sponsored by the new Opera desktop browser this train is unlike anything you have ever seen before it never needs to stop and it never needs to refuel why because it's nuclear powered the atomic age promised a Jetson's world of Limitless power everything from airships to aircraft and yes even nuclear trains themselves but Railways across the globe never adopted nuclear trains in our age of Greener non-stop service came to a sudden halt All Aboard Thomas the nuclear engine the atomic locomotive [Music] X12 the X12 was 36 tons and impressively long so long that it would have a pivot in the middle of the locomotive to go around corners the engine bed would be comprised of 24 driving Wheels grouped in six wheel trucks there would be a driver cabin at the front a reactor in the middle and at the rear the vast radiator array but I'm getting ahead of myself how would that all work and what was inside starting from the front we have the driver's cabin there was an engineer who would control the train and a fireman now I know what you're thinking a fireman he doesn't actually insert Co but would be a nuclear engineer to help manage the reactor which is definitely a slight step up from a man with a shovel and speaking of reactor behind them was the reactor compartment the nuclear power source would have been a solution of fishable material such as uranium 235 contained in a tank 3 ft long and a foot in diameter this wood in turn would have been enclosed within a 20 ton Shield it would be supported by trusses on either side to hold the heavy shielding in place with the core of the reactor in the middle 10,000 L of water would pass through the boiler over the reactive rods and then be turned into steam this steam would then move into the turbine which would be connected to four generators which would power 600 horsepower traction Motors to drive each axle so yes technically it was a steam train but it was a nuclear powered rather than coal powered the steam would then enter a condenser and then be cooled by a vast radiation array that was at the end of the locomotive this would blow air from the outside over the water lines before the now cold liquid water would be sent back to the reactor the reactor itself would actually weigh 200 tons with the majority of the weight going to the shielding but we'll have a talk about that in a moment but because of this radiation presumably this train would have only been used for Freight Service not passenger travel and this was to do more with Logistics passenger trains back in this era of America which was more popular than air travel had regular stops to load and unload passengers giving them plenty of time to refuel cargo on the other hand would need to run over night across the country and cargo operators could save a fortune by never stopping making Limitless fuel a very exciting indeed this whole machine whilst heavy was Compact and highly efficient for the time able to reach up to about 9,000 to 12,000 horsepower when overloading the reactor and to put that into perspective the X12 would be so powerful that it would be able to accelerate a 5,000 ton train from standing to to 60 mph in just 3 1/2 minutes that's pretty damn fast the engineers beli that this could push out the equivalent of diesel engines at the time which is impressive that most of the power went to move the locomotive itself the engineers figured it would cost around about $1.2 million to build the X12 which was about twice the cost of a comparable 4unit diesel locomotive in the 1950s believing that uranium 235 could be attained for around about $9,000 a pound and run for a full year between refuelings they thought that this locomotive would be able to compete successfully with diesel power under favorable circumstances with the engineering problem solved and a pretty compelling business case it was time to take this to the locomotive industry but you can bet that it wasn't just the Americans working on this technology but our favorite Cold War opponents the Soviet Union nuclear trains seem like the next evolution of our rail networks and talking about them today it makes me realize that maybe it's time to upgrade everything else in my life and there's no better place to start than getting a better free web browser like operah I've totally switched to operah as my preferred web browser because too many times my computer slowed down with other browsers hogging up all the computer space and crashing or first the other day it didn't even launch and I thought there has to be something better and Opera it is it's safer it doesn't cost anything and it has built-in ad blocking in vpns but it's also Smarter with actual useful features for example I love the tab Islands this tab grouping is much more powerful than just putting groups for work or fun but also when you're looking at saf for example hotels you open up 10 at once and you can keep your feed clean and still find the other Taps without having to close them all it's simple and intuitive and just makes sense plus Opera has its own AI called ARA in partnership with chat GPT it actually makes my web experience a lot faster allowing me to instantly translate a page great for when I'm looking at top secret Soviet projects or I can ask it to explain briefly which is also great for when I'm trying to understand the science between anti-gravity technology and lastly it's just got like everything in it I can open up several different music players all of my messenging apps without having them take up room on the desktop it's just better honestly the Opera desktop browser is the refreshing Game Changer that we need for our computers and something that I do honestly recommend it's amazing that they're partnered up with us to help make the channel better and give you a free great product just to make the internet a better place so help out the channel by trying Opera out for free with the link down in the description and honestly you won't regret it or I'll give you a full refund it goes without saying that the other side of the Iron Curtain heard about these developments and had to have their own attempt at nuclear power trains at the time the Soviet Union was massive and creating wide track trains with a large capacity was imperative in their large projects of conquering Siberia in 1956 a publication in a Soviet magazine described the power of the atom was being used to conquer the cold and distant Far East the Soviet Atomic Train would use a nuclear reactor to heat the water in a steam turbine to create electricity which would then power the engines and the locomotive basically a very similar concept to the American one however they believed that liquid sodium was the optimal choice to be used as the coolant for the reactor and they projected that their concept could generate around 52,000 horsepower slightly less than the X12 but this is where it gets interesting the Soviet track gauge was already wider than the Europeans but this Atomic Train would operate on a 2.5 to three times wider track because of the sheer size of the locomotives all the passenger cars were also designed with two decks and it would be able to carry an insane amount of cargo or construction materials towards Siberia with or or oil and gas in the other direction of course the military applications of this train would also be very important as well allowing the Soviet Army to transfer huge amounts of Personnel in vehicles over great distances very fast the idea would linger for decades without any concrete development until the 1980s when Chernobyl put it on breaks the Chernobyl disaster made it seem that a radioactive train would be a terrible idea and the Soviet Union back backed away from the concept but surprisingly all this nuclear Innovation was from an unexpected other type of vehicle [Music] submarines in the 1950s nuclear power opened the door for all sorts of atomic propulsion breakthroughs for the Navy everything was on the table from aircraft's carriers to Merchant Navy vessels but it was submarines that took the cake submarines by their very had to lur beneath the waves and never stop moving the Germans and the Japanese had learned this the hard way that when a submarine had to refuel it was at its most vulnerable thus a power source that never needed to be refilled or refilled incredibly rarely was preferred submarines were also the perfect test bed for the technology they were large machines that were surrounded by water away from well everyone a safe testing ground for nuclear reactors plus the military with their unlimited budget was more than happy to experiment and get the fundamentals down ready for civil applications like trains trains being large machines like submarines operating mostly away from population centers at least for the freighter Goods variety of locomotive and always required to stop and refuel were the perfect subject for nuclear upgrades so if submarines were so successful with nuclear energy why didn't subjectively similar trains follow [Music] we're over 8 minutes into the video and I haven't yet answered the question why doesn't Thomas the Tank Engine enter the atomic age well if the trains are going to turn water into steam using nuclear energy then use that nuclear energy for electricity for propulsion then why not use the existing electric trains and use nuclear power plants to provide them with electricity the trains then themselves wouldn't need to carry the power plant around with them and be comparative lighter and let's drill down on that while a nuclear engine would be the same as a steam engine requiring Fuel and water it would also be much heavier and require shielding to protect the reactor and in this case 200 tons of it that radiation shielding made it so heavy that half the horsepower would be needed just to move the train and giving the complexity of the engine each would have a cost that was far far more than the standard locomotive so no railroad wanted to buy into it especially in the case of derailment in fact in almost every scenario nuclear trains were the inferior option if you wanted to go fast you didn't want to Lug around a power supply in tons of water for your steam engine you just use an electric train like the shin Kangen or tgv if you want to transport regular cargo or people on unel electrified tracks that you could just use a diesel engine you don't need water refilling stations along your way and you've got plenty of horsepower to pull dozens of carriages and if you want to carry large cargo across long distances just use a ship or an aircraft there isn't a railway network with a wide enough gauge because there isn't enough demand because ships work fine and are far more fuel efficient if you want to carry large cargo across a short distance then just diesel electrical trains or tracked Vehicles also suffice lastly there's also the argument about giving nuclear technology to those who don't need it the fewer organizations that have a good reason to have nuclear fuel the fewer chances some of it disappearing and making its way to terrorists or minor countries that can Jerry rig it into a dirty bomb or engineer it into full nuclear weapons you don't want your nuclear powered Train derailed by insurgents leaking radioactive water or over the countryside and then have 10,000 people get cancer from a dirty bomb leaving the island of so or a nuclear Wasteland oh and remember that new refueling saving bonus that's quickly gone when you figure out how much more maintenance and monitoring is necessary for a nuclear reactor to work versus a simple diesel engine not to mention the cost of a nuclear engineer versus a diesel mechanic and yes I'm talking about the fireman in this situation so whatever happened when they took the X12 to the railways the project was developed by the University of Utah and several different Railway firms were initially interested and General Motors was very keen in a bid to sell the parts for a prototype atas the project never really evolved beyond the initial feasibility study lacking the funding from the US government or any private ventures in the end the dream of an atomic cho cho train never left deciding thanks for watching and if you want to see more videos just like that then make sure you click that subscribe button because you don't want to miss miss out on all this cool content that we've got coming for this Channel and into the future and let me know if you have any other ideas of some wacky Machinery or other things too that could have happened in our amazing world of engineering hey don't forget to try out the Opera desktop browser for free it's got so many quality of life features that you'll never go back thank you again so much for watching
