Much like “flying cars”, atomic powered cars were a campy futuristic meme of the 50’s, for example, there was the Ford Nucleon concept:
From Wikipedia: The Ford Nucleon was a scale model concept car developed by Ford Motor Company in 1958 as a design on how a nuclear-powered car might look. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine, rather, the vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle, based on the assumption that this would one day be possible based on shrinking sizes. The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium fission.
It looks a little bit like the Bat mobile from the rear:
Now it looks like we might actually see a real one, using Thorium rather than Uranium, which not only is safer to manage, you don’t have to worry about some terrorist car-jacking your ride for fissile materials.
Here’s the new concept. Thorium could be used in conjunction with a laser and mini turbines to easily produce enough electricity to power a vehicle. When thorium is heated, it generates further heat surges, allowing it to be coupled with mini turbines to produce steam that can then be used to generate electricity. It is said that 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent energy of 7,500 gallons of gasoline.
Here’s the headline from Ward’s Auto:
U.S. Researcher Preparing Prototype Cars Powered by Heavy-Metal Thorium
By Keith Nuthall
A U.S. company says it is getting closer to putting prototype electric cars on the road that will be powered by the heavy-metal thorium.
Thorium is a naturally occurring, slightly radioactive rare-earth element discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. It is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times more abundant than uranium.
…
The key to the system developed by inventor Charles Stevens, CEO and chairman of Connecticut-based Laser Power Systems, is that when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat.
Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser, Stevens tells Ward’s. These create steam from water within mini-turbines, generating electricity to drive a car.
A 250 MW (I think this is a typo, they probably mean KW – Anthony) unit weighing about 500 lbs. (227 kg) would be small and light enough to drop under the hood of a car, he says.
Jim Hedrick, a specialist on industrial minerals – and until last year the U.S. Geological Survey’s senior advisor on rare earths – tells Ward’s the idea is “both plausible and sensible.”
…
Stevens says his company should be able to place a prototype on the road within two years. The firm has 40 employees and operates out of an in-house research workshop.
 View Chart Larger |
Hedrick, the industrial minerals expert, says 7,500 gallons is “way more gasoline than an average person uses in a year. Switching to thorium-driven cars would make the U.S. energy self-sufficient, and carbon emissions would plummet.
“It would eliminate the major need for oil,” he says. “The main (remaining) demand would be for asphalt for roadways, natural gas, plastics and lubricants.”
Full story here.
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I want one. 8 grams of Thorium in a V shaped reactor block. The new atomic V-8. The only downside is that I won’t be able to overhaul the engine myself as I would imagine the Thorium would be in a sealed power module. I might add, that this endeavor sounds a little bit like a Tucker, long on promise, short on delivery.
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ADDENDUM:
I published this story late Friday night at 1AM and then went on a trip the next day, I was surprised to learn that people missed my cues and thought I took the Ward’s article seriously. I thought the headline and first sentence set the tone with “flying cars” and “campy”.
Few seemed to understand the Tucker comment at the end either:
“I might add, that this endeavor sounds a little bit like a Tucker, long on promise, short on delivery.”
The Tucker was a car sold on futuristic promises in the mind of a man that hadn’t actually designed or built the car. Preston Tucker floated the concept in Science Illustrated magazine in December 1946 followed by a full page advertisement in March 1947 in many national newspapers claiming “How 15 years of testing produced the car of the year”. He was immediately overwhelmed with pre-orders for a car that didn’t even exist on paper. Hence my comment: “I want one”.
Tucker then got a bunch of investors together to try to fill orders, and got some government help with loan of a WWII supply factory that had been idled after the war. The factory eventually produced 50 cars, but it was too late, as many had lost confidence and he was embroiled in an SEC investigation and court trial over investor funds.
The cars finally produced didn’t have many of the futuristic features that had been promised early on. Some were there, and Tucker was credited with inspiring improved auto safety as a result.
I thought my reference to a Tucker automobile was about as strong a label as anyone could make as the promises of this thorium car being hyped. The parallel seemed obvious.
I guess next time I’ll have to be more explicit. with a /sarc tag – Anthony
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This appears to be a more recent and well presented video on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR)–it looks like the Chinese are really going to try this. The first part of this video is a short summary of the main part:
Kirk Sorensen @ur momisugly MRU on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
94 likes, 0 dislikes 6,708 views (time 1:37:12)
Uploaded by gordonmcdowell on May 24, 2011
“When arriving in Calgary to present at TEDxYYC, Kirk Sorensen was immediately raced from his late arrival flight to MRU, where Brett McCollum had helped organize a lecture.
“Kirk gave a brief overview of Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) and specifically Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR). Half of the time was spent fielding questions from the Calgary students.”
Yes, very true; it is often the replicatable ‘anomolies’ (having properly done the lab work of course!) observed in the course of other work that these discoveries are made … sometimes it is good that experiments or a ‘circuit design’ does not work out quite as planned, as new (or forgotten!) facets of physics (or electronics for me which incl EM ‘fields and waves’ work) are seen and it reminds one (and all) that Mother Nature is still respecting her immutable laws …
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I believe the 250 MW refers to MW-hr.
Bedini* Motor enthusiast by any chance?
Sorry … just had to needle you …
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* Bedini is one of many ‘engineers’ who claim to have designed or co-designed machines that do not adhere to conservation of energy. Such inventions are generally considered perpetual motion machines, but in actuality the constructors have made gross errors in measurement and in their labwork, especially in the use of peak reading volt and current meters when they should be using at the very least RMS measurement capable meters if not other dynamic measurement apparatus e.g. digitizing oscilloscopes or NI DAQ cards … the result being meaningless, skewed data and bad maths …
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For the Thorium reactor don’t use a uranium seed, use a Farnsworth fusor producing high speed protons spalling neutrons off a liquid lead target.
Spector:
Kirk Sorensen is one of the best speakers on nuclear issues, bar none. One of the reasons why, is his knowledge of cross platform reactors. We can forgive him some glossing over, of problems and difficulties in the technology, because of his obvious enthusiasm. After all, this is why he became a advocate.
Liquid fuels can/have been problematic from the operating perspective due to large perturbations in neutron flux. It’s hard enough to control flux and flux shape when the fissioning fuel is static, much more so, at velocity. Even convection currents now have nuclear consequences. The bigger the reactor, the bigger the problem.
I see nothing that cannot be overcome by design/engineering and agree with his entire lecture.
I do not understand why Canada is not leading the charge. The CANDU is fully thorium capable (Kirk forgot about CANDU’s continuous online fueling capability, meaning they can reconfigure core while running). Canada also had experience with their AECL ‘s sodium Whiteshell reactor in Pinawa, Manitoba. They fell asleep at the wheel.
Thanks for the most excellent video. GK
Robin’s comment on the Batmobile comparison:
Holy actinides, Batman!
Big deal, my Delorean makes 1.21 gigawatts of power and can even run on lightning.
RE: G. Karst: (August 14, 2011 at 2:08 pm) RE: my post (August 14, 2011 at 7:05 am)
“I do not understand why Canada is not leading the charge.”
Most of this is new to me, however, I believe he says that the primary advantage of the CANDU process is the ability to use natural uranium without reprocessing, and that advantage does not apply with thorium.
I am impressed with the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) concept as the only credible solution I have yet seen for the ‘Peak Oil’ or more correctly the ‘Declining Oil’ problem, when and if it ever happens. They actually built a proof of concept unit at Oak Ridge. It sounds like these plants should be less costly to operate and they are inherently more safe. It is quite impressive to hear that the ‘waste’ thorium from one small rare earth element mine could provide all power needed by the whole world. Thus I would expect these reactors to be a potential source of low cost energy for all purposes.
From what I have seen, it appears that conversion to this form of energy production has been officially disallowed in this country only because it was incompatible with our pre-existing, first-proven-method nuclear technology. If they perform as advertised, I think the lower cost and enhanced safety of these LFTR reactors would render all earlier nuclear power reactors obsolete.
The atomic cars designs in the video game Fallout are a little more practical. They have dual axles to support the extra weight of radiation shielding.
Spector:
Yes, I agree, it is very exciting technology.
One of the reasons, I would like to see Canada switch (a reactor) to thorium, is it would demonstrate thorium use in a working LARGE reactor. This would quickly expose technical problems in large scale thorium use and we could quickly move along the learning curve, necessary for large scale refinement and deployment. Supply infrastructure would get a head start.
I am not convinced, thorium isotopic enrichment is necessarily an absolute requirement. The fact that those clever Canadians can shuffle fuel (robotic) from the outer channels (Kirk’s so called blanket) to the inner fuel channels, could mean on-line enrichment of thorium, in situ, by neutron activation/transmutation. After all, isn’t that the beauty of thorium fuel? Any reactivity deficiencies could probably be compensated by the addition of plutonium MUX fuel. Of course, I am just spitballing, and we cannot know until someone does the work. Hence my call to Canada to get off their technological asses and try something that may propel them into world leadership. GK
As expected on the Internet: the technology elicits 20 comments, the typo elicits 200. 🙂
I know this is a scam, but if I can get a 500 pound 300,000hp motor, I will use it for aviation to produce a hypersonic turbine engine (since we are in fantasy land already I’ll invent blades that don’t break or melt at those speeds) and launch satellites off the back of fast high altitude aircraft.
I would also use it to place a reactor in every neighborhood so we can all crank the AirCon units down to 50F if we want.
Back to reality, even at 300hp I can’t see the physics working and the problem of high energy particles flying around the vehicles would cause conniptions on the part of the general public even if the levels were shown to be insignificant. Mention the word radiation and the general public goes ballistic – even when one mentions the E-M radiation in a microwave to some people.
Sorry:
MUX should read MOX (Mixed OXide).
Thunk-you very much. GK
It almost sounds like Kirk Sorensen believes that he could make artificial gasoline from the CO2 in the air using energy from his LIFTR reactors at less overall cost than it could be made from material extracted from the Canadian tar sands. That was from “Oh by the way,” comments.
I note that he has just started his own company, Flibe Energy, to make commercial LIFTR reactors in this country. If he is not shot down by the current market crunch or insurmountable technical difficulties, this could be a Microsoft garage sale startup moment.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/09/further-on-thorium/#comment-720412
Please note that the Flibe LFTR thorium reactors are intended as a better (lower cost, more safe, and less waste) *nuclear power station* reactor technology as opposed to the laser driven automotive thorium reactors proposed by Charles Stevens of the Connecticut-based Laser Power Systems Inc. of the main article.
I looked up the company (http://www.laserturbinepower.com) – they appear to be talking about 250 horsepower, not 250 megawatts. That’s a wee bit more reasonable.
They’ve also had no updates on the web site in two years. And appear to be claiming a ‘thorium laser’ releasing energy from a thorium nuclear reaction, with the only input being heat. As far as I know, the only way to make thorium release energy is to put in a bunch of neutrons from either a seriously radioactive material (uranium, plutonium) or a quite large particle accelerator (which the Indian government is working on).
I don’t think this ‘thorium powered car’ is a serious proposal… it strikes me as more of snake-oil.
Seems there are many here who don’t pay very close attention. The 250MW is obviously a typo –
250KW is just about all the power a car will ever need. The comments by Stevens and some skeptics lead me to believe that Stevens is much better informed than his skeptics are. They didn’t even know, for example, that his power plant cannot produce U-233. And they often refer to his machine as if it were a miniature nuclear reactor, which it clearly isn’t. So my money is on him
and I’ll wait the relatively short 18 months or so and see what happens. Since the battery pack for the upcoming Tesla Model S with 300 miles of range costs roughly $40,000 and weighs over 1000 pounds, I’d say that Stevens has plenty of room in terms of economics and size restraints. If
his machine costs less than $20,000, he wins it all.
An interesting link here: http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/thorium-scam-widely-linked-hits.html
Same complaints I saw – energy densities as per thorium fission:
“…when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat.
Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser, Stevens tells Ward’s. These create steam from water within mini-turbines, generating electricity to drive a car.”
Hot metals expand. Thermal energy is not sufficient to split thorium – that requires neutron bombardment. Thorium-based laser? Thorium is opaque, and won’t be lasing anytime soon as a metal.
Steven’s previous venture, Helyxzion, LLC (http://www.helyxzion.com/) was in DNA/genetics. Hmmm… snake oil…
Why getting upset about such nonsense, and not simply enjoy it? In fact, Anthony, why don’t you create something like a “Friday-Funny” drop-down page next to your Refernce Pages, and have articles like this and the Italian cold fusion, and Josh’s cartoons in it? And add algae for green energy too, and, and,… I am sure there will be more.
I expect many readers here are in the same position as the noble lady in the UK House of Lords who had to interrupt the speaker and ask what thorium was. It is a mildly radioactive heavy metal with a half-life on the order of 14 billion years.
The complicated reaction for power generation begins when a natural Thorium-232 absorbs a neutron and becomes the more unstable thorium-233, which quickly changes to Protactinium-233 and that over a period of about a month changes to Uranium-233. Now if the Uranium-233 nucleus absorbs a neutron, it will break apart (fission) releasing *energy* and two free neutrons, one to crack open another Uranium-233 nucleus and also one to start another Thorium-232 nucleus marching off to its final destiny.
Thorium is atomic number of Thorium is 90, that of Protactinium is 91, and that of Uranium is 92; so we can see that the long part of this cycle is the progressive transformation of neutrons into protons as the total number of nucleons remains the same–233. It certainly looks like we do not want the Protactinium nuclei to absorb any more neutrons as a matter of process efficiency. For those who have not heard of protactinium before, suffice it to say that it is an unstable, short-lived element, not naturally occurring.
I understand the above theory has survived an extended proof of concept test at Oak Ridge, but that project was discontinued, before an actual prototype was ever built.
Other than seeing that there is a paywall paper about cavitation induced fission of thorium-228, I have not yet found any real evidence that there is a valid scientific theory behind the new method proposed by Stevens for automotive use.
http://www.natscience.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/chem/10870/Ultrasonic-piezonuclear-reaction-of-thorium-solutions
On the natscience link that I posted above, be sure to check out the included comment section.
This is a link to what appears to be a much more credible Thorium Energy project:
EnergyFromThorium [Blog]
“Devoted to the discussion of thorium as a future energy resource, and the machine to extract that energy–the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor.”
http://energyfromthorium.com/
Spector:
Great links! Whenever I think about thorium and LFTRs, it stirs up undesired urges to come out of retirement (there are so many possibilities, obstacles, directions of problem solutions etc.) . Please stop. I want to quietly enjoy my remaining years. 🙁 GK