Is a thorium powered car in our future? | Hacker News Reader

Is a thorium powered car in our future?

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12 pointsrmason8 comments

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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