

Is a thorium powered car in our future? - rmason
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20100035-48/is-a-nuclear-powered-car-in-our-future/

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frankus
This crazy dude I used to work with (and I mean that in the nicest way
possible) liked to point out that the theoretical specific energy of a battery
(that is energy per unit mass) is c squared. By that standard it is entirely
possible we might one day have cars that ship with all the fuel they'll ever
need stored in a little capsule the size of a thimble.

But it's one of those "in principle not impossible" kinds of technologies that
are fun to think about but unwise to bet the future of the planet on.

What would be really cool is if someone figured out a way to generate
electricity from a nuclear reaction without going through a heat step—to
somehow fling off electrons without moving the nuclei around much. In the mean
time I suppose we could also shine this guy's laser at a solar cell like the
article a few weeks back suggested.

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joelburget
Some great previous discussion on thorium based nuclear reactors:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2723675>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009869>

I think the first article was in reaction to the Fukushima disaster. It's hard
to imagine this technology will actually make it to cars, whether it's safe or
not, because of the r-word. Intriguing stuff, though.

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gus_massa
The links you give are about nuclear thorium reactors, which is a real working
technology.

The problem is that in this project, they are not using a thorium reactor. It
is not a nuclear fission reactor of any kind!

They heat thorium with a laser or they produce a laser with thorium, or
something like that, it changes from article to article. But the thorium
doesn’t participate in any nuclear reaction. The energy involved in any
nuclear reactions is so high that, with the current technology, it is
impossible to produce a nuclear reaction with a laser (and perhaps it will
never be possible).

Another important point is that they don’t have a working prototype, and the
explanations about how it works are very confusing.

Some previous submissions about the same project:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2877063> (14 comments) and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879219> (5 comments).

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derobert
It's quite possible to produce a nuclear reaction with lasers. You just need
some _very_ serious lasers, for example
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility>

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gus_massa
You are right! You are right!

But your link is about a _fusion_ nuclear reaction, that need a lot of heat to
happen. And thorium is used in _fission_ that are not temperature dependant.

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ars
This is so pointless. Use thorium for stationary power plants, you will have a
far far larger impact that way.

Save the hydrocarbons for mobile devices. You can even make hydrocarbon fuel
(SynGas) using the energy from a stationary power plant.

Putting the actual thorium reactor in a car is so ridiculous it's silly.

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dhbradshaw
Putting a miniature thorium reactor in a car could mean years of driving with
no need to refuel. It may be difficult to do well, but it is not a silly goal.

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ars
Lets get some clean grid power first, then we can worry about luxuries like
that.

