[HN Gopher] The Atomic Tank? (2018)
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The Atomic Tank? (2018)
Author : ZeljkoS
Score : 50 points
Date : 2020-08-21 08:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mydailykona.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mydailykona.blogspot.com)
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I spent a month earlier this year writing up the history of
| nuclear power development in the USA [1]. If you like this it
| might be right up your alley. Things that actually were built
| include a truck-mounted nuclear reactor (ML-1), nuclear reactors
| in space (SNAP-10A), a nuclear-powered merchant ship (NS
| Savannah), an ice-base powered by a nuclear reactor under
| Greenland (Camp Century), dozens of highly exotic power reactor
| prototypes, and (of course) the modern nuclear power plants.
|
| [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html
|
| I didn't cover tanks but did touch on nuclear-powered aircraft,
| which we spent about $1B (1950s) dollars on before ICBM progress
| obsoleted the concept (for urgent military needs at least). The
| work led to the molten salt reactor concept, which is much loved
| today in the internet nuclear circles with civilian power
| production in mind.
| natcombs wrote:
| >> I didn't cover tanks but did touch on nuclear-powered
| aircraft
|
| IIRC, this idea resurfaced in the early 2000s for long-lived
| drones, but were terminated due to the concern that there may
| be radioactive material/debris if they were shot down. Is that
| true?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Not sure about the resurfacing, but the concern is
| legitimate. When you're splitting atoms to get heat, the
| leftover smaller atoms have what's called nuclear afterglow.
| This afterglow is most hazardous the moment the reactor stops
| and slowly becomes less hazardous with time. In any case, a
| nontrivial fission power reactor vaporizing in atmo would be
| akin to atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from a radiological
| hazard POV. We've done stuff like that before in remote
| areas, but no one thinks it's a good idea.
|
| To do it again, we'd have to basically convince ourselves
| that no matter what shot the plane down, the radiation
| containment system would survive the hit and the crash.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| What's fascinating about nuclear reactors is that you can do
| them in so many ways that are very different.
|
| If you think of combustion engines, there's only a few viable
| cycles or configurations: otto, diesel, brayton. Some small
| variations on these with supercharging and valve timing etc.
| Wankel engine as one different configuration.
|
| But for nuclear power there's hundreds or thousands potential
| ways to produce energy. Different nuclei to start with,
| different fuel cycle, breeding. Neutron speeds, moderated and
| unmoderated. Fuel can be solid, dissolved, molten, gas. As can
| moderator. Pebble bed.
|
| As far as I understand, even traditional reactor rod scheduling
| is a hard computational problem that a lot of resources is used
| on even by today's massive computing standards.
|
| There's so much "blue ocean" left in fission reactors.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I've thought a lot about this as well. In fact, I made a
| random reactor concept generator [1] that is a Python script
| making combinations. There are 1.3 million different options
| possible and that is still not all of them.
|
| [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/random
|
| More info including the full list here [2].
|
| [2] https://whatisnuclear.com/random_info.html
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Hah, that's awesome!
|
| As they say, old airplanes were designed entirely by hand.
| At some point computers could do some calculations. In the
| nineties, the computers could analyze CAD designs. Later,
| the computer could iterate through designs and do
| dimensioning. Maybe currently, generative design of parts.
| In the future they will be able to do configuration.
| krisoft wrote:
| > "[...] before ICBM progress obsoleted the concept."
|
| I'm afraid that anti-ICBM defenses and the availability of
| reliable auto-pilot technology made the concept of a nuclear
| powered planes relevant again:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
| imglorp wrote:
| First of all that's a very important article people should be
| aware of: around the ABM treaty, nuclear _powered_ cruise
| missiles, and maybe some deaths developing that tech. This is
| just last year, Putin driven.
|
| Second of all, it's not clear why it needs to be nuclear
| powered. Our 1970's subsonic cruise missiles are terrain-
| following for 2500km at 30m AGL. You can throw them from
| trucks or ships or planes and go well into someone's
| territory. A fair assumption is that everyones' are better
| now in all axes. The point is you don't need the price/risk
| of unlimited range, unless your goal is to terrorize and
| poison everything on the way to your target.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| We had some nuclear scramjets in the Project Pluto era. I
| think one nice thing about them in the military sense is
| that they can go REALLY fast for a pretty long time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
| sandworm101 wrote:
| They were doomed. The issue was heat. At supersonic
| speeds air friction heats the missile. Without fuel being
| burnt there is no way to _dump_ the heat off the missile.
| Regardless of heat from the engine, after a few hours air
| friction would see the entire thing glowing red, the
| "thermal thicket".
| Gravityloss wrote:
| There's enough energy in kerosene though that regular cruise
| missiles are plenty dangerous...
| liability wrote:
| Depends entirely on what you want to do. If Russia wanted
| to hit a missile silo in Nebraska with a [supersonic]
| cruise missile they'd need to sneak an Oscar up the
| Mississippi (which is implausible if not impossible.)
| Granits have less than a thousand kilometers range, so
| realistically the only way Russia could strike at the
| middle of America is with ballistic missiles. ABM tech
| calls even that into question, hence their recent
| 'superweapon' projects like Skyfall and Poseidon.
| dkarl wrote:
| Project Pluto's nuclear ramjet bomber/missile sounds like it
| came from the imagination of a science fiction novelist or a
| screenwriter:
|
| _a locomotive-size missile that would travel at near-treetop
| level at three times the speed of sound, tossing out hydrogen
| bombs as it roared overhead. Pluto's designers calculated that
| its shock wave alone might kill people on the ground. Then
| there was the problem of fallout. In addition to gamma and
| neutron radiation from the unshielded reactor, Pluto's nuclear
| ramjet would spew fission fragments out in its exhaust as it
| flew by._
|
| Not as efficient at killing as ICBMs, I guess, but a much more
| terrifying concept.
| jabl wrote:
| I imagine if someone were to design a new tank today, the crew
| would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote controlled.
| And an array of sensors, including cameras, to provide visibility
| for the crew.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > the crew would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote
| controlled
|
| Already done: the T-14 mentioned by nradov, and also the Remote
| Weapon Station, used on lots of platforms [0]. Historically,
| the Swedish Stridsvagn 103 [1] was fully turretless.
| Conversely, if you like turrets, then how about the T-35, which
| has five [2]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_stati...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-35
| nradov wrote:
| That is exactly the design used in the Russian T-14 tank.
| jacobush wrote:
| "U.S. Army Gulf War Veteran, former Ford Autoworker and presently
| working in the aviation field as a Chemtrail Technician"
|
| Cracked me up
| chiph wrote:
| All I can think is "top heavy" and "going to tip over"
|
| 10 tons for the chassis, 15 tons for the huge turret.
| rangibaby wrote:
| There's also the Object 279 tank, which wasn't nuclear powered
| but was designed for the nuclear age
| [deleted]
| Shivetya wrote:
| The good old days were probably better known as the crazy old
| days. Think about the technological jump that came from WW2,
| suddenly all aspects of society are impacted by what had been
| developed in relatively short order.
|
| So the next generation is presented with all these new concepts
| and technologies with no world war to get in the way of
| exploiting them. Yes a lot of the ideas were war related but so
| much also went into civilian use that transformed the world.
| dwighttk wrote:
| It talks about a V-8 engine and an electric generator. Is
| "electric generator" a different way of saying "nuclear reactor"?
|
| Edit: I missed the paragraph about later considerations for other
| systems to power the tank...
|
| The NB-36H was an interesting plane.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Expe...
| throwanem wrote:
| Like something out of _If This Goes On--_
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| What's stopping remote controlled unmanned tanks?
|
| Tanks are a huge bullseye target on the battlefield and everyone
| inside seems pretty vulnerable from anything but small arms fire.
| ISL wrote:
| Any jammer that thrashes the entire EM spectrum?
|
| When a modern war big-enough to involve opposing forces of
| main-battle tanks kicks off, most of one's intuition about what
| is fair or possible goes out the window. This is particularly
| the case if the other side _knows_ you have remotely-operated
| hardware. Blinding oneself can be a great strategy if your
| opposition is rendered both blind and ineffective.
|
| Edit regarding armor: it is my impression that modern main-
| battle tanks are designed to survive attacks from everything up
| to, and sometimes including, weapons whose only purpose is to
| kill main-battle tanks.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The amount of power that one would need to jam the
| electromagnetic spectrum would have to be massive though
| right?
|
| Seems like anything from a plane could take down a tank?
|
| I don't know how prevalent air forces are in countries
| though.
| ISL wrote:
| Jamming selective bands requires some care. Filling the RF
| environment with noise may only require a powerful
| generator and a suitably mis-configured spark-gap
| transmitter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter
| vkou wrote:
| > Tanks are a huge bullseye target on the battlefield and
| everyone inside seems pretty vulnerable from anything but small
| arms fire.
|
| Tanks operate supported by infantry, and tanks really do not
| like infantry pointing anti-tank weapons at them. You may get
| one surprise shot at a tank, but unless you're truly suicidal,
| you're probably not going to stick around for a second.
| paganel wrote:
| Tanks were really vulnerable in Syria against Kornet-like [1]
| weapons, I think only the Russians providing T-90s to the
| Syrian Army helped made things a little better for them, but
| by that point the Government-supported army had already lost
| dozens (probably more than 100 even) of tanks.
|
| Also judging by what happened in Syria, tanks are not that
| efficient in densily built urban environments. The Syrian
| Army tanks had almost free reign in the Damascus neighborhood
| called Jobar but with not that much showing for it. Similar
| thing happened in East Aleppo, but at a smaller scale. What
| helped tip the balance in favor of Assad's army were the
| Russian air bombardments (a quick search for "Syria cluster
| bombs" will help clear things up).
|
| [1] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/9M133_Kornet
| [deleted]
| jdkee wrote:
| Inspiration for http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ ?
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