8 grams of thorium could replace gasoline in cars | Hacker News Reader

8 grams of thorium could replace gasoline in cars

geek.com

18 pointsukdm13 comments

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Sounds like another "just-around-the-corner-invest-now!" alternative fuel company.

* A lot of wordy rhetoric about "clean" and "green" power, not technical references.

* 200kg engines that generate hundreds of MW of power

* Claims prototypes are coming "very soon" (2014)

* Typical "lone inventor through sheer genius discovers new untapped, almost unlimited source of energy"

* Picture of Obama on the site ("Look govt. is investing in this too, so should you, get ahead of the game!").

<sarcasm> Not bad. I bet some will buy in. There is a profit to be made off of pedalling "just-around-the-corner" amazing energy breakthrough deals. But in this case first order of business should be finding a better website designer. If they are peddaling this for "investors" they need more flash, some animations, maybe some fake graphs.</sarcasm>

Source article is much better: http://wardsauto.com/ar/thorium_power_car_110811/

I think the biggest hurdle will be containing the thorium so that a head-on collision between two cars at 100mph each doesn't leak radioactive material all over the road.

I can't comment on the difficulty of building a nuclear engine weighing 227kg (I assume he means 250kW), but I would have thought the space industry would be the first to utilise such a breakthrough, and I'm not aware of the widespread adoption of those engines over solar panels.

If these challenges are met then such an engine could be a viable alternative to the batteries in electric cars.

For an auto engine it is beyond hopeless (economics, safety). This particular case is a crackpot/scammer with no substance at all.

Very small nuclear-powered engines are possible. There were several launched on space satellites by the US and USSR, i.e.

http://www.etec.energy.gov/history/Major-Operations/SNAP-Ove...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

SNAP weighed under 430 kg for the entire power system (note this is a real fission reactor, not a radioisotope heat source like many space probes). These use highly-enriched uranium (weapons grade) to get very small cores.

Nuclear reactors have been proposed for interplanetary probes, such as the (recently cancelled) Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, which would have used a nuclear reactor powering an ion thruster. It's completely viable.

http://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/jupiter/JIMO_Bac...

Also tested for aircraft propulsion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion

tl;dr They discovered it was a bad idea.

"Stevens has worked out you’d require a 227kg, 250MW thorium engine in order to power a typical road car."

250MW is around 333,333 horsepower. A 250kW, 333 horsepower, engine seems more likely to me.

A 250MW engine could power a city and its suburbs.

"Keep that foot on the gas, we need lights downtown for another couple of hours"

Anyone have more information on exactly how this works? Does it mean 200+ Kg of thorium, only 8 grams of which would be used up during a car's life time?

The engine, turbine, housing and all that weighs over 200kg. The thorium weighs 8g.

It's a blatant scam, it doesn't work. No one's building nuclear auto engines.

Three questions:

1) How much would 8g of Thorium cost? How much would the engine cost? Even with economies of scale, I can't imagine that it won't be an astronomical investment.

2) Could enough thorium ever be produced? Can it work on a North American ~1car/person scale?

3) Finally, is this _really_ a good use of the technology? Isn't it better to just drive less, use public/bike/walking for transportation, live closer to work, etc?

Unfortunately, the oil companies are too powerful to allow something like this to succeed. I would be very surprised if anything ever came of this.

I guess being a realist earns you downvotes these days?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

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