![]() From 1946 until 1961, vast teams of engineers, strategists, and administrators toiled in a whirl of blueprints, white papers, and green bills in an attempt to get the idea off the ground. As World War II drew to a close, the United States began work to realize Fermi’s dream of nuclear-powered flight. The Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi had introduced the idea of nuclear flight as early as 1942, while serving on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. During the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear apocalypse led to surprisingly pragmatic plans, engineers proposed to solve the problem by hiring elderly Air Force crews to pilot the hypothetical nuclear planes, because they would die before radiation exposure gave them fatal cancers. Shielding it from spewing dangerous radiation into the bodies of its crew might be impossible. Making a nuclear reactor flightworthy is difficult. ![]() The advantages of nuclear submarines over their conventional cousins raise a question about another component of the military arsenal: Why don’t airplanes run on nuclear power? Read: What it felt like to test the first submarine nuclear reactor Defense planners expect that the new submarines will run on one fueling for the entirety of deployment-up to a half century. ![]() Unlike “conventional” submarines, which need to surface frequently, nuclear submarines can cruise below the sea at high speeds for decades without ever needing to refuel. Navy recently asked Congress for $139 billion to update its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
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