Our Nuclear Alternate Future? - YouTube

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In the 1950s, as the Cold War was heating up and children were being urged to “duck

and cover” from nuclear weapons, car companies seriously proposed powering their cars using

lead-lined nuclear reactors.

It seems like madness today, but while the world saw the threat of nuclear war, they

also saw the seemingly limitless potential from nuclear power.

Just how were these vehicles supposed to work and how far did they get to reality?

This is the Nuclear-powered car story.

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The atomic bomb raised the spectre of a new devastating kind of war, but also the hope

of almost limitless, cheap power.

With the cold war gathering apace, in 1955 the US launched its first submarine with a

nuclear propulsion plant – the USS Nautilus.

It was launched by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower with the traditional bottle of champagne,

and soon she began sea trials.

That is the submarine, not Mamie Eisenhower!

Nuclear power was perfect for submarines.

Internal combustion engines were loud which meant they could be more easily be detected

with sonar, and they gave off fumes which limited their use underwater.

Electric propulsion using batteries allowed for limited underwater operations before having

to be recharged, whereas nuclear powered submarines could stay silently underwater for months.

The nuclear reactors can create power, potable water, air and electricity.

As one ex-sailor put it - it could last until the coffee ran out!

So, by the mid to late 50s the public was captivated by the potential for almost limitless

power; we’d entered the “atomic age”!

The public was promised that nuclear power stations would produce electricity that would

be “too cheap to meter”.

Small nuclear reactors would soon be available that could be put to a myriad of practical uses.

The USSR started looking at nuclear powered trains, but the USA was in love with the automobile,

so thoughts turned to how cars could use small nuclear reactors, helped of course with grants

from the US Government to stimulate growth.

Concept cars allow car makers to show its forward thinking, and to fire the public’s imagination.

Ford showed off its “Nucleon” concept in 1958.

The occupants sat up front, with the nuclear reactor at the back, not so much to minimise

the radiation exposure although there would be lead shielding, more to distribute the

weight of the incredibly heavy reactor.

Like with nuclear power stations, the reactor would be used to superheat water, which would

then turn turbines – one to drive the wheels and one to power ancillary equipment.

The water would then condense starting the cycle all over again.

This, in effect, made the Nucleon a steam car, returning to 19th century technology

with a 20th century twist.

Each reactor would be good for 5,000 miles (8,000 km) before it needed to be swapped

out at the atomic equivalent of a petrol station.

Want more performance?

Just plump for the sporty reactor next time you swap it out!

The Nucleon’s designer was Jim Powers.

He’d make another pie in the sky design – quite literally – a flying car called

the Volante.

His most practical automotive creation was the 1961 Ford Thunderbird, but the cold Michigan

winters finally got the better of him and he moved to California to start his own design company.

Also jumping on the nuclear bandwagon, presumably with the same Government funding was Studebaker

& Packard with their Astral prototype also in 1958.

It seems more removed from reality than the Nucleon, using a “protective curtain of

energy” to prevent accidents.

It balanced Segway-like on a single gyroscopic ball under the vehicle and could hover over water.

It was designed by Studebaker-Packard’s interior design chief, which shows it was

more an intention to show off what could be done with the interior and glass-reinforced

plastic than as a serious vehicle.

Despite this, the designers claimed it could use a nuclear or ionic engine – whatever

that might be – in the dim and distant future when they would be available.

Unfortunately, neither Studebaker or Packard would see that future, with the Packard name

disappearing just a year later, and Studebaker quitting automobile production in the 1960s.

Ford was still pushing nuclear powertrains into the early 1960s at the Century 21 Exposition

in Seattle with the “Seattle-ite XXI” – named after the new interest in space.

Under the new Space Needle almost 10M visitors wowed at this 6-wheel creation with a front

end that could be swapped out for economical or performance driving.

And, of course it included the option of a fuel cell or nuclear powertrain – just as

soon as the boffins invented them!

One element of the car that was visionary was the view screen that would show engine

information, road and weather conditions and a map along with estimated time of arrival.

The designer was Alex Tremulis.

He was no stranger to show cars, creating this view of what cars in the year 2000 would

look like just 4 years earlier, sadly without a nuclear powertrain.

If you’re at all into vintage space, he also designed the cancelled 1960s Dyna-Soar

military space plane that was a forerunner of the 1980s Space Shuttle.

But he also made more practical designs, like the 1978 Subaru BRAT.

All three prototypes clearly showed the sense of optimism in the rapid progress for nuclear

energy and other technologies of the time such as computers, glass and plastics technology.

But the excitement around nuclear powered cars disappeared almost as soon as it had appeared.

It soon became clear that nuclear power won’t be “too cheap to meter”, but was about

the same price as coal, oil or gas.

Those small submarine reactors were expensive, required constant maintenance and proved tricky

to miniaturise.

Over time people discovered that not just the nuclear waste, but ancillary waste like

protective clothing not only cost a lot to dispose of but hung around being all “radioactivy”

for a heck of a long time.

By the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor radiation leak in 1979, public opinion

on nuclear power had well and truly soured.

With radioactive material being transported by rail, the UK Central Electricity Generating

Board felt it needed to calm public nerves by staging a dramatic test in 1984 where a

nuclear flask was crashed to prove it wouldn’t leak.

Thankfully the test was a success and went some way to dispelling the public’s worries,

but just two years later the radioactive disaster that was Chernobyl spewed radiation over the

surrounding area – turning it uninhabitable, and creating a radioactive dust cloud that

swept over Europe.

In the process they achieved what alchemists had been trying for centuries to achieve – turning

parts of the lead-lined roof into gold.

Lovely, highly radioactive gold…

So, by the 1980s it was laughable that a nuclear reactor could be installed in fast moving

vehicles that regularly crashed into one other.

We were having enough problems getting stationary nuclear reactors to be safe!

But this didn’t stop others from dreaming about nuclear-powered cars.

In 2009 Cadillac introduced its vision of what a 100-year maintenance free car would look like.

Instead of using uranium, it would use thorium to power a laser that would again create steam,

this time to generate electricity that would power the car.

But despite promises that nuclear powered devices could become small enough to fit into

vehicles, nothing practical has ever been demonstrated.

The latest thorium reactor designs, although being touted as safer than previous uranium

designs, still fit into several large buildings.

And no one has yet figured out how to safely store all that radioactive waste for 10,000

years or more.

As humans who are lucky to live 1/100th of that time, we simply aren’t willing to cost

in the impact to those future generations.

It’s always somebody else’s problem.

There is one atomic powered vehicle that’s been driving around since 2012.

Thankfully, it’s on another planet!

The Mars Curiosity rover uses a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that generates heat

from the decay of radioactive isotopes.

The heat is converted into electricity that powers both the instruments and the wheels.

Curiosity was joined by fellow atomic rover Perseverance in February 2021.

Back on Earth, if you want a nuclear-powered car, you can buy one today.

Sort of.

In France over 10% of all cars sold at the end of 2020 were electric, and over 70% of

the energy to power them comes from a nuclear power station, so in a sense they’re powered

by nuclear energy.

It’s just the reactor isn’t sitting behind the driver in a lead-lined box.

Nuclear-powered cars have always been a dream – either fuelled by Government funding that

spurred car companies to produce outlandish designs, or pie in the sky ideas trying to

show a bankrupt company is forward thinking.

But although you might scoff at those crazy impractical show cars, they plant a seed as

to what might be.

The 1962 Ford Seattle-ite promised something very similar to today’s trip computers that

appeared in the 1980s, and satellite navigation that appeared in the 1990s.

We wondered at the flat panel screens and tablets in Star Trek and realised we wanted

them, so LCD screens were invented and refined into today’s technology.

Nuclear-powered cars might have been a terrible idea, but we must continue to dream.