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.
Pebble bed reactors. There was another one with a rod and a neutron source that moved along it and depleted it but a forget its name.
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nuclear power / nukes are a HOAX
HHO is the WAY
And back towards cars. It could be possible. There were nuclear powered pacemakers inside people for decades.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
Weather making a car with a power supply that will run its life span or one you have to fill up with energy is also a topic.
Who wants to buy a tesla that costs a few hundred thousand dollars because it will never need fuel only maintenance. Maybe only Uber and taxi companies.
Would make more sense to build a nuclear power supply into your home to power it, your car’s and bikes etc.
Then you start to hit solar roofing can do that. If you have a lot of roof.
I heard nuclear material is radioactive and can cause skin irritation… 
I’m all for nuclear power, as long as the device using it is designed properly in a safe way lol I’d drive a nuclear car if it were a thing
No one’s gonna put a nuclear reactor in a car, dude.
Never say never. Fleet cars that never stop to charge may benefit. It still a lot of cost up front.
Crash wise a car full of charged Li-Ion batteries is scary energy stored under your feet. Where a nuclear car would only be putting out a constant much lower power output and be heavy shielded.
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You don’t normally have terrorists with screwdrivers and wrenches trying to make dirty bombs on the moon or mars… yet.
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It never got past the 1/2 scale model stage.
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Getting fallout vibes here
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Not sure about the millions of dollars as if the Russian miniature reactors in cruise missiles cost so much you’d have to limit its use to nuclear ordnance . Perhaps they will be and also read the other day Satan 2 will have them but not sure why or if it’s true.
But what is true is when a kid lots of stuff was promised and never came to be . Remember a book I read when about 11 going into great detail on how we’d all be using driverless cars by the 80s.