The Savannah is a beautiful white ship nearly 600 feet long. But when you look at her, there seems to be something missing. There aren't any smokestacks! Of course there aren't any smokestacks, because there isn't any smoke!
The N.S. Savannah has a speed of 21 knots. She can carry 9,400 tons of cargo, 60 passengers, and a crew of 110. On only 700 pounds of fuel, she can take this heavy load around the world 12 times!
N.S. Savannah
Atomic reactors are already in use on ships and submarines and they may soon be used for other types of transportation. Experiments have been made on atomic tractors which would pull long trains of sleds in the Arctic. And there has been some interest among railroad people in atomic locomotives.
The most serious experiments, so far, with atomic locomotives, have been made in the U.S.S.R. That country, because of its vast size, has an unusual amount of freight traffic. Trains now use up one quarter of all the coal and oil produced there. The Russians have completed the design for an atomic locomotive that will have a speed of 75 miles an hour while pulling a load of 4,000 tons. It will travel for almost a year without new fuel, and will go from Moscow to Riga and back (about 1,000 miles) on a piece of uranium the size of a marble!
Designers here and abroad have also started to think about atomic airplanes. One type of design would use a reactor similar to the power plant reactor. It would make steam, the steam would drive a turbine, and the turbine would turn the propellers.
Another design would work on the turbojet principle and wouldn't need steam. Air would be scooped in and heated by the reactor, then shot out of the rear jets, driving the plane ahead.
atomic plane