Mobile Nuclear Reactors?
Mobile Nuclear Reactors Could Provide Power and Jet Fuel for Military, DARPA Says
Navy Aircraft Could nuclear-powered carriers use their reactors and seawater to provide jet fuel for their aircraft? U.S. Navy/Stephen Rowe
That plan could fit well with the U.S. Navy's "Green Strike Group" concept for biofuel and nuclear-powered vessels. The Register points out that nuclear-powered aircraft carriers could make use of seawater to make JP-8 jet fuel from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, courtesy of work by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
This gets trickier for U.S. military land bases that lack easy access to carbon feedstocks or massive quantities of water, but DARPA does hint at making use of the sewage lakes that have accumulated next to some bases in Afghanistan. Still, trucking in huge amounts of water could prove unwieldy.
The U.S. military has already begun deploying green technologies that aim for self-sufficiency for reasons beyond environmental concerns -- running fuel convoys puts U.S. warfighters in harm's way of insurgent ambushes and roadside bombs.
DARPA ultimately hopes for portable nuclear reactors that can provide 5 to 10 megawatts of electricity and produce 15,000 gallons of JP-8 or road fuel every day -- about enough fuel to top off a Chinook helicopter a dozen times, according to The Register.
Perhaps the biggest technical challenge is creating such small nuclear reactors in the first place. But at least Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others have already begun backing plans for shrinking nuclear power to portable sizes.
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