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by Bobbi Snow » 07-23-2009 02:38 AM
May I offer up a book, also, to read? ATOMIC AMERICA. It's a real eye-opener.
Pages 136-138
"The damaged B-36, redesignated the NB-36H, was overhauled and equipped with a 1-megawatt, twenty-ton nuclear reactor, which hung from a single hook in the middle of the bomb bay. The reactor served no function other than to provide radiation. The core was cooled by air that was channeled over it through ducts in the fuselage. The single hook allowed the plane to easily unload the reactor between flights, for storage inside a deep pit in the hangar at Carswell. The hook would also allow the plane to drop the twenty-ton reactor in flight in the event of a catastrophic failure.
The plane was retrofitted with heavy shielding, including a four-ton lead disc between the crew and the reactor. Because of its extreme weight, the shielding only protected the crew, who sat in the front of the plane, essentially in the shadow of the lead disc. Radiation from the reactor streamed unhindered from the sides and back of the aircraft. All crew functions that normally required personnel aft, such as visual inspections of the engines, were replaced with automated systems and television monitors. On September 17, 1955, a nuclear reactor went airborne for the first time.
The plane took off from Carswell and flew directly over Lake Worth, Fort Worth's main water supply. Somewhere over the south-western desert, the reactor's three control rods were pulled and the reactor was brought to criticality. In case of disaster, a C-97 accompanied the NB-36H and carried a specially trained detachment of Marines. If the reactor were jettisoned, or the plane crashed, the crew was instructed to drop darts with warning signs and smoke bombs, while the intrepid Marines parachuted after it to man a perimeter around the smoking, lethally radioactive reactor. A B-50 also tagged along to measure radiation emitting from the plane. So intense was the radiation field that the crew of the B-50 found they could reliably estimate their distance from the NB-36H by the readings on their radiation gauges. The plane's route took it 365 miles, from its home in Fort Worth to the Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico.
In all, the NB-36H flew forty-seven times between 1955 and its last flight on March 28, 1957. All of the test pilots were civilians until near the end of the program, when the Air Force thought it wise to give one of their own some experience with the craft. They recruited legendary Air Force Pilot Fitshugh "Fritz" Fulton, already in Carswell to test the 1,600-mile-per-hour B-58, to be the first military pilot of the NB-36H. He flew it only once. Thankfully, none of the disaster plans were ever necessary, although during one flight one of the smoke bombs did light off inside the plane, causing some panic, but no jettisoned reactor.
Some details of the NB-36H program were declassified early. A 1956 article in The New York Times said the test flights would be useful in "designing atomic planes of the future." However, the full story wasn't known to the citizens under the flight path until the Albuquerque Journal reported the story in 1987. In one final strange footnote to the NB-36H saga, the plane's hangar at Carswell had been shuttered for many years, unused and off-limits, a designated radiation area. When the base workers reopened the hangar in 2005, after half a century, they found inside lush vegetation, full-grown trees, and a family of the largest raccoons any of the workers had ever seen."
My thanks to Todd Tucker for permitting me to share this small section of his wonderful, eye-opening book with this forum.
This book is available thru Amazon.com and in many large book stores. You might be amazed at how many sites had near-meltdowns of nuclear reactors, and where they are located...
THIS is how much our governments have cared about us...
NOTE:If the moderators don't think this fits in this discussion, please remove it, or move it where you think it belongs... but I thought it might fit in with this discussion.
Last edited by
Bobbi Snow on 07-23-2009 02:40 AM, edited 1 time in total.
If you're still breathing, it's not too late!