
The Nucleon, Ford's 1958 nuclear-powered concept car that never was - dgudkov
https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/04/10/remembering-the-nucleon-fords-1958-nuclear-powered-concept-car-that-never-was/
======
acidburnNSA
I'm sure this was always a bit tongue-in-cheek and/or just non-technical
salespeople drumming up some hype. Here we are talking about it many decades
later. The 1950s reactor designers certainly were not that stupid. In fact, a
1955 textbook on nuclear technology says this in its intro:

"The [statement] that the heat released by the complete fission of one pound
of nuclear fuel is equivalent to that obtainable by 1400 tons of coal (or
300,000 gallons of fuel oil), has led to some erroneous conclusions. The
fantastic possibility has been envisaged of including in an automobile enough
fissionable material, about the size of a pea, to last the life of the
vehicle. In order to realize why this is not within the bounds of reality, it
is necessary to understand something about the fission process."

Glasstone -- Principles of Nuclear Reactor Engineering (1955) [1]

[1]
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&view=1up&seq=18)

~~~
__s
On the other hand, Feynman On Patents is a good overview of why these ideas
would be thrown about:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk)
(& well, we did end up with nuclear submarines)

Asimov's fiction had quite a bit of arbitrary nuclear devices

~~~
pengaru
Feynman never fails to bring a smile to my face, one of few men I regret being
too young to meet before they died.

~~~
mhh__
I have suspicion Feynman is a "don't meet your heros" type person - There's
Feynman the very great scientist but then there's also Feynman the egotistical
misogynistic alleged wife beater.

~~~
pengaru
> there's also Feynman the egotistical misogynistic alleged wife beater

I find it rather unlikely he was a wife beater considering what I've read
about the relationship with his ill wife. It seems far more likely this is
gossip spread by folks on a mission to slander great men of the past. If you
can't provide any actual evidence backing that claim, you should really
refrain from spreading such things IMHO.

~~~
kick
_Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in
bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his first year
on sabbatical in Brazil.[123][108] He had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell
from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had
studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to
Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was in Brazil, she taught classes
on the history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. He
proposed to her by mail from Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho,
on June 28, 1952, shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she
was frightened by his violent temper. Their politics were different; although
he registered and voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and her
opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ( "Where there's smoke
there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory
decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme
cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.[124][125]_

Obviously, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but it's not particularly
contested that Feynman was a wife-beater to Wife No. 2.

~~~
kryptiskt
I read Gleick's biography, and it says:

"The divorce had a fleeting life in the national press--not because Feynman
was a celebrity, but because columnists and cartoonists could not overlook the
nature of the extreme cruelty: Prof Plays Bongos, Does Calculus In Bed. "The
drums made terrific noise," his wife had testified. And: "He begins working on
calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens . . . He did calculus
while driving his car, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed
at night.""

As far as I can tell they went through that route so they could get a quick
divorce and not have to go through a cooling-off period.

------
rmason
I'm pretty sure I've told this story on HN before. When I was a wee lad we
took a school trip to the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant South of Detroit.

We saw a movie where they talked about the future which showcased nuclear
powered cars. They may have even used the Ford design but I no longer
remember. After the tour they had a Q&A so I asked about the validity of
nuclear powered automobiles. What happens in the event of a bad crash? Do we
just not use that particular intersection for the next hundred years?

The guy absolutely mocked me and was very derisive. On the ride home I will
never forget the teacher told me that I'd asked a legitimate question and the
guy was totally out of line. I think at the time I was maybe 8-9 years old.

~~~
jacquesm
I can't stand it when adults do that.

~~~
Razengan
Maturity doesn't come with age, and never for some people.

------
baybal2
I do remember something similar, but back from the union.

A Teknika Molodezi (a popular science journal from USSR) from around late
fifties told that... "by the year 2000, every soviet housewife would have a
nuclear reactor"

Remember, that was in times when electricity linkup for a household was still
a relative luxury. Even in Moscow back then, it was very normal to live in an
apartment with very poor, irregular electricity supply, or none at all.

I do vividly remember pictures of possible applications, like powering a
fridge, providing heat, hot water, or steam for house cleaning... or cooking.

Only at the very end, there was a bit of scepticism "it now appears that
advances in metallurgy open a clear way to making a reactor as small as a
stove, but material science has not yet found a way to contain radiation that
is not as bulky, heavy and expensive as lead or uranium"

~~~
tomr_stargazer
The Teknika Molodezi prediction came true! Not a single Soviet housewife in
2000 lacked a nuclear reactor. ;)

~~~
cwillu
Not a single one had one either :p

~~~
gambiting
I think the joke is that there were no Soviet housewives in the year 2000
anymore, so the statement "all Soviet housewives now have a nuclear reactor in
their home" is correct.

~~~
ygra
As is the statement "all Soviet housewives do not have a nuclear reactor in
their home", which I think is what your parent poster said.

------
jshevek
From the title, I thought this was in reference to a car powered by a
radioisotope thermoelectric generator, like the kind used in spacecraft and
some lighthouses. But the article mentions being powered by uranium pellets,
and wikipedia confirms " _The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium
fission similar to those found in nuclear submarines_ "

They actually envisioned having a true reactor under the hood.

~~~
m4rtink
RTG powered car could work, but the electrical power available would be rather
small, they have horrendous power to weight ratio. Steam turbine powered by
heat from the radio isotopes would work better, but would still be very very
expensive due to cost of the isotopes.

An actual fission reactor generating steam would indeed be the best most
likely, when you ignore small stuff like emergency cooling, all the control
mechanisms and shielding. ;-)

------
linsomniac
Slightly related: I wasn't aware of this until last year, but at one point
nuclear-powered jet aircraft were a thing. Think cold-war jets, always ready
to counter if the other side strikes, that could stay aloft for a month or
more.

The issue is that weight is the enemy of flight, and nuclear shielding is
heavy. The US was working on distributed shielding: instead of being
centralized around the reactor, messing with the CG, it was spread out.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-
powered_aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft)

~~~
acidburnNSA
Ah, my favorite topic. There was a $1B (1950s dollars) program in the 1950s to
make these. It led to vast nuclear development. Some good reading and pictures
on it are in this huge report [1]. I particularly like this image:
[https://whatisnuclear.com/img/nuclear_rocket.jpg](https://whatisnuclear.com/img/nuclear_rocket.jpg)

Another fun fact, if you've heard of molten salt reactors (MSR) or the
associated thorium fuel cycle, you should know that almost all of the tech
development related to those projects came from the program to develop
nuclear-powered aircraft. The first MSR was called the Aircraft Reactor
Experiment (ARE) [2]. The second one, the famed MSRE, was built in the
building that had been entirely funded and built for the air force project,
using mostly parts and certainly the expertise built by it.

[1] [https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1048124-comprehensive-
technical-...](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1048124-comprehensive-technical-
report-general-electric-direct-air-cycle-aircraft-nuclear-propulsion-program-
program-summary-references)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Reactor_Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Reactor_Experiment)

~~~
stickfigure
You can visit the two test reactors/engines, sitting in a parking lot in Arco,
ID. Here's some pics I took about a decade ago:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763287997/in/album-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763287997/in/album-72157621750944722/)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763298693/in/album-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763298693/in/album-72157621750944722/)

The lead-lined railroad locomotive was pretty cool too:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763363831/in/album-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lhoriman/3763363831/in/album-72157621750944722/)

(there's a few more if you click through to the album)

~~~
acidburnNSA
Indeed! Those HTREs in the lot were prototypes for this particular engine. The
parking lot is for the Experimental Breeder Reactor I, the first reactor in
the world to make electricity. It was cooled with sodium-potassium eutectic
liquid metal. Really amazing museum now.

------
ficklepickle
Am I the only one surprised that this site is pushing some "tech festival"
conference so hard?

Apparently they know for sure that 20 000 will be able to mingle in Amsterdam
on Oct. 1.

------
cbanek
Anyone else reminded of the DeLorean from Back to the Future? It's got that
circle kind of thing in the back where the fuel goes? Same for the Mr. Fusion!

And just a few years after the famous Hill Valley lightning storm in 1955!

Maybe it's just that it's the only nuclear powered car I can think of. Oh
wait, that sucker's electrical. It just needs the nuclear reaction to generate
the 1.21 gigawatts for the flux capacitor!

~~~
acidburnNSA
Ha. Later in my nuclear career, I realized the genius of Doc's claim:

"Does it run like on regular unleaded gasoline?"

"Unfortunately, no. It requires something with a little more kick: Plutonium!"

"Ah, Plutonium. Wait a minute, are you telling me that this sucker is
nuclear?"

"Hey hey hey! Keep rolling! keep rolling there! no no no no! This sucker's
electrical! But I needed a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of
electricity I need"

I should try that in public. No, those aren't nuclear plants over there.
They're electrical! They just use nuclear reactions to generate the
electricity you need.

~~~
mixmastamyk
"I'm sure in 1985 Plutonium is available at every corner drugstore!"

------
LeoPanthera
It's amazing that this actually used (or was supposed to) a real fission
reactor.

I've always thought that the possibilities of radioisotope thermoelectric
generators were under-utilised. They would be amazingly practical for off-grid
living. Surely it must be possible to make a relatively safe one by packing it
inside a solid metal case and then burying it in the ground outside your home.

I wonder how far an EV could travel with an RTG in the trunk.

~~~
p1mrx
The Curiosity rover's RTG produces 125W, which could recharge a typical 60 kWh
EV in about 20 days:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
mission_radioisotope_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
mission_radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

~~~
teraflop
Curiosity's RTG also cost about $100 million to manufacture, of which $8.5
million was the cost of the plutonium itself.

[https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1364515](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1364515)

~~~
ampdepolymerase
Where did the rest of the 100million go?

~~~
mixmastamyk
R&D, salaries, benefits, government pork.

------
dead_mall
I'd imagine that if you got into a car accident in a nuclear-powered car, it
would blow up like a mini-nuke just like in Fallout

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The design of a nuclear bomb is necessarily very different from the design of
a nuclear reactor. You could have a reactor that blows itself up from internal
pressure (like Chernobyl did) but one not with any sort of nuclear (or even
conventional explosive of the same size or weight) force.

~~~
mhh__
There is a paper somewhere that actually suggests that Chernobyl might have
contained a (small) nuclear detonation at the beginning. Not being a nuclear
physicist I can't really critique it.

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269)
(Found it)

~~~
08-15
Can you explain what that's supposed to mean?

An intentional nuclear explosion is air exploding because it's heated by a
nuclear reaction. Chernobyl was water exploding because it was heated by a
nuclear reaction. It's the same thing, but it's also a steam explosion. Is
that paper saying "Chernobyl was not an ordinary boiler failure"? Of course it
wasn't.

~~~
mhh__
As in, the conditions in a few of the fuel channels were sufficiently extreme
as to cause an actual critical explosion (is the hypothesis)

~~~
08-15
Yeah, and that phrase has no meaning. Especially "critical explosion" is
nonsense, because "critical" in the context of a nuclear chain reaction means
"steady state".

What happened, as commonly understood, is that the reactor was in a state
where it had a positive temperature coefficient. The insertion of the
graphite-tipped control rods added reactivity, it became super-critical, and
thanks to feedback, the power spiked to an order of magnitude more than the
design power. All that heat flashed the water in the pressure channels to
steam, which blew the top off the reactor. A steam explosion caused by heat
from a nuclear reaction.

Now what the hell is a "critical explosion", what is "a nuclear jet", and how
is a "nuclear explosion" not the sudden expansion of water or air?

~~~
mhh__
As in nuclear bomb goes bang.

I don't know much about nuclear physics (particle yes, nuclear engineering
no).

~~~
08-15
See, that's exactly the problem. They tack on "nuclear" and "critical" to
empty phrases so they sound scary to people who know nothing about nuclear
fission. Thanks for confirming.

------
HugoDaniel
Looks like the cars in the game Fallout

------
spsrich2
Just imagine if this had caught on. You'd pop down to Kwik-fit to get your
control rods looked at.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I genuinely can't. We are ridiculously lucky that all we have to worry about
in that range is limited blast and relatively easy to put out fire. The old
country has a high amount of natural gas powered cars. Since they require user
to be a little more careful during pumping, gas station attendant was mandated
to it for you.

------
dang
Related from 2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4745123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4745123)

------
dekhn
I remember my teacher in high school saying GM or Ford developed a turbine-
based car that had the standard list of amazing features and never needed
repairs, but it was quashed by the mechanics union (or some other similar
conspiracy theory).

Huh, I guess it was this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car)

~~~
trhway
it is strange though that turbine based hybrid cars (in series or range
extender configuration) haven't emerged in the recent years. It would be best
of the 2 worlds - a small lightweight turbine as a generator would work in the
most optimal mode, and the torgue/etc. characteristics of the car would be
that of the electric motor.

Wrt. nuclear - while nuclear on Earth is pretty much done away (at least for
fission, for fusion - well, once somebody develops a laser pulse efficiently
fusing proton+boron it probably can have a chance), the space is the true
nuclear domain. In particular i think that launch window and flight time
limits of flying to Mars would naturally lead to nuclear powered LEO-to-Mars
Starships.

~~~
jandrese
None of the car manufacturers have experience with turbine manufacture (except
I guess Rolls Royce, and they don't build Hybrids).

The Hybrid system was already a pretty big ask for the car companies and
developing a novel compact hardy turbine at the same time was just too much.
Plus hybrids are seen as more of a stepping stone to pure electric vehicles so
you might put a ton of time and energy into developing it only to have the
entire concept become obsolete in only a few years.

Don't be too sad though, turbine technology does live on, the M1A1 and M1A2
Abrams main battle tank. It's the reason for the incredible land speed but
also ridiculous fuel consumption and enormous IR signature.

------
RickJWagner
A nuclear-powered car from the makers of the Pinto?

What could possibly go wrong?

