Include

[roofeditor]

Originally Posted by NBhunter80

The numbers do sound great; however, installing a nuclear reactor on a train would not be as easy as installing one in a sub. First problem, the sub weighs 6000 tonnes. The only reason this is possible in a sub is because of the buoyancy of water supporting the weight of the vessel. Therefor all the power can propel the sub with very little being wasted just trying to fight friction and gravity. This is not the case with a train...it must fight against gravity and friction to move itself. If you do the math, just the engine itself weighs 6000 tonnes = 6,000,000 kg, therefor on a 10 degree hill to move the engine uphill would require 6,000,000kg (0.17365)(9.18) or ~ 9.5 million N of force. Say the hill was 1km long... then you need to do 9,500,000N(1000m), or 9.5 billion Joules of work to move the train up that hill. Say you wanted to do this 1km hill in 1 minute (meaning 60km per hour or ~ 37mph), the power calculation would be 9,500,000,000J/60sec = 158 000 000W or 158 megawatt. Therefor just to fight Gravity on the engine and move it up this hill the train would use 158 megawatt of power. Keep in mind this is for an unloaded train!!! no cars at all, and this does not include the power required to fight friction and inertia. I'm sure people have thought of this possibility before;however, nuclear powered trains are not possible with the current technology. Another downfall is the cost. A nuclear reactor can cost several billion dollars to build and maintain. You would have to haul an aweful lot of cargo to make back that investment.

By that calculation a train with 4 engines at 5,000 hp each could not climb much of a grade!

I was joking on puting a reactor in a train. My early career after MIT was at The Electric Boat Company in New London. Point I was making is that no matter what Al Gore says Trains will be powered by diesels for a long time.....possibly bio-diesel.