TECHNOLOGY | CARS | HISTORY
Nuclear Cars Could Become a Thing In The Future
The story of the Nucleon, and the prospect of nuclear-powered cars.
Rights via Pexels Images Nuclear power gets a bad rap.
And one can understand why — when things go wrong with nuclear, they go epically wrong and the headlines aren’t pretty. I’d still argue that fossil fuels have caused far, far more damage than nuclear power ever has.
Sadly, deep fears of nuclear energy have led to over-regulation, which makes it prohibitively expensive to implement.
Now, do I want a nuclear reactor in my car? Eh.
The nuclear car
The concept was introduced in the 1950s. It was called the Ford Nucleon. This is the mini-prototype they drew up. The car is 15 feet long with a nuclear reactor in the rear:
Via The Drive It looks ridiculous, like something out of the Jetsons, but many car concepts looked similar and the end product generally looked different.
Allow me to play devil’s advocate.
The case for nuclear-powered cars
Nuclear power has tremendous capacity: A modern nuclear sub can go 20 years without refueling.
The main limitation for subs is food for sailors (subs can generate near limitless drinking water and oxygen. They farm the oxygen out of the water they bring in to purify).
The Ford Nucleon, in theory, would be able to go 5000 to 10000 miles before needing to refuel, but this was the earliest version of the vehicle and would surely improve. The car was a byproduct of the post-World War II era when people were still coming to grips with the awe-inspiring potential of nuclear energy.
With nuclear power as our sole source of energy, we’d be able to stop drilling for oil, dealing with huge oil spills, and other collateral damage to the environment.
Rendition of Nucleon (Via Ford Authority) In a perfect world, with perfect actors, and perfect drivers, nuclear cars would be incredibly clean and efficient, and drastically reduce carbon output.
The case against nuclear-powered cars
Now, let’s go back to reality because I’ve just taken you to a Happy Land in the clouds, where everything goes splendidly — and everyone is nice and gets along.
There are enormous challenges with nuclear cars.
First, car accidents and defects.
Given the exploding Teslas reported in California, you can imagine the problems with a nuclear-powered car accident.
Accident in Sacramento (Courtesy of Sacramento Fire Department). Driving is consistently the most dangerous thing we do every day, the thing that puts our life most at risk — and so many of us still wing it.
Each car accident would carry the risk of a mini-nuclear meltdown and catastrophic fallout. We’d be dealing with the spread of cancer due to exposure.
Imagine the traffic jam during your commute home — that was caused by a nuclear car accident. You may as well walk home — ideally, in a direction well around the accident.
And then, we have the problem of nuclear power sources being way too accessible. Domestic terrorism would go up to new and terrifying levels, as terrorists stole cars to use radioactive weapons.
But let’s say everyone was a perfect driver and car accidents and bad guys didn’t exist.
There’s still an engineering cost. It would be extremely expensive to properly engineer nuclear cars.
Nuclear power is most often using steam. It is heating up water in a way that generates energy. We’d need to do this at a small scale, and in an effective way to propel a car forward.
Put another way, “One doesn’t simply put a nuclear reactor in a car.”
Even with everything perfect, I still don’t know that I’d feel comfortable sitting in a nuclear car.
It brings to mind the famous Ghostbusters scene, where one of the men turns on their nuclear-powered proton pack (the thing that shoots lassos around the ethereal ghosts).
The pack makes a deep and powerful sound and the men back away from him in the elevator like he’s radioactive:
Via Gify It’d be the same for me when I found out my Uber driver was using nuclear power.
“Hey, I’ll just take the next one and eat the cancellation fee. Thhhhanks.”
The dig on having nuclear cars (ever?)
Perhaps even by the end of the century, we could see manufacturers flirting with the concept.
Currently, electric cars are a far more attractive prospect as they achieve similar goals without enormous risks. I recently rode in the Rivian truck, the competing brand with Tesla. I was in this model:
Via Wikimedia Commons I was blown away by the car: its design, the smoothness of the ride, the dashboard, and how damn fast and quiet it was. Rivian just released a patch update that extended the car's range by another 40 miles.
It’s these innovations that are quickly stacking up and showing how incremental change makes crazy things feel within grasp.
A nuclear-powered car, if it were engineered perfectly in, say, 2350 — would have the benefits of electric-powered cars and then some. It would never need to be refueled.
Yes, in that distant utopia, there’d need to be remarkably effective ways to dispose of nuclear waste (which are several orders of magnitude better and safer than current means).
But, alas, we can’t even get simple things right as humanity. It will be a long, long time before we see nuclear-powered cars. And perhaps that’s a good thing.
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