vsmith wrote: dldance wrote: larsend wrote: The engines from the airplane still exist. They were recently put on public display next to the decommissioned reactor that was used to supply power to the first city to be lighted by nuclear power, Arco, Idaho. These engines are bigger than locomotives. Incidentally, next to these engins, also on display is a locomotive that was used at the Idaho National Laboratory to move high radiation material around the site. It has a relatively small deisel engine, but the operator's cab is a large cylinder with walls 18 to 24 inches thick. One window, in the front made of many layers of lead glass, about 12 inches in diameter. The crew was sealed into the cylinder during the operation. Idaho National Laboratory is located about 40 miles west of Idaho Falls. The displays are classified as a National Historical Site, on the grounds of the I.N.L.Larsend - I think that locomotive is standard gauge but some of the tracks it was used on were 4 rail, with two sets of standard gauge tracks separated by 54.5 inches. The locomotive would run on the inside rails and to hot material was carried on double-wide flat cars with 2 sets of trucks on each side, running on the outer pairs of rails.There was also the rumor that that locomotive was nuclear powered but it is conventional diesel as you described. Thanks for letting me know it is on display now. I'll have to go see it.ddI recommend the National Atomic Museum in Alberqurque, NM. dedicated to the history of atomic weapons in the US Air Force, now I'm no fan of nukes but I found it a riveting place! Full size A-bomb and H-bomb casings the size of truck, lots of displays, got my pic in front of the Fat Man casing and they have a great film on the history around the Trinity bomb site, didnt get to go to Trinity, thats only once a year and has to be reserved well in advance.
dldance wrote: larsend wrote: The engines from the airplane still exist. They were recently put on public display next to the decommissioned reactor that was used to supply power to the first city to be lighted by nuclear power, Arco, Idaho. These engines are bigger than locomotives. Incidentally, next to these engins, also on display is a locomotive that was used at the Idaho National Laboratory to move high radiation material around the site. It has a relatively small deisel engine, but the operator's cab is a large cylinder with walls 18 to 24 inches thick. One window, in the front made of many layers of lead glass, about 12 inches in diameter. The crew was sealed into the cylinder during the operation. Idaho National Laboratory is located about 40 miles west of Idaho Falls. The displays are classified as a National Historical Site, on the grounds of the I.N.L.Larsend - I think that locomotive is standard gauge but some of the tracks it was used on were 4 rail, with two sets of standard gauge tracks separated by 54.5 inches. The locomotive would run on the inside rails and to hot material was carried on double-wide flat cars with 2 sets of trucks on each side, running on the outer pairs of rails.There was also the rumor that that locomotive was nuclear powered but it is conventional diesel as you described. Thanks for letting me know it is on display now. I'll have to go see it.dd
larsend wrote: The engines from the airplane still exist. They were recently put on public display next to the decommissioned reactor that was used to supply power to the first city to be lighted by nuclear power, Arco, Idaho. These engines are bigger than locomotives. Incidentally, next to these engins, also on display is a locomotive that was used at the Idaho National Laboratory to move high radiation material around the site. It has a relatively small deisel engine, but the operator's cab is a large cylinder with walls 18 to 24 inches thick. One window, in the front made of many layers of lead glass, about 12 inches in diameter. The crew was sealed into the cylinder during the operation. Idaho National Laboratory is located about 40 miles west of Idaho Falls. The displays are classified as a National Historical Site, on the grounds of the I.N.L.
The engines from the airplane still exist. They were recently put on public display next to the decommissioned reactor that was used to supply power to the first city to be lighted by nuclear power, Arco, Idaho. These engines are bigger than locomotives.
Incidentally, next to these engins, also on display is a locomotive that was used at the Idaho National Laboratory to move high radiation material around the site. It has a relatively small deisel engine, but the operator's cab is a large cylinder with walls 18 to 24 inches thick. One window, in the front made of many layers of lead glass, about 12 inches in diameter. The crew was sealed into the cylinder during the operation.
Idaho National Laboratory is located about 40 miles west of Idaho Falls. The displays are classified as a National Historical Site, on the grounds of the I.N.L.
Larsend - I think that locomotive is standard gauge but some of the tracks it was used on were 4 rail, with two sets of standard gauge tracks separated by 54.5 inches. The locomotive would run on the inside rails and to hot material was carried on double-wide flat cars with 2 sets of trucks on each side, running on the outer pairs of rails.
There was also the rumor that that locomotive was nuclear powered but it is conventional diesel as you described. Thanks for letting me know it is on display now. I'll have to go see it.
dd
I recommend the National Atomic Museum in Alberqurque, NM. dedicated to the history of atomic weapons in the US Air Force, now I'm no fan of nukes but I found it a riveting place! Full size A-bomb and H-bomb casings the size of truck, lots of displays, got my pic in front of the Fat Man casing and they have a great film on the history around the Trinity bomb site, didnt get to go to Trinity, thats only once a year and has to be reserved well in advance.
I thought Trinity was open for tours twice a year; the first Saturday in April and October. I was planning on getting down there while I am in Colorado. Sounds interesting.
THAT'S exactly what we need! A nuclear powered train! With a derailment being posted on this forum on a weekly basis, it seems there wouldnt be any risks at all! Too bad those long haired liberals kybashed the idea long ago.
WTF????
Just took a look at the specs. Wow! A whopping 78 tons of tractive effort, from a rolling nightmare 160 feet long...
Wasn't N&W 4500 running at the time? IIRC, 'Jawn Henry' had tractive effort in the same ballpark, burning ol' plain jane non-radioactive coal. And even with N&W heavy duty right of way there were 12 axles under the 4500, 3 more than the project design used.
IMHO, the fate of the 4500, and the C&O turbines, had to be a pretty good indicator of what would have happened to the steam turbine end of the nuclear locomotive. Steam turbines and rail service are NOT a marriage made in heaven.
Speaking of the Nevada site, Yucca Mountain, we don't need to import any demonstrators. We already have an ample supply based locally. (They even went ballistic when the words, "mushroom cloud," were used in conjunction with a discription of a planned CONVENTIONAL explosion about as big as a PRB mine would use to break coal for one shift...)
Chuck
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
wallyworld wrote: Anyone remember this made for tv movie several years ago.?.what a dog...but it was so bad it was good in a humorous aka dumb way..eeeek!
Anyone remember this made for tv movie several years ago.?.what a dog...but it was so bad it was good in a humorous aka dumb way..eeeek!
Oh yeah, that one
Have fun with your trains
WOOF!spoke the dog
Victrola1 wrote: It would be fun to build a nuke locomotive and send in across the country to pick up nuclear waste from research laboratories for disposal at the new doomsday storage site in Nevada. Would the gray pony tailed buzzards at Berkley, or Madison, show up to protest?
It would be fun to build a nuke locomotive and send in across the country to pick up nuclear waste from research laboratories for disposal at the new doomsday storage site in Nevada. Would the gray pony tailed buzzards at Berkley, or Madison, show up to protest?
We have our own homegrown grey, pony-tailed buzzards right here.
Union Pacific does a good job delivering the stuff with conventional equipment, but every once in a while the natives get restless.
If it directly effects their research grant money, it usually works like the mute switch on your tv remote.
There was also project PLUTO, for a nuclear powered rocket, they said after the rocket dropped its warheads it would fly around the enemy country spewing out radiation. Who thought science could be so fun.
Can you imagine a derailment? uhh..bob, can you take that rerailing frog over there...bob?...come on we only have ten miutes of exposure time here...where'd you go?
They built the plane, even loaded a mock reactor, they even did some ground tests with the engine system, but the prospect of a multi-million dollar airborne nuclear reactor colliding with a $2K Piper Cub and spreading a nuclear debris field over an area the size of a small state, kept them from ever trying it in the air.
PS they used a B36 because the fact that the plane was soooooo heavy from the radiation sheilding, that was the only plane that could get it airborne, even then the sheilding was "thin' to keep the wieght down and the flight crews would have only had a very short exposure time (1 hour max. flight time comes to mind) before, well, lets just say I hope they had kids before they took the flight. Lets just say no one was lining up to "volunteer" for those future flights. So they cancelled it.
Thanks for the 1954 report. Google went nowhere.
Concerning the nuke bomber, I believe a B36 was used as test bed for an airborne reactor. The Air Force got the reactor in the air with all of its tare. As with the locomotive, all the lead shielding left little else for moving payload.
Poking around on the N. S. Savannah, the cost of decomissioning was a pricey issue.
A number of problems...
First, it is technically difficult to provide really adequate shielding within the geometry of a locomotive.
Second, there is an alternative way to use nuclear power for rail operations: electrification, and generation of the electricity by nuclear power plants. Of course, that runs into...
Third, the collection of NIMBYS, BANANAS, and other assorted weepies with tremendous political clout and little or no brains have effectively stymied the use of nuclear power for anything, despite the proven safety of such power and the equally proven reduction in greenhouse gasses and global warming associated with a switch to nuclear power. Go figure.
Whatever happened to the nuclear powered locomotive?
When the US Navy launched the Nautilis, smaller reators were to change propelling everything. The Air Force planned and did serious research on a nuclear powered bomber. The S.S. Savanah was launched into the merchant marine. What of land transport?
I inherited a video tape of an NBC documentary on railroads. It was done nearly 50 years ago. Chet Huntley tells of the promise of nuclear powered locomotives over a video of design engineers wearing narrow ties and pocket protectors looking over a drawing of a strange object inside the shell of an EMD cab unit.
That future is now. Whatever became of nuke powered locomotive?
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