Thorium fueled engine

boing
41

The 1950ies called, they want their nuclear wet dreams back.

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42

He’s got a sideline in canal barges too

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43

I think we can get right on this after we get Fukushima all cleaned up. OK?

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44

You mean like… a possum?

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45

Eh, there is orders of magnitude between the two. The Honda solar car looks like something a lot of serious DIY/Makers could build in their garage. The Caddy looks futuristic as hell - and just as impractical, but most concept cars are.

Most “exaggerated” supercars don’t have angles just for the hell of it, most of them have some aerodynamic function if you ever chose to push one to their upper limit. But then again that’s impractical. We all better stick to the Prius and Tesla.

46

Don’t forget: Detroit will stop this from happening - it’s a car that runs forever … ON NOTHING BUT WATER!!!

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47

No, no, no, no, no, this sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.

(Actually, now that you mention it that’s a pretty dubious distinction.)

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48

Perfect! It’s cooling system only uses alkaline fluids.

49

Of course. That’s just basic chemistry.

50

Not going to happen. Thorium reactors run on U-233 bred via neutron capture. When you breed U-233 you end up with some amount of U-232, and the decay chain for U-232 includes some pretty horrendous gamma ray emitters.

And do you know what gamma rays go through? EVERYTHING. You need good, thick chunks of lead to protect yourself from gamma rays. And that tends to cut down on the performance of automobiles.

51

Of course you wouldn’t have the thorium reactor in the car, you’d get energy for your hydrogen fuel-cell car from a neighbourhood-scale reactor and pay for it in bitcoins…

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52

My, that would be quite the showstopper.

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53

I was so excited until I realized we were talking about Thorium, not Thallium.

54

If that baby has a 1MW thorium reactor and tires with a 60,000 mile tread warranty, I’m sold.

55

Well, that’s just it… concept cars aren’t meant to be sold. They’re basically just a form of advertising meant to build hype around a car company. “Look, it’s like a vehicle from the present!” doesn’t get much free press.

56

Does it make a sound that causes people to think the world’s coming to an end?
Also, optional restraints and muzzles would be a plus.

57

There will never be a nuclear powered car. The shielding issue is too complicated. Take for example a small amount of radioactive material, 1 curie (3.7 * 10^10 becquerels). At 1 meter away from a point source you have a dose rate of 1 rem/hr (10 mSv) (the curie-meter-rem rule). Say that you decided to put 6 inches of lead around it. Every 2 inches of lead drops the dose rate by 10. So now we are talking about 1 mrem/hr. If you operate it for 100 hours, you now have reacted the exposure limit for non radiation workers. The problem here is that 1 curie is an almost insignificantly small amount of radioactive material when you are talking power generation. The best case I have ever read has been about 1 watt per curie (an actual fission reactor). The worst case is for RTGs, like with the Curiosity rover which has about 80,000 curies to generate only 2 KW. And a car is going to need at least 50 KW to be able to move its enormously shielded reactor. I’m not going to say impossible, but I will note that I could be off by a factor of ten or more in most of my calculations, and it still would not be plausible.

Maybe I missed something in the reading, but I don’t see how anything that makes use of a nuclear reaction (fission, decay, or whatever) will ever be able to be housed and be able to power something as small as a car.

Edit: Just to be clear, I know the calculations I just used all assume cobalt. This is good since Co-60 is usually the worst case. But even if it isn’t, I have plenty of room for error.

58

I hear they’re supposed to have the kinks worked out in the next two years or so.

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59

“Because thorium is so dense it has the potential to produce tremendous amounts of heat”

bullshit-o-meter triggered.

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60

If building this car is what it takes to get Fallout 4 released, Bring It On.