9 ms·
The Nucleon, Ford's 1958 nuclear-powered concept car that never was
- spsrich2 7y agoJust imagine if this had caught on. You'd pop down to Kwik-fit to get your control rods looked at.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoI genuinely can't. We are ridiculously lucky that all we have to worry about in that range is limited blast and relatively easy to put out fire. The old country has a high amount of natural gas powered cars. Since they require user to be a little more careful during pumping, gas station attendant was mandated to it for you.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dang 7y agoRelated from 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4745123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4745123
- linsomniac 7y agoSlightly related: I wasn't aware of this until last year, but at one point nuclear-powered jet aircraft were a thing. Think cold-war jets, always ready to counter if the other side strikes, that could stay aloft for a month or more. The issue is that weight is the enemy of flight, and nuclear shielding is heavy. The US was working on distributed shielding: instead of being centralized around the reactor, messing with the CG, it was spread out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
- dgudkov 7y ago>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft Tupolev Tu-119 ... had two conventional turboprop engines and two direct-cycle nuclear jet engines, and got around the shielding weight issue by simply not including it. This made my day.
- jsperson 7y agoRuined some people's day though - next paragraph: "We had all been irradiated, but we ignored it. Of the two crews, only three men survived- a young navigator, a military navigator and me. The first to go, a young technician, took only three years to die".
- 08-15 7y agoFunny how someone who is not a radiologist can blurt out nonsense and nobody questions it. If you follow the link to the main article: "...radiation shielding, which was one of the main concerns for the engineers. Liquid sodium, beryllium oxide, cadmium, paraffin wax and steel plates were used for protection." Clearly, the Soviets weren't suicidal. They were obviously looking for lightweight ways to shield the neutron radiation, which is very damaging to both humans and electronics. The gamma radiation would still reach the crew, but attenuated by the distance. Gamma isn't too bad, because little of it is absorbed. > a young technician, took only three years to die Well, that wasn't radiation poisoning (it kills within days or not at all), and it wasn't cancer (that takes longer to develop). What was it? Ethanol poisoning?
- garmaine 7y agoAlso, how do you keep the crew alive for months without allowing for all the weight of those supplies?
- akhilcacharya 7y agoTheoretically you could replace the crew/restock in midair
- jshevek 7y agoFrom the title, I thought this was in reference to a car powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, like the kind used in spacecraft and some lighthouses. But the article mentions being powered by uranium pellets, and wikipedia confirms "The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium fission similar to those found in nuclear submarines" They actually envisioned having a true reactor under the hood.
- lb1lf 7y agoIf nothing else, nuclear-powered cars would have made David Hahn’s nuclear reactor a lot simpler to build! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
- m4rtink 7y agoRTG powered car could work, but the electrical power available would be rather small, they have horrendous power to weight ratio. Steam turbine powered by heat from the radio isotopes would work better, but would still be very very expensive due to cost of the isotopes. An actual fission reactor generating steam would indeed be the best most likely, when you ignore small stuff like emergency cooling, all the control mechanisms and shielding. ;-)
- baybal2 7y agoI do remember something similar, but back from the union. A Teknika Molodezi (a popular science journal from USSR) from around late fifties told that... "by the year 2000, every soviet housewife would have a nuclear reactor" Remember, that was in times when electricity linkup for a household was still a relative luxury. Even in Moscow back then, it was very normal to live in an apartment with very poor, irregular electricity supply, or none at all. I do vividly remember pictures of possible applications, like powering a fridge, providing heat, hot water, or steam for house cleaning... or cooking. Only at the very end, there was a bit of scepticism "it now appears that advances in metallurgy open a clear way to making a reactor as small as a stove, but material science has not yet found a way to contain radiation that is not as bulky, heavy and expensive as lead or uranium"
- selimthegrim 7y agoIn Asimov's Foundation series you see similar references to housewives having "nuclear knives" for slicing meat like in a deli, as well as washing machines I think
- tomr_stargazer 7y agoThe Teknika Molodezi prediction came true! Not a single Soviet housewife in 2000 lacked a nuclear reactor. ;)
- cwillu 7y agoNot a single one had one either :p
- gambiting 7y agoI think the joke is that there were no Soviet housewives in the year 2000 anymore, so the statement "all Soviet housewives now have a nuclear reactor in their home" is correct.
- ygra 7y agoAs is the statement "all Soviet housewives do not have a nuclear reactor in their home", which I think is what your parent poster said.
- RickJWagner 7y agoA nuclear-powered car from the makers of the Pinto? What could possibly go wrong?
- HugoDaniel 7y agoLooks like the cars in the game Fallout
- acidburnNSA 7y agoI'm sure this was always a bit tongue-in-cheek and/or just non-technical salespeople drumming up some hype. Here we are talking about it many decades later. The 1950s reactor designers certainly were not that stupid. In fact, a 1955 textbook on nuclear technology says this in its intro: "The [statement] that the heat released by the complete fission of one pound of nuclear fuel is equivalent to that obtainable by 1400 tons of coal (or 300,000 gallons of fuel oil), has led to some erroneous conclusions. The fantastic possibility has been envisaged of including in an automobile enough fissionable material, about the size of a pea, to last the life of the vehicle. In order to realize why this is not within the bounds of reality, it is necessary to understand something about the fission process." Glasstone -- Principles of Nuclear Reactor Engineering (1955) [1] [1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&view=1up&seq=18 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...
- __s 7y agoOn the other hand, Feynman On Patents is a good overview of why these ideas would be thrown about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk (& well, we did end up with nuclear submarines) Asimov's fiction had quite a bit of arbitrary nuclear devices
- FpUser 7y agoThank you for sharing this link. Somehow I've never stumbled upon it. I am a big fan of Feynman ( his book were invaluable when I was studying physics in the university )
- pengaru 7y agoFeynman never fails to bring a smile to my face, one of few men I regret being too young to meet before they died.
- mhh__ 7y agoI have suspicion Feynman is a "don't meet your heros" type person - There's Feynman the very great scientist but then there's also Feynman the egotistical misogynistic alleged wife beater.
- dekhn 7y agoI remember my teacher in high school saying GM or Ford developed a turbine-based car that had the standard list of amazing features and never needed repairs, but it was quashed by the mechanics union (or some other similar conspiracy theory). Huh, I guess it was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
- trhway 7y agoit is strange though that turbine based hybrid cars (in series or range extender configuration) haven't emerged in the recent years. It would be best of the 2 worlds - a small lightweight turbine as a generator would work in the most optimal mode, and the torgue/etc. characteristics of the car would be that of the electric motor. Wrt. nuclear - while nuclear on Earth is pretty much done away (at least for fission, for fusion - well, once somebody develops a laser pulse efficiently fusing proton+boron it probably can have a chance), the space is the true nuclear domain. In particular i think that launch window and flight time limits of flying to Mars would naturally lead to nuclear powered LEO-to-Mars Starships.
- jandrese 7y agoNone of the car manufacturers have experience with turbine manufacture (except I guess Rolls Royce, and they don't build Hybrids). The Hybrid system was already a pretty big ask for the car companies and developing a novel compact hardy turbine at the same time was just too much. Plus hybrids are seen as more of a stepping stone to pure electric vehicles so you might put a ton of time and energy into developing it only to have the entire concept become obsolete in only a few years. Don't be too sad though, turbine technology does live on, the M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams main battle tank. It's the reason for the incredible land speed but also ridiculous fuel consumption and enormous IR signature.
- exDM69 7y agoThere are gas turbine based buses and trucks used in eastern Europe where LNG imported from Siberia is plentiful. They're not common in my city, but there's (only) one on the bus line that drives by my house. It's only a bit louder than piston engines buses, but the sound is very distinctive so you can hear it from a mile away.
- ficklepickle 7y agoAm I the only one surprised that this site is pushing some "tech festival" conference so hard? Apparently they know for sure that 20 000 will be able to mingle in Amsterdam on Oct. 1.
- cbanek 7y agoAnyone else reminded of the DeLorean from Back to the Future? It's got that circle kind of thing in the back where the fuel goes? Same for the Mr. Fusion! And just a few years after the famous Hill Valley lightning storm in 1955! Maybe it's just that it's the only nuclear powered car I can think of. Oh wait, that sucker's electrical. It just needs the nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts for the flux capacitor!
- Roboprog 7y agoI was thinking more of the nuclear RV in the book Snowcrash. The world had become anarchy, and the wealthy owner was unconcerned with safety.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoHa. Later in my nuclear career, I realized the genius of Doc's claim: "Does it run like on regular unleaded gasoline?" "Unfortunately, no. It requires something with a little more kick: Plutonium!" "Ah, Plutonium. Wait a minute, are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?" "Hey hey hey! Keep rolling! keep rolling there! no no no no! This sucker's electrical! But I needed a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need" I should try that in public. No, those aren't nuclear plants over there. They're electrical! They just use nuclear reactions to generate the electricity you need.
- wwwwewwww 7y agoIn part 3 Doc says that while the time circuits are powered by Mr Fusion, the engine runs on the old-fashioned unleaded gasoline.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago"I'm sure in 1985 Plutonium is available at every corner drugstore!"
- rmason 7y agoI'm pretty sure I've told this story on HN before. When I was a wee lad we took a school trip to the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant South of Detroit. We saw a movie where they talked about the future which showcased nuclear powered cars. They may have even used the Ford design but I no longer remember. After the tour they had a Q&A so I asked about the validity of nuclear powered automobiles. What happens in the event of a bad crash? Do we just not use that particular intersection for the next hundred years? The guy absolutely mocked me and was very derisive. On the ride home I will never forget the teacher told me that I'd asked a legitimate question and the guy was totally out of line. I think at the time I was maybe 8-9 years old.
- jacquesm 7y agoI can't stand it when adults do that.
- hakfoo 7y agoIn the 7th grade we had a representative from the local atomic plant come and visit. She demonstrated "here's a spent fuel pellet-- see that it pegs the geiger counter, but so does this piece of Fiestaware!" It was also presented in a Home Economics class, not even the science class. I suspect that even the least of the science teachers would have eviscerated that demo.
- dead_mall 7y agoI'd imagine that if you got into a car accident in a nuclear-powered car, it would blow up like a mini-nuke just like in Fallout
- joezydeco 7y agoThat’s not how nuclear explosives work.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThe design of a nuclear bomb is necessarily very different from the design of a nuclear reactor. You could have a reactor that blows itself up from internal pressure (like Chernobyl did) but one not with any sort of nuclear (or even conventional explosive of the same size or weight) force.
- mhh__ 7y agoThere is a paper somewhere that actually suggests that Chernobyl might have contained a (small) nuclear detonation at the beginning. Not being a nuclear physicist I can't really critique it. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1... (Found it)
- 08-15 7y agoCan you explain what that's supposed to mean? An intentional nuclear explosion is air exploding because it's heated by a nuclear reaction. Chernobyl was water exploding because it was heated by a nuclear reaction. It's the same thing, but it's also a steam explosion. Is that paper saying "Chernobyl was not an ordinary boiler failure"? Of course it wasn't.
- mhh__ 7y agoAs in, the conditions in a few of the fuel channels were sufficiently extreme as to cause an actual critical explosion (is the hypothesis)
- LeoPanthera 7y agoIt's amazing that this actually used (or was supposed to) a real fission reactor. I've always thought that the possibilities of radioisotope thermoelectric generators were under-utilised. They would be amazingly practical for off-grid living. Surely it must be possible to make a relatively safe one by packing it inside a solid metal case and then burying it in the ground outside your home. I wonder how far an EV could travel with an RTG in the trunk.
- p1mrx 7y agoThe Curiosity rover's RTG produces 125W, which could recharge a typical 60 kWh EV in about 20 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-mission_radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-mission_radioisotope_the...
- teraflop 7y agoCuriosity's RTG also cost about $100 million to manufacture, of which $8.5 million was the cost of the plutonium itself. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1364515 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1364515
- ampdepolymerase 7y agoWhere did the rest of the 100million go?
- mixmastamyk 7y agoR&D, salaries, benefits, government pork.
- wiml 7y agoOne problem with RTGs is you can't throttle them. They're going to produce that amount of power, no more and no less, according to their decay curve, whether you have a use for it or not.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoThis car represents a whole class of problems. How much can a artefact with potential exponential power be entrusted to the individual human? This is not just a question of terrorism, but general recoverability of artefacts with potential to do harm by society. Imagine Elon would create a remotely controlled spaceship with a near solid metall tip. Which once in orbit, represents a potential kinetic impactor. The software dies, and it goes on a journey to return with significantly larger speed. And the more we progress, the bigger these problems become. In a way, the ak47 already represents these artefact power problems, escalating tribal conflicts to bloody civil war. How do we want to progress as a society towards this? A purely libertarian view is dangerous, as is a total surveilance view on this problem. I personally try to think of a duality of a approach, a ying-yang of surveilance, in which the population watches the powerfull and one another, and the powerful watch the mechanism allowing the watchmen & woman to perform their dutys. Freedom to endavour new things is kind of difficult in these systems. No idea, how a future, panopticum of a mankind, would treat inventors or high stake risk-takers. To try something new, could become equally to a criminal endavour over time.