Rather than screwing around with basically unproven electric cars, why doesn’t Detroit go nuclear?
December 17, 2009 in Politics
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
The Day after day Elitist questioned:
Now that it seems the automakers will end up in receivership at smallest amount, why don’t we skip the stupid gripping hybrid jabber and build nuclear-powered vehicles? I’m dead serious – it would simple to drop a microscopic uranium hydride reactor in a passenger vehicle. Ford had the nuclear-powered Nucleon thought all the way back in the 1950′s.
Let the Japanese, Chinese, and Germans mess around with batteries and plug-ins. Let them build go-karts that can travel 200 miles without charging up – we’ll have 500-horsepower Escalades that can go a million miles without refueling or emitting a release small amount of carbon, and which would be greatly safer than riding around with 20 gallons of uber-combustible gasoline in a steel tank a few inches off the ground. Just infer what that would to give a new lease of life American industry and the state!
So, do you agree? Is is time to get serious and start building nuke-powered vehicles?
Brains,
Here is no source of potential that is completely devoid of risk. But, comparing nuclear with fossil fuels like gasoline, here is austerely no evaluation – the gasoline and diesel we now use is far more perilous.
buckmark,
I’m sorry to report that you know absolutely not anything about nuclear potential, as evidenced by your proclamation that a collision would upshot in a nuclear blast. At the very most terrible, here would be some insignificant radiation exposure, roughly equivalent to that expected in a couple of CAT scans. Even that isn’t liable, as it is completely realistic to sell something to a name a restriction mechanism capable of left over intact all owing to even the most terrible auto collisions.
Brains (again),
You wouldn’t need to refill, ever. A 1 kg uranium hydride fuel source would be excellent for well over 1 million miles.
Did you know that you can save fuel and run your car on water
Nuclear energy is hazardous.
How just so would you utilize it into a car and refill it with it.
If a car crash, they’ll explode and yield much more hurt a habitual car would do
Well, that would kill all the criminals . . .
Liberals have the unacquainted frightened of nuclear anything.
i told you the additional day why here is absolutely no need for nuclear
ya, how many car wrecks do we have a year?
now that number of wrecks would be mini nuclear blasts with those cars. No wreck would be survivable.
terrible thought, subs and ships can run on nuclear b/c they are huge and capable of protecting the core, and also b/c they seldom run over.
Uh, and what just so happens if you crash? I don’t want to find out.
You have plainly been conception too many 1950s comics. Do you sincerely want millions of mini-Chernobyls whizzing around in the hands of fools? And what about their eventual decommissioning?
By the way, for what it’s value, battery equipment is only just compelling off, to say not anything of hydrogen fuel cells, and prototypes such as the solar powered passenger launch built at the Academe of La Rochelle, which may maybe do 17 knots completely loaded, day in, day out.
Judge me, I’m all for promoting nuclear potential, but reactors in cars is a terrible thought at most terrible, an immature (as in “an immature equipment” one at best.
1. Defending. You are inane to have to buffer public (driver, passengers, pedestrians, public in additional cars) from neutrons and gamma rays. You can’t effectively extent down the defending requirements just in view of the fact that your reactor is smaller. A high energy neutron or gamma, for wits, requires a fastidious thickness of clarification to be attenuated to a fastidious top and that thickness is fundamentally self-determining of the number of those particles/rays that are really life bent. It requires 4″ of lead *on all sides* to reduce a 6 MeV gamma flux by 99%, or another 2″ to reduce it by 99.9% and even that will probably not be ample. Neutrons are not very effectively shielded by lead, so you would have to use a hydrogenous clarification such as fill up or polycarbonate to buffer the neutrons. 48″ of polycarbonate would buffer 99% of the neutrons; another 24″ would buffer 99.9%. Again, even that may not be ample. Now we’re up to 78″ of total defending. So, just the (debatably effectual) defending would be, at a minimum, a ball that is 13 feet in diameter – and that is with zero room on the surrounded by for something such as a reactor.
2. Infectivity in the event of collision. Admittedly, the odds of extant a crash in a car equipped with a liquid fuel bomb is probably less than a car equipped with a sturdy reactor – but that’s only a fleeting term benefit. What if the crash causes the relief of fission harvest? Yeah, we can sterile it up by inane to the crash site and loading all of the contaminated dirt and asphalt into dump trucks and hauling it off to…Yucca Mountain.
Oh, geez, now we have to
1. handle the heavy equipment and dump trucks as radioactive clarification,
2. figure out how much of radioactive dirt and asphalt force be bent annually,
3. worry whether some mush-for-brains force want to grab himself a contaminated “souvenir” from the crash site before the help arrives,
4. make sure the radiation staff apparent the site before the EMT’s can get to work
5. shut down conveying to repave the road.
And all of these difficulties I just mentioned don’t even deliberate gaseous fission harvest which would be impossible to keep from being paid into the background, or what happens if an accident occurs when it is raining. In that last scenario, the rain would start to frenziedly apply the fission harvest the instant they were released.
The largest wits it’s not a excellent thought? Nearly no one would buy a nuclear car – indeed not in the quantities that would make them economically realistic. It would be *very* pricey and folks are so irrationally worried of nuclear potential now that the thought of a nuclear reactor in each garage would keep them up at night. (Hey, just read the answers to your question!) If public were undaunted of nuclear potential ample that they would deliberate a nuclear powered car, we would have as many nuclear potential plants as we have shopping malls. And, if we had that many nuclear potential plants, we force even be able to fit all of our energy wants with electricity generated by splitting the atom which would, in turn, make gripping cars a lot more realistic.
Only 1 kg of uranium won’t work. You would need *at smallest amount* 52 kg in view of the fact that that’s the essential mass of U-235. In actuality, the core of the reactor would have to be probably double as generous as the minimum 17 cm diameter sphere a barely essential mass requires. As soon as ample U-235 has fissioned such that the total amount of U-235 in the core is below the 52 kg threshold, the reactor will no longer work. In additional words, no intact core, operational in any case of its size can ever have less than 52 kg of U-235.
Oh, and a couple of CAT scans of the head would net me over double the once a year ionizing exposure I expected when I was a nuke in the Navy. And that’s using the exposure from the CAT scan that imparts the smallest dose. Said another way, only “a couple of CAT scans” sounds like a lot of exposure to me! Also, in view of the fact that that couple of CAT scans would not really be due to a health check course of action but an accident, the law as regards officially authorized radiation doses to the general public would have been kaput. The officially authorized limit for “members of the general public” is 100 mrem in any one year. A CAT scan of the head imparts 140 mrem of exposure.
If, as you aver, it really *is* realistic to sell something to a name a restriction and defending structure that can fit on a car and allocate room for travelable defending, I’d be detective novel to see some documentation!
Way to reflect outside the box, but no cigar on this one. Come up with a way to significantly reduce defending and make it much more effectual, and keep perilous fission harvest from life bent and the expense may just conclude to be an come forth. Also, I reflect it will take longer for them to come to market than you reflect it will. See the physorg link below and scroll to the last two paragraphs in the condition.
In the appeal of full leak, I do not work in the nuclear industry, have no investments in the nuclear industry, nor know anyone who facility in the nuclear industry. I don’t want to work at a nuclear potential sow for the same wits I wouldn’t want to work at any sort of potential sow: the hours. They’re on for 24/7 and have to be completely staffed around the timer. I would have absolutely no problem income right next to any American nuclear potential sow, or any sort of bestow nuclear waste gift. I wouldn’t want to live surrounded by 20 miles of a coal sow, even if, except I had to.