Based on experience in Russia, a nuclear engine, advanced cruise missiles “Petrel” in the near future it will be possible to build a better power unit, writes the business newspaper “Sight”. In the edition of sure to the same circuit of the engine is added to the second, resulting in an upgraded powertrain can be installed on “the aircraft with unlimited range, including manned”.
The newspaper writes that “the air of which heat is used to create a jet thrust, this missile is in contact with the reactor itself, not with some intermediate heat exchanger”, because the current engine “Petrel” is single-loop.
“Emissions of radioactive isotopes, which are now regularly detected in Europe, but that’s about it. This engine is quite suitable for weapons used for nuclear war — much worse from it nature would not be”, — stated in the publication.
In July, the special representative of the President of the United States arms control Marshall Billingsley called the “Petrel” “the flying Chernobyl”. The official noted that “such weapons should not even exist.”
In June 2020, Popular Mechanics wrote that one found in Northern Europe of the isotopes, iodine-131, has an artificial origin and is one of the products of nuclear reactions is likely associated with the nuclear testing engine “Petrel”.
In February 2019 military expert Anton Lavrov said that the flight of promising Russian cruise missiles, global-range “Burevestnik” with a compact heavy-duty nuclear power compared to nuclear weapons, in a portable traditional propulsion units, will be inevitable radioactive exhaust.
