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Would you though? A lot of freight lines in europe are already electric, wouldn't it be much more efficient to have a stationary high-power reactor than carryin
by echoangle 2y ago
Would you though? A lot of freight lines in europe are already electric, wouldn't it be much more efficient to have a stationary high-power reactor than carrying around a smaller one on each locomotive?
- ceejayoz 2y agoThat might be balanced somewhat by not needing to maintain thousands of miles of caternary wire.
- echoangle 2y agoI think maintaining thousands of miles of wire and one large powerplant would be cheaper than maintaining thousands of small mobile reactors, but that's just speculation of course. And most of the wire has to already be there anyways for passenger transport, I think, because many rail lines are used by cargo and people. Unless every train should have a reactor?
- lukan 2y agoOnce we have cheap miniaturized fusion reactors, that work stable - we won't need so much electric wiring anymore, true. Unfortunately, so far exactly 0 working fusion reactors have been build, so currently, I would not demolish electric lines just yet.
- kjs3 2y agoThe underlying technology does not exist in a production form, to the extent that it's not clear which basic reactor design option is going to be the future. So we can't know what the maintenance burden from a fisson rector is, much less one mounted on a train. Don't plan on tearing down those overhead cables just yet.
- 0x457 2y agoIn europe sure, in the US most of freight rail isn't and companies operating those rail roads don't want to spend money on eletrifying railroads. Currently they're trying to gas light us that hydrogen-hybrid locomotives are the futures (why not use diesel-hybrid locomotives that already exist is a mistery)
- genewitch 2y agotrains in the US have electric motors that actually make the wheels turn. The issue with the US is the distances trains have to go. Mostly short distance trains will be(are?) fully electric but long distance and frieght is diesel series hybrid engines.
- 0x457 2y agoSorry, I wasn't clear in my comment. I was talking about trains that can use grid or diesel engine to power those electric motors. And hydrogen comment was about this: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/usdot-announces-97-million-hydrogen-related-rail-projects-part-24-billion https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/articles/usdot-announc... . My tinfoil hat theory is that every carbon-fuel company pushing for hydrogen knowing well it's energy density isn't enough, so the experiment will fail, and they're going back to diesel saying that green tech isn't ready.
- genewitch 2y agoI'm still confused, but that's ok. I spoke to why we don't use electric trains in the US, because the distances are too far and the terrain is too varied. The rockies, the cascades, just to get imports from west to east. No matter what, the power plant will have to be on the freight trains in the US. In the US, all freight trains are electric series hybrids, with diesel power plants. I doubt hydrogen will ever go, because people like me will say "Hindenburg, but already on the ground where it can do the most damage, plus moving at 50-80MPH"