at all?

Or is this the Onion?

[RexDart]

10. Everything old is new again

For some reason I can not link to the Project Pluto wiki page.

Scary thing is that they actually tested that engine.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

Not sure what your problem was.

On edit: The DOE explanation: http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/factsheets/DOENV_763.pdf

I cannot copy from it, but they ran it at 513MW for 5 minutes, producing the equivalent of 35,000lbs of thrust. Using a ton of air per second, at 1,350 degrees Fahrenheit, from 25 miles of oil well casing pipe, to simulate the air going into a ramjet at speed.

[kentauros]

19. Ahh, the "Flying Crowbar"

Was just discussing this last night with some friends. There's a B-movie out there that has a similar premise, called "The Lost Missile". I just posted the youtube trailer video for it in The Lounge

[nradisic]

15. bad fucking idea...

really? who is the rocket scientist who thought this one through...Iran will be the first do hack into one and land it like the did with other drone recently....bad, bad idea.

[unkachuck]

16. if we can make....

....small, safe nuclear powered generators to power military drones for months on end, why can't we make small nuclear powered generators to power our homes and vehicles?

....and if tens of millions of units were sold yearly, the price per unit should be relatively inexpensive....

[ladjf]

17. Is this a story from "The Onion" ? Please don't tell me that any sane person would think it's

a good idea to have a nuclear weapon on board an airplane with no pilot. Could the human race possibly be that dumb?