Report: Russia's nuclear-powered 'Skyfall' missile is dirty and dangerous

Sometime on Oct. 21 of last year, high above the Arctic Circle, a lone missile shot skyward from a Russian island.

The missile flew northeast and then banked and began flying in loops for hours over the barren, frozen landscape.

According to Russian and Western sources, the new weapon, known in Russian as Burevestnik and by NATO as Skyfall, was powered by a small nuclear reactor. Few other details were forthcoming.

Now, two MIT researchers have published an analysis that sheds fresh light on how the nuclear-powered missile actually worked. If they are correct, the October flight test marks the first time a nuclear-powered aircraft has ever flown. It would also suggest the opening of an extraordinarily dangerous new chapter in the 21st century's simmering arms race.

"This is something that is possible, but wildly expensive and very dangerous," said Jake Hecla, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a dual appointment in both aerospace and nuclear science and engineering, who led the new analysis along with co-author R. Scott Kemp.

Their modeling shows a reactor design that spews radiation as it flies, putting anyone living or working near the test site for the missile at "enormous risk, potentially."

Since the 1950s, both the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union contemplated building nuclear-powered aircraft. Such weapons had the potential to give both sides an advantage in the Cold War because they would have nearly unlimited range. That could allow them to loiter near a target awaiting an attack order almost indefinitely, or they could attack from an unpredictable direction, making it harder to defend against.

The U.S. and Russia both experimented with flying nuclear reactors during the Cold War. The U.S. placed a small nuclear reactor in a Convair B-36 Peacemaker, but the plane never ran off of nuclear power. Chronicle/Alamy hide caption