Nuclear powered Engines?

[Anonymous]

The thickness required for reactor shielding could not fit into the width or height of a locomotive body. No shielding, no reactor.

[zardoz]

Actually, my post was meant rather tongue-in-cheek.

But considering the numbers mentioned, and considering the part of my post where I indicated "line-side solar collectors" maybe, when solar cells become more efficient, it might not be too far-out of an idea.

[jchnhtfd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

How about a solar-powered electric locomotive? There could be an array of photo-voltaic cells all across the top of the locomotives, as well as numerous solar collectors along the right-of-way feeding the power directly into overhead wires. There could also be a connection to the main power grid to be used on cloudy days, and when the trains are not using the power, or if there is an excess of power in the system, the solar power could be sold back to the utility companies.

OK,, lets throw some numbers at this and see what happens.

The amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface is roughly 1 horsepower per square yard (it varies quite a bit over the latitudes covered byu the US, but that's an easy average to work with)
Solar panals are around 10-15% efficient (a 1 square yard panel receiving 1HP of sunlight will produce 1/10th HP of useable electricity)
A modern loco is around 4000 HP, so doing the math means that 40,000 square yards of collecting area are required for each loco you intend to run. That's 7.5 football fields.

[:D] I was going to throw those numbers, but you beat me to it. But I'd sure like to see a locomotive that size trundling around!!! Let's see. Assume a 10'6" width for clearances, and restrict ourselves to the top of the thing... that's about 40,000 feet of locomotive[:)]

[Hugh Jampton]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

How about a solar-powered electric locomotive? There could be an array of photo-voltaic cells all across the top of the locomotives, as well as numerous solar collectors along the right-of-way feeding the power directly into overhead wires. There could also be a connection to the main power grid to be used on cloudy days, and when the trains are not using the power, or if there is an excess of power in the system, the solar power could be sold back to the utility companies.

OK,, lets throw some numbers at this and see what happens.

The amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface is roughly 1 horsepower per square yard (it varies quite a bit over the latitudes covered byu the US, but that's an easy average to work with)
Solar panals are around 10-15% efficient (a 1 square yard panel receiving 1HP of sunlight will produce 1/10th HP of useable electricity)
A modern loco is around 4000 HP, so doing the math means that 40,000 square yards of collecting area are required for each loco you intend to run. That's 7.5 football fields.

[dldance]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

How about a solar-powered electric locomotive? There could be an array of photo-voltaic cells all across the top of the locomotives, as well as numerous solar collectors along the right-of-way feeding the power directly into overhead wires. There could also be a connection to the main power grid to be used on cloudy days, and when the trains are not using the power, or if there is an excess of power in the system, the solar power could be sold back to the utility companies.

it takes a lot of solar cells generating milliwatts each to produce the megawatt that a locomotive needs - much more than even the surface area of a DD40.

dd

[zardoz]

How about a solar-powered electric locomotive? There could be an array of photo-voltaic cells all across the top of the locomotives, as well as numerous solar collectors along the right-of-way feeding the power directly into overhead wires. There could also be a connection to the main power grid to be used on cloudy days, and when the trains are not using the power, or if there is an excess of power in the system, the solar power could be sold back to the utility companies.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarc

I have been non-PC all my life, I don't plan on changin now. I have sensitivity for those who do not know and ask a question, I have none for those who are clueless and post absurd and completely incorrect information. I have a very low tolerance for stupidity.

I had a friend like this guy several years ago. He was a very bright individual, but despised most people because in his book, they were "below him"...
One night for no reason, he stuck a 9mm pistol in his mouth and ended his life.

As for nuclear powered trains. I don't know about that. Cold fussion maybe-if they ever actually develop it...

trainluver1

[domefoamer]

Last year, Rail History Quarterly (I think) published a research paper into the history of these efforts. It's fascinating reading. The loco would have been enormously heavy, and to what benefit? Compare this to a nuclear submarine, which is designed to roam the seas self-contained for years at a time, far from ports, hidden from sight. That's an application that almost demands nukes. But trains operate in the exactly opposite mode. You can't hide them. They stop frequently to drop or add freight and exchange crews. Far from self-sufficient, they travel within their own supporting infrastructure and pass a diesel tank every 100 miles or so, at least. Leaving aside the many intractable difficulties of a nuclear locomotive, there's just no benefit I can see...

[vsmith]

OH NO not this topic again!

How long before we get into that mythical ex NW 2-8-8-2 with a bootleg reactor roaming the backwoods of India again. hahahaha

Or shall I revive the Legendary Soviet Atomic "Big Joe" locomotive...heheheee

[Anonymous]

Nuclearwriter, after reading your recommended article with all of the possibilities of the ever shrinking nuclear reactor.Something akin to it would find a use in small and isolated areas of the world where transmission of electricity would be difficult and expensive comes to mind as a real application. However, when you talk about railroads the area of electric traction is where the mini reacor may come into its own as a phased peaking type unit in a given service or division on the railroad or as shared assets between the rail companies and local utilities. A good direction for our discussion, but a subject that still will require some time and patience to come to pass.

[Anonymous]

Here is a site with some information on a condesing nuclear loco....

http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/newsteam/modern16.htm

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

During the early stages of the cold war the USAF did some research on nuclear reactors for airplanes. (Luckly, locomotives don't fall out of the sky) however, I believe that the AF discontinued the research due to a wide varied of issues including safety issues. Given the current reglatury enviorment could you imagine the size of that nuclear powered loco? New heavier track would have to be laid and special cooridors for it's use determined and the haz mat teams beefed up where ever this thing went. Granted it would be a looker!

[dldance]

Even if nuclear waste were safe enough to use as baby food (imagine changing that diaper!) small nukes in locomotive still have to deal with condensors. And condensors have never been successfull long-term in land based locomotive applications. Sea based, yes - so a nuclear container ship is feasible. The cooling side of the power equation is just as important as the heating side.

dd

[cmulligan01]

Thanks for the information Chad Thomas.

To clarify matters some I'll explain my a little. Some of my information I get through the media the other info I get from my Dad. He works for the company involved in the Yucca Mountain railroad project but in a different office and department within the company. The regional hq that covers Nevada is in the same office though. I have never worked because of health issues so I have no first hand knowledge of the corporate world. Every so often the company has a meeting to inform employees of what is going on in other departments of the company and major projects. That's where I found out the company was involved this close to the project. I am unaware of how old my information is. I first heard several months ago.

I understand emotions can run high on a matter such as this. I'm far enough away I think I look at it as something interesting and worth following. Whatever happens in the end and however it's resolved I hope it never turns violent. I really hope nobody is killed. My Dad has told me about the protests he had to drive through while working on a nuclear plant in the 1970s.

More on topic I think that nuclear plants providing the power for electrifried railroad lines is a good solution. I would think the power needed for the lines would need to be steady and putting waste, safety concerns, etc. aside a nuclear plant is a good choice for a steady, constant output. What I would worry more about now, after reading the most recent issue of Trains, is the age and shape of the infrastructure in the NE corridor.

[chad thomas]

from The Las Vegas Review-Journal Mar-6,05

Western Shoshones file Yucca lawsuit: Tribes cite 1863 treaty in claiming land cannot by used for waste repository

A contingent of Western Shoshones played what Yucca Mountain, Nevada nuclear waste project opponents consider their ace in the hole Friday: a lawsuit based on an 1863 treaty that the tribes say doesn't allow building a repository on their native land.

It is the first time the Ruby Valley Treaty, authorized by Civil War Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, has been used in a case that targets Yucca Mountain, said Reno attorney Robert Hager, who represents the Western Shoshone tribes.

"I have always felt the Western Shoshone have the best claim to stop Yucca Mountain," Hager said, flanked by tribal leaders outside Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas where the case was filed.

Yucca Mountain is a sacred site for Western Shoshones.

Hager said the tribes want to hold the departments of Energy and Interior accountable for the contractual agreement that specifies how their 93,750-square-mile swath across parts of Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho should be used.

The agreed uses do not include a disposal site for highly radioactive waste or a railroad to deliver waste to the mountain, which the federal government intends to do by submitting a repository licence application to regulators by the end of this year.

The lawsuit, with a motion for an injunction to stop the project, names Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton as defendants.

A spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas had no comment on the lawsuit.

The mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is the planned site for a repository to entomb 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and deadly defense wastes. The repository sits on land covered by the treaty, an eight-part pact with the Western Shoshones that was negotiated by James Nye, who was then governor of the Nevada Territory.

The plaintiffs from the Timbisha and Te-Moak bands -- Joe Kennedy, John Wells, Pauline Esteves and Kevin Gillette -- and the Western National Council claim the treaty allows only five uses for the land: settlements, mines, ranches, roads and a railroad.

"We've always talked about using this as a last resort," Raymond Yowell, 75, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, said of the lawsuit.

Kennedy, of the Timbisha tribe, said the timing of the lawsuit, nearly three years after Congress overrode Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto to approve the repository, is important "not only for Western Shoshone but for all people and the citizens of Las Vegas."

"They just can't run over the people," Kennedy said of DOE officials.

"We're looking out for Nevada as a whole. They (DOE officials) have to be accountable and just can't put nuclear waste in the mountain. It could be devastating," he said.

Kennedy said his ancestors who forged the treaty and others before them long have considered Yucca Mountain and nearby Forty Mile Wash sacred places. To Western Shoshones, the mountain lives as a giant snake slithering westward for nearly 20 miles across the remote terrain of southern Nye County.

Ian Zabarte, the council's secretary of state, said unlike other cases involving the treaty, this one focuses on contractual issues and puts the burden on the U.S. government to demonstrate title. "They can't possibly do that," he said.

Wells, a Western Shoshone from Las Vegas, said the lawsuit "is finally putting the treaty out there where it belongs."

Yowell, 75, who lives on a reservation 27 miles south of Elko, estimates there are roughly 10,000 Western Shoshones, most scattered across the United States.

In 1946, an American Indian claims commission determined that when the West was settled, the Western Shoshones lost their land through gradual encroachment. In 1985, the Supreme Court favored the federal government in a lawsuit over who had title to the land.

Last year, President Bush approved a congressional measure to pay Western Shoshones more than $145 million in compensation and interest for their territory. The payment was for $27 million the claims commission awarded them in 1979 for what their territory was valued at in 1872.

According to Yowell, no money has yet been doled out to Western Shoshones who are split on whether or not to accept it.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain Project but also was instrumental persuading Congress to distribute the claims commission compensation. Reached late Friday, Reid's spokeswoman, Tessa Hafen, said the senator "feels if the case is successful and Yucca Mountain is stopped, then that's good for Nevada and the country."

In Carson City, project critic Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said he was pleasantly surprised when he heard the lawsuit was filed.
"I think it's great news. I think every bit of help we can get on Yucca Mountain is great," he said.

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group, said the lawsuit is significant because it shows the Western Shoshone are "are fighters and they're not going to sit still for this."

"This may be the thing that saves our butts from Yucca Mountain," she said. - Keith Rogers, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, courtesy Larry W. Grant

[cmulligan01]

I am aware of the resistance to the whole Yucca Mountain project. I know someone very well who's company is involved in the railroad construction (as well as one of the sections of the Phoenix light rail project) and the latest I heard was it's still a go.

[kevarc]

I have been non-PC all my life, I don't plan on changin now. I have sensitivity for those who do not know and ask a question, I have none for those who are clueless and post absurd and completely incorrect information. I have a very low tolerance for stupidity.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarc

People should think JUST a little before they post. If you don't know, don't post.

The same can be said for people who have little sensitivity for others. Perhaps, it is more desirable to inform rather than criticize.

I you would like an exercise in absurdity just read what you wrote: "If you don't know, don't post." If you don't know, maybe you don't know that you don't know...you don't.

[chad thomas]

The Yucca mt. project is hitting enough resistance that it may not happen.

[cmulligan01]

This question sounds to me like the experiment the US Air Force did early in the Cold War with a nuclear powered bomber. If I remember right the biggest problem in that experiment was getting enough lead shielding for the reactor in the plane. In one flight the crew got at least their one year's worth of safe radiation. I think in the end they couldn't fit enough lead shielding in to protect the crew without the weight going past what the plane could handle.

As for as the transportation of waste I've seen a program I think it was on either the Discovery or History channel and some of the tests they put the containers through. One I remember was dropping a container from a crane several stories high. Another was parking a flatbed truck with a container across a test track. Then they fitted rockets to the side of what looked like an early Geep or SD. A high hood -7 or -9 and hit the truck about 50 mph. The container flew through the air and I believe the outer layer cracked but not the 2 or 3 interior layers.

There is a rail line being built to Yucca Mountain. I was told it's about 50 miles long and it's supposed to be the largest completely new route in at least 50 years.

[ajmiller]

QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion
AJ: I know a few plant managers that would probably look at you with all the love and careing of your fourth grade teacher after a successfull spitball attack and ask you into her/his office for a little adjustment for that kind of idea on lighting.

I was more of a paper airplane person rather than spitballs in the fourth grade.
But blue lights would sure look cool. A nice Cherenkov Effect glow to light up the night sky.

QUOTE: But the color of steam is usually enough to get the public going, especially when the hyperbolic type cooling towers (not to be confused with the forsed draft variety) are used in non-nuclear applications such as a coal fired electric generating plant or a chemical plant. I have had people swear that the cooling curtians are nuclear reactors when I was working in the construction of a coal plant near Macon GA. One even called me a conspiritor and a liar against the public good when I was his host on a guided tour of the place. Go figure- PL

See, you get it. People fear what they don't understand, and the news media and entertainment industries go to great lengths to spread stupidity when it comes to science and technology.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ajmiller

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarc

"He threw Nuclear man right into the hatch at the bottom of the cooling tower where all the radioactive steam comes out. You know, the steam you see coming out of the cooling tower? "

This is NOT radioactive steam ot water. The cooling towers are NOT for the steam that goes through the turbine, but it is for the condenser water. Each is a closed syetem and the waters do not co-mingle.

Really? I saw it in the movie therefore it must be true! [;)]

NO, I know it's not radioactive. And I know the difference between a BWR and a PWR too.

What do you think about my idea to shine blue lights on the cooling towers? We could shine them on the cooling towers at fossil plants too just for fun.

When you see pictures of nuclear plants on TV, what do you see? Cooling Towers! If it's got cooling towers, it must be a nuclear plant.

AJ: I know a few plant managers that would probably look at you with all the love and careing of your fourth grade teacher after a successfull spitball attack and ask you into her/his office for a little adjustment for that kind of idea on lighting.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But the color of steam is usually enough to get the public going, especially when the hyperbolic type cooling towers (not to be confused with the forsed draft variety) are used in non-nuclear applications such as a coal fired electric generating plant or a chemical plant. I have had people swear that the cooling curtians are nuclear reactors when I was working in the construction of a coal plant near Macon GA. One even called me a conspiritor and a liar against the public good when I was his host on a guided tour of the place. Go figure- PL

[chateauricher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarcPeople should think JUST a little before they post. If you don't know, don't post.

[soapbox]Sometimes you don't know you're wrong until its pointed out to you. H*eck! It wasn't until Columbus bumped into North America, that Europeans realised that the world isn't flat. And even Columbus thought he was taking a shortcut to Asia, not knowing a whole continent stood in his way.

So it is unfair to resort to insulting people who say things they don't know might be wrong. Correct them, yes. Point out their mistake, yes. But don't insult them.

[kevarc]

All plants that have condensers have cooling towers.

Unless they are direct discharging to a body of water, such as a lake.

[ajmiller]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevarc

"He threw Nuclear man right into the hatch at the bottom of the cooling tower where all the radioactive steam comes out. You know, the steam you see coming out of the cooling tower? "

This is NOT radioactive steam ot water. The cooling towers are NOT for the steam that goes through the turbine, but it is for the condenser water. Each is a closed syetem and the waters do not co-mingle.

Really? I saw it in the movie therefore it must be true! [;)]

NO, I know it's not radioactive. And I know the difference between a BWR and a PWR too.

What do you think about my idea to shine blue lights on the cooling towers? We could shine them on the cooling towers at fossil plants too just for fun.

When you see pictures of nuclear plants on TV, what do you see? Cooling Towers! If it's got cooling towers, it must be a nuclear plant.

[kevarc]

"He threw Nuclear man right into the hatch at the bottom of the cooling tower where all the radioactive steam comes out. You know, the steam you see coming out of the cooling tower? "

This is NOT radioactive steam ot water. The cooling towers are NOT for the steam that goes through the turbine, but it is for the condenser water. Each is a closed syetem and the waters do not co-mingle.

[ajmiller]

QUOTE: Originally posted by talbanese

QUOTE: Originally posted by ajmiller

The best way to power trains with nuclear energy is to build nuclear power plants and use them to run electric locomotives.

This is already happening!!! The NEC receives its power from outside sources which do use nuclear fuel to generate power. So your Acela's are nuclear powered.

My Acela's? Cool, I didn't know I had Acelas! Nuclear powered Acelas! [8D]

It'd be neat if we could look at the electrons in the wire and figure out wether they came from a nuclear plant or a hydro plant or from a hobo wheel. Or maybe they just move back and forth since it's AC power and all.

Anyway, on public perception of nuclear power, has anyone here ever seen Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? I just love how Superman disposed of Nuclear man by throwing him into the cooling tower at nuclear plant. He threw Nuclear man right into the hatch at the bottom of the cooling tower where all the radioactive steam comes out. You know, the steam you see coming out of the cooling tower? [;)]

I used to tease my dad (He's a nuclear engineer) that his plant should shine bright blue lights on the outside of the cooling towers at night just to freak every one out.

[kevarc]

People should think JUST a little before they post. If you don't know, don't post.

This topic has been hammered on in at least 1 or 2 other threads in the last 2 weeks. Enough is enough. the search function works in the forum software, use it and save a lot of greif.