Nuclear Aircraft Feasibility Study. Volume 1

Abstract : From several missions requiring a long endurance aircraft, the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) mission was selected for the purpose of establishing point design parameters. Since the mission avionics package was required to be relatively large, the weight was minimized using a constraint of 0.95 reliability for a 14 day mission. The aircraft was designed utilizing standard aerodynamic design techniques, considering mission constraints but optimizing to require minimum thrust. From the several aircraft configurations analyzed. a canard configuration was chosen for final design consideration. The propulsion system, consisting of the reactor, the heat transfer system, and the engines, was analyzed for various configurations, including liquid metal and gas cooled reactors and indirect and direct cycle engines. A probabilistic risk analysis was performed to determine the hazard to society in terms of deaths caused by radiological exposure. Several cost modeling techniques were coupled with expert opinion to form a probabilistic assessment of the life cycle cost of the point design aircraft.