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Nuclear propulsion includes a wide variety of propulsion methods that use some form of nuclear reaction as their primary power source. Many military submarines, and, owing to crude oil prices and emissions, aircraft carriers and a growing number of large civilian surface ships, especially icebreakers, use nuclear reactors as their power plants (see nuclear marine propulsion for civil use and nuclear navy for military use). In addition, various types of nuclear propulsion have been proposed, and some of them tested, for spacecraft applications:

Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rockets - conduct nuclear fission reactions similar to those safely employed at nuclear power plants including submarines. The energy is used to heat the liquid hydrogen propellant. Courtesy of NASA Glenn Research Center

• Antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion
• Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rockets conduct nuclear fission reactions similar to those safely employed at nuclear power plants including submarines. The energy is used to heat the liquid hydrogen propellant. Advocates of nuclear powered spacecraft point out that at the time of launch, there is almost no radiation released from the nuclear reactors. The nuclear-powered rockets are not used to lift off the Earth. Nuclear thermal rockets can provide great performance advantages compared to chemical propulsion systems. Nuclear power sources could also be used to provide the spacecraft with electrical power for operations and scientific instrumentation.^[1]
• Bussard ramjet
• Fission-fragment rocket
• Fission sail
• Fusion rocket
• Gas core reactor rocket
• Nuclear electric rocket
• Nuclear photonic rocket
• Nuclear pulse propulsion
• Nuclear salt-water rocket
• Nuclear thermal rocket
• Radioisotope rocket

RKA (Russian Federal Space Agency) NPS Development

Anatolij Perminov, head of Russian Space Agency announced that RKA is going to develop a nuclear powered spacecraft for deep space travel. Design will be done by 2012, and 9 more years for development (in space assembly). The price is set to 17 billion rubles (600 million dollars).

See also

• Project Pluto, which developed an unmanned cruise missile that used a nuclear powered ramjet for propulsion.
• NERVA - NASA's Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications, a US nuclear thermal rocket program
• Project Prometheus, NASA development of nuclear propulsion for long-duration spaceflight, begun in 2003
• Project Orion, first engineering design study of nuclear pulse (i.e., atomic explosion) propulsion
• Project Daedalus, 1970s British Interplanetary Society study of a fusion rocket
• Project Longshot, US Naval Academy-NASA nuclear pulse propulsion design
• Ford Nucleon - never realized idea for a nuclear-powered car
• Nuclear aircraft - General Electric's cold war project to build a nuclear powered bomber.

The draft design of the spacecraft is slated to be ready by 2012, while the actual model is expected to be developed by 2018. The total cost of the project is estimated at about $600 million.

Bibliography

• Bussard, R; DeLauer, R (1958), Nuclear Rocket Propulsion, McGraw-Hill  

References

External links

• RKA home page in English
  • (Russian) RKA home page in Russian
  • (Russian) 2006-2015 RKA Fundamental Space Research Program
• Russian Space Program
• Atomic Rockets -- Realistic Designs ten speculative concepts from NASA