Nuclear B70?

Forgive me if this has been asked before, I can't figure out how to use the "search" function....
In the "9/11 and 7/11" section there was a thread running, regarding a radio interview with Doctor Robert Bowman. In this recording, Dr B. lists the projects on which he worked. One of them mentioned is the "Nuclear B70" (I'm sure that's what he says!)
Does this mean that the XB70 Valkyrie that we all know and love was originally planned as a nuclear-powered aircraft? Did a nuclear-powered version actually fly?
Or was it just that it was a proposed nuclear-armed bomber? (If that was the case, why differentiate it from all the other nuclear-capable bombers in the USAF inventory)

im fairly sure that with todays technology nuclear powered areoplanes are impossible and long range cold war bombers would all have been nuclear capable. so im guessing that it was nuclear capable.

Justin

Is this the thread you were referring to?

Robert M. Bowman

Yes, that's the thread! Sorry- I forgot to link it....

I just find it strange that it is referred to as "The Nuclear B70" if it was just a nuke-armed bomber. After all, just about every bomber since the B29 has been capable of carrying them, why should he have made that distinction?
Then again, he could have been talking about something completely different!

www.atomictourist.com...

In the 1950's an attempt was made to build atomic powered bombers that could remain aloft for extended periods, before ballistic missiles were perfected. They were so big that they would have required a 10 mile runway (hence the eastern Idaho location). The pilots would have received a fairly large dose of radiation, because good shielding would have been too heavy to fly, and there were the obvious safety problems with airborne reactors.

they actually made the engines AND tested them

...and even flew a nuclear reactor on the NB-36, accompanied by a chase plane full of Marines to cordon off the area if it went down...

www.cowtown.net...

It could just be antiquated termonolgy, is he a quite oldish guy?

I ask because I have a 1960's reference to the 'Avro Vulcan nuclear bomber' which referred to the armament of course, not the engines.

In the early stages of the B-70 program (before it was the B-70 - it was a 'Weapons System' something like WS-114 from memory), and nuclear power was considered, but then dropped. As mentioned, they did fly a B-36 with a reactor on board.