Electric Jet Ducted Fan?

Example all battery case

Regional jet like this Bombardier CRJ900.
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/crj900/
Assumptions:
-Replace the entire max Jet-A fuel load of 11150 liters (9 tons) with batteries
-Battery energy density 0.2kWh/kg (about 55x worse than Jet-A)
-Replace 50% eff. turbo fan engines w/ 98% eff electric turbo fans

Gives me a maximum range of 150+ miles.

Nuclear power case

Appears the old nuclear aviation case is feasible with HTS electric fans:
-737 fuel load = 26 tons
-737 engine power cruise (x2): 5.5MW [24kN * 228m/s]
-Replace fuel load w/ Hyperion 25MW(e) small reactor weight, size: 15-20 tons, 1.5M OD x 2M

Range: Five years aloft

If your numbers are right, that's terrible performance.

Yes, certainly. Max range of that aircraft is normally 1720 miles. Though here's the key interest for battery power: assuming the HTS fans can be made cheaply, the battery powered aircraft is about the same cost per mile as the Jet-A powered one, including the battery cost, even at today's battery prices. Battery prices will go down, Jet-A will only go up.

An airplane that has a range of 150n.m. is an epic failure, no matter how cheap per mile it costs.

Nuclear powered aircraft were seriously looked into by skunk works back in the 60s. The idea never got off the ground because the amount of lead shielding needed to protect the pilots was too heavy.

See: Skunk Works, Ben L. Rich for more good info on this.

Thanks, I've seen some discussion, but are you sure this is a relevant source? I searched Skunk Works for 'nuclear', 'lead', 'shielding', and 'radiation': all the hits were about weapons.

How do you measure failure? One can imagine the case that an for say, 20% lower operating costs an airline might use a similar plane to do nothing but make the shuttle run from NYC to Boston five times a day. And, it might offer be able to operate at night because of reduced noise, thus opening up time slots not available to traditional aircraft.

Realistically, I suppose that the costs of certifying a radically new technology aircraft for a small market segment make the 'electric shuttle to Boston' unaffordable.

How did you search the book, do you have it in pdf format?

You're taking an existing aircraft and reducing its range by an order of magnitude. That's always bad - really - really bad.

<shrug>. I'm talking the feasibility of turning a profit in aviation w/ electric aircraft.

...
In terms of electrics, ... Of course, a ducted fan would have to be quite a bit larger in diameter to get the roughly the same amount of thrust.

A. Propulsion
In most modern airliners, propulsion is done through the combustion of jet fuel in turbofans in which, thrust is generated by both exhaust of hot gas and rotation of a large ducted fan generating an airflow bypassing the turbine. In modern engines, most of the thrust comes from the fan and only a fraction, less than 10%, comes form the exhaust. Therefore, it should be possible to replace the turbine by an electric motor and generate the full thrust using a large fan. This concept is presented in Fig. 4.

The duct and fan can be kept almost identical if an electric motor of the same shape and size as the original turbine is designed. The low rotation of the fan being limited to about 2,600 RPM, a propulsion motor will have to exhibit both high power density and high torque density. ...