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Nuclear powered Engines?
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I've posted this in the other topics before, but I'll say it again. There actually were plans to build a nuclear-powered locomotive in the mid-1950's. This was part of the Utah Project, which worked for ways to develop atomic power. The proposed engine would have looked something like an E unit coupled to a really long B unit. The "A unit" would have had three 3-axle trucks and the "B unit" would have had one 3-axle truck and one 2-axle truck. All the trucks provided traction, except for the 2-axle one at the end, which was just there to support the weight. The whole thing would have been 160 feet long and weighed 396 tons, 359 of which were on the "A unit". It would have had 9000-12,000hp. The reactor was located in the "A unit" and was protected by 198 tons of armour in case of a derailment. There were also safety measures taken so that the nuclear reaction would automatically stop if there was a derailment. This idea never reached fruition for obvious reasons, one of which was that the cost of this monster over 10 years of use was estimated to be double that of 4 diesel locomotives of equal power.
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