Slashdot Mirror
Coming To a War Near You: Nuclear Powered Drones
An anonymous reader writes "American scientists and engineers are researching a new generation of UAV's that would be nuclear-powered. Why do this? They would have the capacity to stay over a target area for months and only be limited by the ordinance they could drop on a potential foe. They would be similar to a nuclear attack submarine but not limited to the amount of food on-board. The article notes: 'The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the U.S. government's principal nuclear research and development agency – and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time "from days to months" while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia,' the paper reported."
And unsurprisingly the Slashdot headline fails to note that the program work has been halted and that it was never approved. Doing a little feasibility research is entirely reasonable for the military. That is, assuming they don't waste too much money on something that has serious downsides -- yeah I know, leap of faith time.
Crazy ideas turn out to be reasonable once in a great while -- we call they breakthroughs.
you get a bunch of responses from people who want to show their intellectual superiority
You left one out: misunderstanding your argument because they're dense and have problems with reading comprehension, and then talking down to you like you're an idiot because of what they falsely think you said. Then launching personal attacks, or splitting hairs, or selectively quoting you when you point out what was right there in black-and-white because that's actually easier for them than admitting they made a mistake. That's a popular one.
... the autostraw.
It's the unintentional straw man approach. It's
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
So when these inevitably are downed for some reason (e.g. technical malfunctions, enemy interference, etc), what's to stop the enemy from reverse engineering the technology and gaining "nuclear secrets"?
I wouldn't worry so much about the secrets, but rather the nuclear materials you provide them free of charge for anyone who manages to shoot (or lure) one down.
And the summary completely misses the main point of the story:
The fact that the program has been halted is something that Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on drone warfare, suggests may be lost in the attention on the nuclear aspect of the project.
“What people seem to be missing is that the program was not approved. We are not building it!” he told me. “All sorts of ideas are proposed by scientists, and this one was found to involve a technology not yet ready for prime time and which carries some deep concerns about its implications for operations, legal concerns, and fear of accident impact. So it was not approved.”
Apparently the submitter, in typical Anonymous Coward fashion, failed to read past the first paragraph.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
(Note: all figures below reflect electrical or mechanical power, not thermal power, and weights include thermoelectrics or heat engines, not bare reactors.)
Currently deployed RTGs have shitty Power/Weight Ratio, in the range 1-10 W/kg for the RTG alone, and these are already designed for spacecraft where weight is crucial. Compare to the Wright Flyer, which had a whole-vehicle P/W of about 30 W/kg (engine: 116 W/kg), or a Predator UAV (again, whole-vehicle) @ 85 W/kg, and you'll see that's not even close.
Comparing small fission reactors, the S6G reactor used in Los Angeles-class submarines makes 17 W/kg, and could conceivably be improved if designed for uncrewed situations and greater emphasis on low weight. A space-based reactor design from the '80s that was sadly canceled, the SP-100 was to make about 35 W/kg -- not perfect, but approaching feasibility, and 5 times better than the ASRG (AFAIK the most power-dense radioisotope plant on the drawing board today, using an efficient Stirling engine rather than thermoelectric junctions).
For future next-generation designs, see the Hyperion uranium hydride reactor, which is supposed to make 1500 W/kg, more-or-less, as a land-based design. Doesn't mean all that much till we see a prototype, but Pu-based RTGs simply can't come anywhere remotely close. Now maybe isotopes of some light metal could put RTGs back in the game -- and you certainly can't fission light elements for a corresponding gain! -- but for now, fission reactors have the lead.