Nuclear Powered Car!

[Somecallmetim]

I have been playing around with this idea for a while. At first it was to just get a laugh, but then I sat down and I can actually see a very viable project.
I have several ideas about it and saftey as well, I just wanted to get your guys view on it, any forseeable problems.
It would basically be a steam powered engine with rods or pellets that power the nuclear reaction. I think everone could stand to save money at the pump.
I do understand that this will have some real saftey issues, but be that as it may, I believe that it could be quite easy to manufacture.
Any idea, problems, links?

 

[Moohooya]

Cars all too often get involved in accidents.
Expense of dealing with radioactive material.
Weight of lead sheilding to keep driver and passengers from being 'cooked'.

Perhaps eventualy ther will be nuclear powered cars, but I believe todays technology is too primitive.

 

[Peter]

Anything generating waste that, apart from being insanely toxic, remains dangerous for some 10000 years is definitely not worth thinking about.

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: Peter
Anything generating waste that, apart from being insanely toxic, remains dangerous for some 10000 years is definitely not worth thinking about.

Hell, just toss the used pellets out your drivers window at the ricer following you to closely

 

[blahblah99]

yes i'll spiel out my radioactive wastes out the rear of my car so the ricer trying to follow behind me will grow an extra ball.

 

[Darkcirc]

yeah and keep in mind the spent pelletsa re not only many many pound but still several hundred degrees. they would still prolly light the interior of your car on fire once removed from the theoretical shielding. Further how in the hell do you plan on cooling this monstrosity? might I remind you of those little cooling stacks that vaporize a mere couple hundred gallons of water a week?

 

[alkemyst]

I am all for alternatives to petrol....however some trends to those that find better ways:

Creator missing

Creator dies messy

Creator says he screwed up despite all the previous tests he did, quietly retires to the mediterranian.

Hard to screw with one of the biggest commodities on the planet. but retiring to a nice island still has it's merits.

 

[Locutus4657]

Originally posted by: Somecallmetim
I have been playing around with this idea for a while. At first it was to just get a laugh, but then I sat down and I can actually see a very viable project.
I have several ideas about it and saftey as well, I just wanted to get your guys view on it, any forseeable problems.
It would basically be a steam powered engine with rods or pellets that power the nuclear reaction. I think everone could stand to save money at the pump.
I do understand that this will have some real saftey issues, but be that as it may, I believe that it could be quite easy to manufacture.
Any idea, problems, links?

Perhaps if you can work out fusion... But I seriously don't see fision working at all.

Carlo

 

[dkozloski]

There has been a wealth of stuff used to power automobiles. Some that come to mind are wood, coal, corn cobs, chicken manure, pig poop, peat moss, peanut oil, inertia flywheels, bungee cord, wound springs, white lightning, sails, fuel cells, and the Lord knows what else.

 

[kadajawi]

but at least once you have so much power in a car over a long time you can realise cool stuff... like powerful electro motors making the car very fast or even with a turbine system... so it can fly like a jet.

 

[wfbberzerker]

i think once we reach the age where something like this would be feasible, we will already have come up with a new source of energy that is better and in the realm of possibility.

 

[ReiAyanami]

then all a terrorist would have to do is crash into something. then again the only way an SUV could ever get good mileage is thru nuclear power

 

[Mark R]

You could power the car with hydrogen generated from nuclear power in a large-scale secure facility. That would work.

Hydrogen isn't a particularly compact fuel, and has serious engineering problems associated with it, but it does work: both with conventional engine technology and with fuel cells (although they are a long, long way from commercial viability).

 

[kadajawi]

of course it WOULD work. BUT: How long? Depending on the car the fuel could be empty before you started! There are battery powered electro cars which eat up their battery in maybe 5 seconds (by that time they have reached 200+km/h (or even 300+). Such a car should be able to be run a rather long time with nuclear power...

 

[earthman]

Nuclear power in something the size of a car is ridiculous. For one thing, with all the paranoia about terrorism, you want everybody running around with nuclear material in their trunk. For another thing, where are you going to get all this nuclear material? Its fairly scarce and expensive. Then, what company concerned about liability would actually be insane enough to try to build it?
Hydrogen burning vehicles are much more viable and are running now, but hydrogen is a net loss fuel by about a factor of 5 so it needs to be created using renewable energy like solar or wind.
Nuclear powered vehicles were discussed back in the 60's, and even then, when people weren't so scared of anything nuclear, the costs were considered far beyond the realm of possibility, and those costs have gone up, not down. Its simply not an appropriate technology for small vehicles,and perhaps not large ones either.

 

[Howard]

I believe propane would be a viable alternative. Unlike many other alternative fuels, propane is easy to compress and transport. In fact, injecting propane into a diesel engine has the same effect as nitrous into a petrol engine.

 

[Mark R]

Propane is a viable alternative. Certainly in Europe it is promoted by much lower taxation than gasoline or diesel oil.

It is straightforward to convert a gasoline engine to propane - if you are technically adept, then you can even do it yourself. The requisite parts can often be had for about $600 for a 4 cylinder.

Diesel conversions are available - but use propane not as an alternative to diesel, but to supplement it - i.e. the engine runs on 50% diesel and 50% propane, producing a cleaner exhaust and using less of the heavily taxed oil.

The problem with propane is that it doesn't do anything about the CO2 emissions - a converted vehicle produces just about as much CO2 as it did on gasoline.

Hydrogen doesn't produce CO2, but it needs very high pressure or cryogenic storage. It is also much bulkier - prototype cars have needed 50 gallon tanks just to go 200-300 miles

 

[Howard]

Propane combustion: C3H8 + 5 O2 = 4 H2O + 3 CO2
Isooctane combustion: C8H18 + 12 O2 = 8 H2O + 8 CO2

This is assuming combustion is complete.

 

[dpopiz]

ok well I think this idea is completely unfeasable with fission, but there's a chance and here's something nobody's mentioned:
if you calculate it out, (at least using a gt-mhr or something similar) the car could run for 25 years on a single pellet of fuel...."disposable cars" that never have to be refueled? also if they never have to be refueled, you can cross out the spent fuel removal problem

 

[Peter]

dpopiz, two words for you: Critical mass.

You can't have a nuclear chain reaction in a single pellet.

 

[dpopiz]

ohhhhh yeah

 

[anthrax]

ah........Critical mass...you only need that for Nuclear Fission.........
A car powered by nuclear fusion might be intresting....

 

[earthman]

You are confused. Critical mass is needed for a nuclear explosion. You don't want the car to explode. Nuclear fission power plants (current technology) use pellets of nuclear fuel that are decaying through a controlled chain reaction and release huge amounts of heat over time. This heat is absorbed by water which powers steam turbines. The reaction is controlled by regulating the mass of fuel and by inert barrier rods interlaced with the fuel rods. In a nuclear power plant, critical mass is the one thing you are trying to avoid. Nuclear fusion requires many gigawatts of laser power to initiate, and a stable force field to contain the million-degree plasma. So far no one has been able to do that for more than a fraction of a second, or figure out how to make it happen at a lower temperature. So, really, this is a moot discussion. All we need is a cheap self contained fuel cell and some good batteries that have about 3 or 4 times the capacity of whats currently available and we're all set. Nuclear power is not neccesary for a car.

 

[dkozloski]

So far the smallest practical application of nuclear reactors for transportation has been ships and submarines. Here in Alaska the military had some small reactors that powered remote microwave repeaters that were a shielded lump of fissionable material that provided enough heat to generate current from an array of thermocouple junctions in a manner similar to but the opposite of a Peltier device. These things were very heavy and produced less than 1Kw. There was a proposal at one time for a nuclear airplane that was to be about B-36 or B-70 size. In fact I think there was an airborne reactor but it didn't produce power for flight. The aircraft had to be very large to allow the crew to be far enough away from it so that even with shielding they wouldn't receive a lethal dose of radiation.

 

[earthman]

That sounds similar to the small reactors used on deep space probes like the voyager craft, about 1 kw in size, but with the same issue...radioactive. Thats why they're used a billion miles out in space, not in your dad's Caravan.