At the onset of the Atomic Age, military planners and scientists envisioned nuclear energy powering everything. Here's What You Need To Remember: More promising and nearly as cool are the nuclear powerplant for airships and another for hydrofoils. The nuclear airship based on a Goodyear base plan could fly at 85 miles per hour a mile up in the air for a very long time, its crew separated from the reactor by 200 feet of lighter-than-air structure. Ah, the Atomic Age, when nuclear energy seemed the ticket to a future of limitless possibilities. For a generation after 1945 the United States explored all kinds of nuclear propulsion concepts. Some, like naval power plants for subs and ships, proved both revolutionary and effective. Others proved possible to develop but impractical to pursue.