Would you dare to drive a car that has never been refueled?

There is a car that can travel 1,000,000 kilometers without refueling or any other fuel. Would you like to drive such a car? If you heard that the car is nuclear-powered, would you still want to drive it? In fact, as early as the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the space race, nuclear-powered cars had already been put on the research agenda by scientists. However, in the 21st century, human control over nuclear technology has far surpassed that of 50 years ago.

In 1958, Ford designed a scale model car called Nucleon in order to verify that the automotive industry could be driven by nuclear power and to examine how nuclear reactors would change the design of the car body. The result is obvious to everyone: the volume of the nuclear reactor occupies half of the space of the car body, making the entire car almost impractical.

Ford Nucleon

The Ford Nucleon's reactor is a uranium fission reaction, similar to the working principle of a nuclear submarine. The resulting steam is used to drive two steam turbines, one for directly driving the wheels and the other for generating electricity. However, the characteristics of uranium determine that it cannot enter ordinary people's homes at all. No one wants a "mobile nuclear bomb" parked at their doorstep, right?

Ford Nucleon

When we think of nuclear power, the recent incident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused by the tsunami disaster in Japan even brings us great psychological pressure, not to mention driving a car with a nuclear reactor on its back one day. However, human beings' determination to safely use nuclear energy will not be reduced. "Thorium" is considered to be the most suitable nuclear fuel for vehicles at present. Thorium has weak radioactivity and can be controlled by lasers. The energy that 1 gram of thorium can generate is equivalent to the energy contained in 28,390 liters of gasoline.

Thorium

Sounds promising, right? In fact, Laser Power Systems in Connecticut, USA, is already working on a prototype. If a car is added with 8 grams of thorium metal, it will not need to be refueled until it is scrapped. How about that, tempting?

The control of a thorium reactor also appears to be much simpler than that of an ordinary nuclear power plant. High-energy lasers heat the thorium metal, stimulating the atomic energy to a critical temperature where it can generate heat on its own. The heat then generated can be used to heat water to produce steam, which is used to drive a small turbine and thereby generate electricity. This is almost exactly the same as the power generation principle of a nuclear power plant, except that the scale and power generation are much smaller.

With electricity, the rest of the work is no problem, just a simple EV. The generator that always works means that the vehicle can be driven by an endless "battery". Some people may think that such a complex system must be very heavy. According to the company's CEO, the entire system can be controlled within 500 pounds, or 226kg, which is completely within the vehicle's carrying capacity.

Compared with unstable uranium, thorium is much safer, it only radiates alpha rays, and the radiation level of these rays is so low that it cannot penetrate human skin. Therefore, a vehicle-mounted reactor using thorium as a power source only needs a three-foot-thick stainless steel container to completely suppress the radiation of thorium.

Moreover, it is extremely difficult to convert thorium into weapons-grade nuclear materials, so there is almost no panic about thorium falling into the hands of terrorists.

The global reserves of thorium are also very considerable. The United States alone has proven reserves of 440,900 tons, and Australia has more than 300,000 tons. So once the utilization of thorium is mass-produced as an alternative energy source, what kind of new energy source with huge potential will it be?

Ranking of the world's proven thorium reserves

Having said so much good, any technology has two sides, let's talk about the bad. First of all, the reactor needs to be small enough to meet the needs of vehicles. Considering that the reactor needs a steam turbine, a generator, a large amount of closed circulating water, etc. to achieve power generation, the difficulty of miniaturization and lightweighting can be imagined.

Secondly, thorium is very stable when working at critical temperature, but it takes at least 30 seconds to generate enough steam and energy to drive the vehicle during cold start, and it is not suitable for rapid response.

The prototype car using thorium power is getting closer and closer to us, but it does not mean that the new technology of thorium power is unstoppable. Human fear will be the key to overcome. What are your expectations and thoughts on "nuclear-powered" cars? Welcome to post and communicate!