No, I'm afraid you are mistaken what is scary about these. People have "launch the nuke, abort the nuke, fly back to base and land safely without exploding" al

No, I'm afraid you are mistaken what is scary about these. People have "launch the nuke, abort the nuke, fly back to base and land safely without exploding" already. That is called a nuclear armed bomber. The scary thing about these is that their propulsion is a nuclear reactor. You know how in a jet engine the air is heated up by burning fuel? Here the air is heated up by comming into contact with the reactor. They exhaust fission products while they fly. To quote from the page: "The other major problem with the SLAM concept was the environmental damage caused by radioactive emissions during flight, and the disposal of the reactor at the end of the mission. Merkle estimated that about 100 grams of fission products would be produced, which would be dispersed over a wide area." This thing is by design, when nothing goes wrong leaves a contrail of radioactive contamination behind it. And when things go wrong it leaves even more contamination. And the funny thing is, the Russians are still experimenting with this tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik And predictably as they were trying to scope their test wreckage from the sea floor they managed to have a radiation incident with it in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident (As you can read the exact circumstances are disputed, but I believe this is the most likely explanation of what we have seen.)