Why can’t we have nuclear powered cars? Even given the occasional environmental accident surely it would not be as bad as all the emmisions from vehicles now.
I’m sure someone will tell me this is a half assed idea 
Would you settle for a nuclear power plant that generates electricity that can charge an electric car’s batteries? Certain matters like fuel handling and shielding seem like they might benefit from economies of scale.
Occasional? You would have some interesting fender benders!
I think Xema is on the right track.
BTW…Wishbone Ash played Moondogs in Pittsburgh recently. Good times!
Are Wishbone Ash still going?
Nuclear powered cars would be possible because you’d just need a tiny nuclear reactor thing, very small indeed. Trouble is the nuclear material could get into bad people’s hands very easily.
Yep. A permutation of the original. Sounded great.
So what? I think the trouble is building reactors that small that aren’t a radiation hazard when you crash. Who cares if some bad people get fissile materials? I mean, any idiot can get their hands on poisons that could kill millions, and we don’t even consider it a problem, so I wouldn’t think nuclear terrorism would be a problem either.
You might like to look up the 1958 Ford Nucleon concept car … AFAIK, that’s the closest anyone’s ever come to a nuclear-powered car.
Hmm, I think you’ll find nuclear material is very tightly controlled so that it doesnt get into the wrong hands.
As for radiation hazards when you crash, it would probably be quite easy to make one that’s safely enclosed.
Getting your hands on enough poison to kill millions of people and figuring out a way to effectively deliver it on a limited budget are two completely different things. OTOH, if our friendly neighborhood terrorists were to be able to construct even a small atomic bomb, they could wreak all sorts of havoc with it. Can you imagine what would happen if even a Hiroshima sized bomb went off in Long Beach Harbor? What are we going to do—search every single container on every single ship which comes into port? It would definitely be in our best interests to keep fissionable materials out of the hands of ne’er-do-wells. I remember reading an article back in the 70’s which raised the concern that terrorists could obtain enough fissionable material to build a bomb by abducting people with pacemakers and killing them for the minute amount which is present in those devices. I don’t know how seriously the threat was taken, though.
I’m sure that its feasible from an engineering standpoint. I also believe you could create such a beast that would be terrorist proof…i.e. use nuclear fuel that couldn’t be easily used to create weapons, encase it in such a way that it would be extremely difficult to get at, make the amounts small enough that it would be a bigger pain than it was worth…something like that.
I’d say the bigger issues would be waste disposal, the publics ‘ick’ factor for such a beast (and head explosions of the old school enviro-facists), the cost (which would be VERY high, what with all that safety engineering, not to mention the price of the fuel), and perhaps the availability of large quantities of fuel.
Better to use nuclear power to generate electricity or hydrogen or some other carrier and go electric.
-XT
Looks like pacemakers are a non-issue now. See end of page one and beginning of page two. The NRC certainly demonstrated an active interest in collecting the old batteries, though.
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- Nuclear fuel isn’t exactly plentiful; I’d guess if it was separated 100-million ways (or however many cars there are in the US) your car’s share wouldn’t amount to very much.
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- Also, the most-dependable thermonuclear batteries (such as what are used in satellites) are best at producing low voltages and currents for an extremely long period of time. It’s not the ideal solution for a car, when most cars typically need very-high energy outputs for very-short amounts of time, and that sit unused for the rest (daytime hours and overnight).
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Nuclear reactors don’t scale down well. To make an efficient nuclear reactor, you need to have almost a critical mass, or even more than a critical mass. Admittedly, “critical mass” is somewhat of a misnomer, as it also depends on how the mass is arranged, what moderators you have present, what you surround it with, and the like, but there’s still a minimum size you can make it, and that minimum size is much better suited to a large warship or a small city than it is to a car. One can make smaller reactors by using more exotic fuels, but those more exotic fuels are far more expensive than even the uranium and plutonium used in ordinary reactors. Which means that we want one large reactor to power many cars, as Xema suggested.
In a BBS a long time ago we discussed nuclear powered land vehicles. We coclded a nuclear powered tank (no size or weight limit, capable of 55 MPH for one minute and an overall duration of at least 1 hour) was probably possible.
We discussed a not-obvioulsy-street-illegal semi (by that I mean it meets interstate weight and size limits). The idea was to have the reactor / cooling in the trailer and use electric motors in the tractor.
The smallest nuclear reactor for a vehicle is probably the NR-1 research sub
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-nr1.html
No idea the size / weight of the reactor tho.
Brian
I can’t provide a reference, but I remember a small news story a few years ago about a new Russian-designed reactor designed for satillites that need a large power source. My memory is very vague, but IIRC it was a cylinder about 5 feet long.
That being said, as I understand it all nuclear reactors are a form of heat engine. Heat engines, as I understand it become more efficient the bigger they are. This is because the draw energy from a heat differential; the larger a heat engine is, the greater heat it’s components can take and the better it works. Therefore, a car sized reactor will be inherently less efficient. ( you may now rip apart my ignorance ) 
Finally, fissile metals and lead sheilding are very, very heavy. That’s an important consideration in a land vehicle.