Most airports are already out in the boonies, (having something to do with runways taking up space.) especially international ones, which would be for what these planes are used. I don't think is would be that big of a deal. Now if a plane crashed in an area with some kind of population, now that might be a concern.
Just out of curiousity, where do you live? I can't name an international airport [1], in the USA at least, that isn't in a part of town that has traffic issues during rush hour. Industry pulls itself to airports possibly faster than any other physical attribute.
[1] This assertion definitely excludes small potatoes airports that earn their international name by serving the one country closest to them (i.e. small town WY or MT airports serving Canada).
I live in N. Virginia and my airport is Dullas. It's true that there are people living near it and a lot of traffic by it, but that happened after the airport was built not before. It's certainly not in the middle of a major city. It's already hours from DC and where I live in good traffic. Poor traffic is a nightmare.
Perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed by living in Virginia though, development around here is really like anywhere else in the country.
No, most airports are within a few miles of major metropolitan areas because that's where people are located, and airports themselves are often significant bastions of human infrastructure.
Further, unlike an ordinary plane crash, a nuclear incident even confined within the bounds airport would close that airport for years, if not permanently. No major airport would risk shutting itself down forever.
Very well, small, remote airports may be qualified to service nuclear planes, but that defeats the purpose of massive transit of people between major urban centers.
I'm not trolling and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't throw baseless accusations around. I may be wrong, but that's an entirely different matter.
Airports need to be in places where there is enough space for the airplanes to take off and land. This means that the airports themselves need to be built in places where there is enough space for runways and there are no tall structures to interfere with low-flying aircraft. At the time of building, this means significantly outside urban centers and it means that for a ways around, buildings can only be a few dozen stories tall.
As time passes, commerce and industry builds up around airports, but, in general, large airports are not located within major urban centers. They are at least as remote as many nuclear power facilities. While some airports would then be out of limits, many could be quite feasible.
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Now given that the primary purpose of nuclear planes would not be transportation between major cities but rather intercontinental flight, which, in case you've never been on one, already requires switching airports a number of times before you get to where you want to go, This could conceivably be quite practical. You would have one or two in the Us, one in Canada, One or two in Europe, one in Russia, one in China, one in Australia, etc. and you would transfer flights to get to where you were going. This is how intercontinental flight already works, so I don't see how it is infeasible or self defeating.
