>>16558933
No, consider that you will need a reactor on board, which will need to be encapsulated in lead, unless you want Thorium, but you will need a lot of it compared to something like Plutonium.

The short story is, once you get all the nuclear stuff on board the aircraft will be heavy. Heavier aircraft generally have heavier wing loading and will need more power to fly less passengers (or payload) over a given range or at a given speed/duration.

Your question is too broad, really, so excuse me for giving such a broad answer.

>>16558941
let alone the risk of it crashing in a densely populated area. or anywhere

>>16558952
Good point, one that I should have addressed.

I am sure other anons will bring up other issues.

If you really want more economical passenger travel, it is better to optimize the aerodynamics (think laminar flow in fluid mechanics).

>>16558963
>I am sure other anons will bring up other issues.
sus. you a bot?

>>16558933
Yes, provided we had a free market unmolested by needless government regulations.

>>16558941
>need more power to fly less passengers
Fuel's overwhelmingly cheaper.
>over a given range
An aircraft full of fuel would weigh a lot more than the non-changing mass of a nuclear reactor + shielding.

>>16558968
Nope. not a bot, just a student and I am sure there are actual, more experienced, aerospace engineers will chime in at some point.

I am mostly a lurker, but have posted on a few other threads in the past.

>>16558952
>let alone the risk of it crashing populated area
No greater damage than any other airliner. 99% of the economic costs of nuclear reactor failures is imposed by government: Forced evacuations, dawn out legal nonsense, holding back other unrelated reactors, cancelling construction. All pointless.

Remember the worst nuclear accident in history only managed to kill 30 people due to radiation. It took the complete obliteration of a reactor to accomplish that toll. Far more regularly die in the hydrocarbon refinement industry.

>>16558963
>If you really want more economical passenger travel
>aerodynamics
Wrong. It's about the engines as always. Problem with that is we've now got ESG climate bullshit to hamstring everyone. Instead of aiming for highest thermal efficiencies, we have to keep the temperatures low to keep NOx low, because beancounting imbeciles want to justify their jobs.

>>16558979
>Remember the worst nuclear accident in history only managed to kill 30 people due to radiation.
so you're discarding the huge spike in leukemia post accident, in neighboring countries? don't tell me you're that fucking clueless

>>16558975
Alright, but can that reactor be feasibly kept in the wings (preferably near the first quarter of them), like the fuel on most aircraft. if not, then you have to worry about moments and where the passengers will be seated.

>>16558991
>where the passengers will be seated.
Right next to it.

>>16558982
Yep, beancounters do effect things.
>>16559001
Again, fair enough, i did not really think of this either.

>>16558933
>▶
For once I am uniquely qualified to answer a question on sci more your regular retards here.

Actual aerospace engineer here that works on airliners..

The answer is maybe. Only looking at economically feasible.

Airlines spend a shit load of money on fuel. So, in order to offset the fuel prices, a nuclear reactor seems like a good idea. Let's hypothetically say that they have a SMR. Most SMRs still weigh approximately 1.4M pounds, which is unfeasible. However, the DOD put out a request for proposal for a 40 ton SMR. Hypothetically, let's say this exists. That's 80k lbs. A fully loaded Boeing 767 has approximately 200k of fuel on board, so the weight requirement is met.

If your aircraft flies 200 days a year, each burning approximately 120k of gas on trans oceanic flights. Take that times your average price of JET-A at 6.3$/gal, it costs $110k to cross the ocean. Do that 200 days a year, it costs 22.6M in yearly fuel costs.

Your SMR needs to eventually beat that in price. Estimates I've seen are as low as 50M up to 1B. So lets average that and say it costs approximately 500M for a SMR in an aircraft.

It would take 22 years of flying at that rate to break even, purely on fuel costs. Most airliners are only in the fleet for 25-30 years before they're divested.

So right now, no, it is not. If the price of fuel drastically goes up or the price of a SMR drastically goes down - maybe then.

There's also the other - non purely simplified economical problems. Your American Airlines DEI hire pilots crashing your plane in a populated area and it's now a radioactive nightmare. You also better be damn sure containment is working.

There's also the gigantic amount of government red tape when there's anything nuclear involved.

Finally, the shape of the aircraft must be able to accommodate a heavy SMR without completely destroying the CG or cargo compartment. The aircraft would need to look like a blended wing-body to not be completely retarded.

>>16559039
>▶
>same reddit spacing
sus

>>16559039
>Your SMR needs to eventually beat that in price. Estimates I've seen are as low as 50M up to 1B.
What is the pure material and fuel cost?

>>16558933
No for several reasons.
Nuclear isn't economic way of making power on land so it won't be one in the air where it's price will inevitably be much higher due to various factors.
Nuclear reactors weight far too much and don't produce enough power to actually make a plane fly unless the plane is gigantic. Small enough nuclear power plants simply do not exist
Electric motors are heavy at kN scales.
There's no demand for gigantic planes, if anything plane sizes have been coming down from the 4 engine beasts more towards the large 2 engine models.
Even if there was demand there's no airports to launch gigantic planes.
The safety issues involved would be too many to manage for civilian use and insurance costs alone would wreck any airline.
Etc.

That's of course ignoring the base reality that no such plane exists or even a viable potential design exists.

Could a nuclear powered airship be an option? Since that was realistically considered.

>>16559042
kys reddit faggot idgaf what kind of autistic formatting you want

>>16559052
Tbh I don't know that specifically. Maybe a nuclear engineer type will chime in with some good data.

>>16559080
test your bot somewhere else faggot

>>16558941
a thorium breeder would offer no advantages to an airplane, and nuclear reactors can be made light. The issue is that shielding the reactor would make it too heavy for use on an airplane, so it would only be shielded on one end to keep the passengers and pilot safe but a practical nuclear plane would be a radiation hazard to everyone in its vicinity.

>>16560719
And since I seem to be the only person in this thread who has any knowledge of how nuclear reactors I will add:
Nuclear bomber planes were considered for a time, the idea was for the reactor to heat air in place of combustion in a jet turbine. It was barely practical but was likely doable, the first actual engineering of molten salt reactors came out of that program. Like I said though, the reactor could only be shielded on one end and would probably break apart on crashing so it would have been hairy even for the military.

>>16559074
Honestly maybe more doable, their engines don't need the same power to weight ratio as airplanes so it might even be shield-able all the way around.

>>16559061
you try and sound smart when you haven't even read the (widely known history) of what was considered for nuclear aircraft let alone the engineering behind reactors for aerospace use, you should be ashamed of how confidently you wrote that post

>>16558972
FIREFLASH LETS GOOOOO