Category Archives: Cold War

Atomic Snapshots: Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion

Across the parking lot from the EBR-1 outside Arco, Idaho, you’ll find the decommissioned HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 in large test assemblies. These Heat Transfer Reactor Experiments were tests of nuclear propulsion in aircraft. General Electric J47 turbojet engines were modified (renamed X-39) to use heated compressed air from a heat exchanger as part of the nuclear reactor rather than from combusting jet fuel. The X-39 engines would have been used in the proposed Convair X-6.

Left to right: lead-shielded locomotive, HTRE-2, and HTRE-3.

The reactor and heat transfer system was tested on a Convair NB-36 (converted B-36 Peacemaker) with 47 recorded flights between 1955 and 1957. The reactor was turned on through many of these flights not to power the aircraft but to test and collect data on the feasibility of a sustained nuclear reaction on a moving platform.

HTRE-3. Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment 3 which had horizontal control rods to accommodate the orientation in an airframe.
HTRE-3

The HTRE-2 used vertical control rods with a removable core. The HTRE-3 was built to test horizontal control rods to accommodate the orientation in an airframe. The test assemblies were going to be decontaminated and decommissioned for burial in the Radioactive Waste Management Complex. However, preservation was chosen instead, and the assemblies went on display on May 22, 1989. This includes the lead-shielded locomotive used for the test assemblies and that would have towed the proposed planes inside the hangar.

The program was canceled on March 28, 1961, by President Kennedy, due to public safety concerns, advances in ballistic missiles, and aircraft design innovations, after spending more than a billion dollars developing the concept.

Atomic Snapshot: Weldon Spring

Weldon Springs Interpretive Site
Weldon Springs Interpretive Site

About 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri, is the Weldon Spring Site and Interpretive Center operated by the Office of Legacy Management of the U.S. Department of Energy.

TNT in St. Charles County
Weldon Spring Site display

The U.S. government acquired 17,232 acres of rural land, displacing 576 residents and three towns to establish the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works supporting World War II efforts for manufacturing TNT and DNT. From 1956 – 1967, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission constructed the Weldon Spring Uranium Feed Materials Plant to convert uranium ore concentrates to pure uranium oxides and compounds. Obviously, by 1987, with production ceasing, the DOE was left with a massive Superfund cleanup site.

Weldon Spring disposal cell stairway
Weldon Spring panoramic view
Weldon Spring Disposal Cell

The outstanding feature of the Weldon Spring Site is the 41 acre, 75 foot tall engineered disposal cell structure designed to contain the site’s waste. Now a public park with walking trails, bird watching, mountain biking, and native, restored prairie, the disposal cell stairway takes you to the top of the mound with a panoramic view of the area with historical markers.

Atomic Snapshots: Peacekeeper Rail Garrison

On the edge of the National Museum of the United States Air Force, quite a distance from the museum, itself, you’ll see a red-orange rail car that seems out of place.

Part of the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison, this disguised and modified boxcar was designed to transport and launch Peacekeeper ICBMs which would be deployed on the nation’s rail network to avoid being targeted on a first strike.

Authorized in 1986 by President Reagan, the planning and testing occurred over the next several years, with operational delivery expected in December 1992. However, the program was cancelled in 1991 because of the end of the Cold War. Following termination, the prototype rail garrison car was delivered to the museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 1994 for public display.