AHC: Nuclear-powered Orbital Rockets, Tanks, and Motorcycle by the Year 2000

The challenge is to have small nuclear reactor powering those three vehicles by the end of 20th century. I think there's two important parts that should be overcomed in order to make it happen:
1. Technical issues of the reactor itself. How to make small enough but still have the power AND safety for its users.
2. Making society accept the reactor as usual as OTL hybrid cars/ biofuel system. Maybe convincing them using the pollution issue?

Any POD after Hiroshima-Nagasaki is accepted.

Thanks in advance!
 
And you get a nightmare proliferation scenario. How does one go about securing the fissile material from all those mini reactors? Even if not sufficient to make real bomb, dirty one would be well within grasp of any kitchen.
 
I don't think it can be done. Known physics dictate that gamma rays are attenuated only by massive amounts of shielding, gamma rays from a reactor cannot possibly be down to safe levels within the size constraints posed by a motorcycle.

A nuclear car is a slightly more realistic prospect, but the reactor setup would still weigh tons and the vast majority of that weight would be shielding.

A nuclear tank is definitely possible, it could probably even afford to have its reactor shielded to a safe level. The problem is the tanks "job" of getting fired at, and possibly destroyed.
 
The cost of these motorcycles would be VERY expensive, I was thinking they would just be owned by the extremely rich people. Thus, less proliferation problem in the First World.

How about lead as the radiation protection? I read that even two inches of lead can protect from gamma radiation to the powers of ten.

Were there any examples of nuclear-powered ground vehicles? I know there's something called TV-8 by Chrysler, but I can't get enough info on that.
 
The cost of these motorcycles would be VERY expensive, I was thinking they would just be owned by the extremely rich people. Thus, less proliferation problem in the First World.

How about lead as the radiation protection? I read that even two inches of lead can protect from gamma radiation to the powers of ten.

Were there any examples of nuclear-powered ground vehicles? I know there's something called TV-8 by Chrysler, but I can't get enough info on that.

This isn't happening. Rockets, sure. Tanks are just barely on the edge of possibility; I suppose it could be done, although it's a terrible idea. Motorcycle, no. It would be too heavy to move.

Lead is nowhere near good enough for this. You want tungsten or depleted uranium. But that's not enough - you need to shield against neutrons as well as gamma. Unfortunately, materials well-suited to shielding against gamma are pretty much exactly the opposite of what you need to shield against neutrons - for that, you want very low-Z materials like hydrogen. Those aren't very heavy, but they take up a lot of space. The other problem is, the percentage of your reactor that's shielding climbs precipitously as the reactor's thermal power decreases. That's why a tank is barely possible but a motorcycle utterly impossible.

You might be able to get an RTG-powered motorcycle, but a fission reactor is not happening.

BTW, the TV-8 was only a paper study, it wasn't a hardware program. I've found a picture of a mockup, but that's all I've been able to dig up so far. There was a TV-1 as well. Unfortunately, the one library that has the paper with more information refuses to lend it.
 
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Basically as others have said, you can't shrink a reactor down to those sizes easily or practically. It's beyond known physics.
 
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