Nuclear powered cars

Ok, so we’ve got electric cars but I remember as a kid , long time ago now, we were to have nuclear powered cars which came to nought along with a lot of other stuff. But…the Russians have invented miniature nuclear power reactors to power missiles and the like so why not cars? Unlike previous reactors that power submarines which take hours to start these have to start in seconds >>>>> CAR! Maybe even a flying car :slight_smile:

Nope. Just nope.

PS: Even if it worked you would not magically get flying cars, and the risks are extremely high given the number of crashes.

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This will answer your question.

Will never happen. Fissile material in the hands of end users?

NOPE

Nuclear power for the grid to charge them or recharge a fuel cell? sure.

But not onboard reactors in cars. Never.

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Nuclear power plant, electric car… nuclear powered car :thinking:

Seems like it’s a thing already, depends on how literal you want to be.

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I don’t know if you saw this thread OP. But their was a thread a from last year, that had some users talking about nuclear power cars.

If the Russians think a reactor is safe enough for cruise missiles , with or without thermonuclear warheads , they must be OK for cars.

Are you trolling?

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No, but obviously it’s debatable if they really can be safe

Well, so you know, nukes are not fragile eggs that go off on a hair trigger, every bomb has multiple safeties to prevent a detonation. Would be terrible if a rocket failed shortly after launch and killed the operators. And Russia is not a country I would count on for reliable and safe weaponry.

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Making the tech safe for the lowest common denominator is just not possible.

There is too much risk to the public if even the slightest thing went wrong. Im not under the impression that a every nuke car will go all Hiroshima on us but the likelihood of them going Chernobyl is very high and very bad even at a small enough scale to for nuke car to be feasible.

Nuclear powered cars? We should have had them 3 years ago.

But I guess that was in a different timeline…

Why would you think Russia doesn’t produce safe and reliable weapons? Everyone has bad hair days but best not hope the Satan 2 coming to cities near you is a dud,

I am in agreement with most others, the technology is not feasible for consumer products. This, in my mind is due to two reasons.

First, complexity. If we use submarine reactors as the model, people are not willing to go through advanced training to learn how to safely operate the nuclear power plant in their car. There are alternative cooling systems that are safer than pressurized water reactors, but none that are entirely safe, especially in a consumer product. Hell, some people dont even know how to put gas in their cars as it is.

Second, cost. From what I have read, the fuel is relatively cheap, the reactor is the expensive part. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://mragheb.com/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%20Engineering/Nuclear%20Marine%20Propulsion.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjzsui617HdAhUQnFkKHdcpAP8QFjABegQIDBAF&usg=AOvVaw3alwa6DL18_-il3Qas61DC

Looking like about $100million for a submarine based unit. Even scaled down, if this is even possible, the cost would still be millions of dollars.

It is an interesting concept to think about, but one that will most likely remain in the science fiction genre.

Whether or not the vehicle can be safe, the fissile material can be taken out of the cars and used to make bombs, either dirty (which is bad enough) or full nuke. Either is bad.

You don’t want fissile or significantly radioactive material in the hands of civilians. Military hardware doesn’t have that issue.

So, because the radioactive fuel would be a security risk, the nuclear car (at least with nuclear fission) will never happen for civilians. Ever.

Aw cool 10 hours and I die of cancer.

That comment of mine was only a reference to nuclear indirectly, as in with battery cars via the electric grid. Fallout or Back To The Future style onboard fission or fusion power is a whole different ballpark, hence why that statement contains the comparisons to hydro, solar and wind for generating power, even though they obviously can’t be readily transported.

That said while I doubt portable reactors will make sense on much smaller than a boat, there have been actual deployment of reactors on very small scale for space applications, and tests of Nuclear aircraft by the USA during the cold war… so these would likely be a better place to start looking to find the numbers\drawbacks you’d need to know on the subject for an informed choices than commercial power reactors are.

Nuclear car talk in the thread from last year starts about post 160 of 190… vs the 103 linked above, see here: What is after Gasoline cars?

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Aside from the fact that we humans dont deserve nice things because we scheme to steal and blow them up.

Nuclear bulk freighter ships should be a thing I believe. And when AI is in control of the cars and trucks. Nuclear powered trucks perhaps.

I guess it comes down to the energy invested to make weapons grade material to make a small reactor like what’s in a US air force carrier. If it was solar / wind etc that’s perhaps ok energy wise.

Then comes the tech and expense. The crew and tools and to maintain a US naval nuclear WESSEL (star track) is considerable. Private enterprise and modern plans for small reactors could save money.

Then we dont deserve nice things because…humans.

Russia did the ship thing.

The technical ability to do this is the easy part.

The security overhead to ensure that Bad Guys don’t do dastardly deeds with the radioactive material is the hard part.

I did hear about compact, sealed, zero maintainence reactors which could be buried and used to power a town or something. When it runs out of fuel the whole this is replaced so it doesn’t require any special training or anything to operate . So in theory it would be possible to have nuclear powered cars which worked on a similar principle. In fact I think Ford or someone looked in to it in the 50s but nothing was ever built.

But yeah there are obvious reasons why this wouldn’t happen. Plus I can’t see it being cheaper than internal combustion.