3 ms·

I want a thorium-powered car. http://www.geekosystem.com/thorium-powered-car/ http://www.geekosystem.com/thorium-powered-car/

• InclinedPlane 13y ago
  No you don't. Thorium reactors are actually breeder reactors which run off of U-233, one of the byproducts of breeding U-233 is U-232, which emits gamma rays like nobody's business. The only way to stop gamma rays is with lots of shielding made out of high-Z materials, like lead, which is inevitably super heavy. So you'll either get a multi-ton car that crawls or a light-weight car that gives you cancer or a lethal dose of radiation if you drive it more than a few hours.
• gus_massa 13y ago
  The "thorium-powered-cars" were discussed previously. They are based in a totally different "unproved" technology. The main point about "thorium-powered-cars": * It's not a nuclear reactor, it doesn't produce fission. * It says that the thorium has a lot of potential energy, but it's not clear how to extract it. (A similar weight of potatoes has the same energy and at least it's easy to extract a part of it.) * It mixes lasers and radioactive material. A lot of buzzwords but the explanation of the details is unintelligible. I gave more details and direct quotes for the project in a previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879955