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Fueled by nuclear thorium lasers






tttonyyy said:
Re-fuel Every 100 Years With the New Thorium Car

Any thoughts? :D

(Yes I agree, that's a nice looking host, but my Utter Bollocks Detector is off the scale!)
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The energy density quoted can only be attained with nuclear fission. That means converting thorium to Uranium 233, which is the actual fissile material (Thorium doesn't work under the cited conditions).

You also get Uranium 232, which emits radiation that is not as easily blocked, at all.

All in all, it has the earmarks of a scam to get investors, not a real "product".

:san:
 
Not to mention the fact that thorium production is an extremely closed market (mainly china iirc) and the element is extremely expensive, at over $100/gram.
 
I'm in!!! I want that car!!
$800 for years of driving -- Right Arm!
Right.......... HMike
 
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Sigurthr said:
Not to mention the fact that thorium production is an extremely closed market (mainly china iirc) and the element is extremely expensive, at over $100/gram.
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And yet thorium is over twice as abundant as uranium and easier to seperate. Moreover it is enormously safer and easier to use as nuclear fuel.
 
TheGreaterWatt said:
And yet thorium is over twice as abundant as uranium and easier to seperate. Moreover it is enormously safer and easier to use as nuclear fuel.
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Yep, the driving force in cost is not availability or difficulty, but political and economical (fully supporting thorium breeder reactor technology would devastate boiling water reactor and fossil fuel markets).
 
This is a good subject. I've seen youtube videos on this before but never had a discussion about what I saw and you know how youtube commenters are like lol
 
I personally thought that Caddy was ugly. FWIW, I think 90% of the current production vehicles are ugly and they seem to be getting worse. Give me the thorium tech in a car from the 50s or 60s and I'd be happy.

I hope they are able to come up with a solution. With that amount of life, they should make a universal power cell that can be used in any vehicle. Not any of the proprietary crap like Apple uses. That way as vehicles get wrecked or become useless some other way, if can be used in your next vehicle. It could save money too.
 
Dr_Evil said:
I personally thought that Caddy was ugly. FWIW, I think 90% of the current production vehicles are ugly and they seem to be getting worse. Give me the thorium tech in a car from the 50s or 60s and I'd be happy.

I hope they are able to come up with a solution. With that amount of life, they should make a universal power cell that can be used in any vehicle. Not any of the proprietary crap like Apple uses. That way as vehicles get wrecked or become useless some other way, if can be used in your next vehicle. It could save money too.
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"With that amount of life" = nuclear powered.

The size of a system that can produce nuclear power is still too large to be practical...we have nuclear warships, but not nuclear tanks for example...and a nuclear car would be HARDER to do than a tank, etc.
 
Then there's the crash safety and illegal use issues. These two problems are why we don't see nuclear pacemakers anymore.
 
hot_wheels_elite_bttf_delorean1.png


That's the answer right there :D
 
saw this a while back. it was mentioned in another thread quite some time ago. it's about as credible as the solar roadways idea


 
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Solar roadways can work, if they don't load them up with freaking LEDs and associated processors, and wifi connections. The math doesn't check out on those, as numerous experts have pointed out. In western europe places are replacing bike paths with embedded solar cells, and that does work just fine.

Car sized nuclear power, of any type, is far away from being reality. Not because we can't make reactors that small, but because they're too expensive and dangerous, and fossil fuels are a huge market.
 
We do have a pretty good supply of thorium. Back in the '80's IIRC, I used to have to off road over giant waste piles of the radioactive crap to do readings, get monitoring well samples, etc.

I like off roading, but, in a moon suit, and having to be steam cleaned afterwards (Plus the trucks) and Geiger Countered/Pee Sampled all the time took SOME of the fun out of it.

It WOULD have been nice to just spoon a little into the "gas tank" and have years' worth of fuel...instead of spending all that time cleaning the grit OFF the trucks, but whatcha gonna do? To be fair, there were crews that did the cleaning, I only had to get things dirty out there, and come back with the readings/samples.

:eg:
 
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