Thorium Powered Cars: A Million Miles Without Refuelling

From Laser's web site:

The idea needs refining, but is so promising that at least one private firm is getting involved. The Norwegian firm Aker Solutions bought Rubbia's patent for this thorium fuel cycle, and is working on his design for a proton accelerator.

Who knows, this may be it!

Thanks for the interesting article SolarEagle. This looks like something worth following the development cycle.

As someone acually on the side of nuclear power generation and Thorium there are problems that would need to be overcome.

Heres how I see it, no matter how good it is it just plain ain't going to happen (in personal vehicles) due to the heavy and stringent automotive industry regulations and public opinion, even if you could create a sealed fuel-cell/power plant module small enough to power a vehicle. Even if it did it would not be economical so people wouldn't buy them (or even be able to afford them).

Additionally you still need a lot of energy reserve (eg- batteries) because a single compact power plant is not going to be able to provide the high continuous and even higher peak energy requirements a vehicle needs (read extra expense, size, complexity, reliability issues, etc).

Straight from the linked article

Laser Power Systems uses a high intensity laser to heat thorium, exciting the molecules to a point where the element gives off considerable heat. This is then used to create steam from water, which drives mini-turbines. The electricity generated would be used to power the car. In effect, your car would have its own power station under the hood, and Stevens thinks it could weigh as little as 500 lbs.

Heat to steam to electricity turbines to batterys and electric motors. Additional problem - how much extra weight is the water (which is physically storage space intensive and heavy), and how much range will you get until you have to refill the water! These are all questions that raise serious issues with small-scale projects that just cannot easily be minaturised or at all for something as small as a personal vehicle.

It is far better (and more realistic) to concentrate on continued development and expansion of the Thorium-fueled nuclear power plants which can then be used to power electric vehicles (vehicle fuel use after all only counts for a fraction of the worlds energy usage and pollution) rather than trying to put mini power plants and additional steam power plants into electric vehicles.

Besides, you just KNOW the first Thorium-fueled vehicle is going to be named "THOR" (with the associated cheesy mass-marketing campaign)

<cringe>

It would be like a Chevy Volt, where the generator would recharge the batteries as needed, only you would never need gas, never have to plug in, and would have unlimited range...The water, or heat exchange fluid could be closed system, never needing to be ' topped off '...The first flat screen tv's were really expensive too...

There is a big difference between a flat screen TV (which is effectively electronics which can be miniaturised) and a nuclear power plant.

All you are doing is adding a power source and over 200kg of additional bulky, unproven equipment to an existing electric vehicle (which already has a huge amount of weight of additional expense and weight in the battery pack). Who wants a pickup with the flat bed full of powerplant and the floor full of batteries!

I just don't see any real world practicality in something like this, even though it may be a good idea.

I am reminded of air-powered cars with onboard petrol-powered compressors, the idea of onboard fuel generation is appealing but it isn't the only consideration that makes a design practical in the real world.

I don't see how this could ever be practical compared to switching to Thorium nuclear power plants for grid (and electric vehicle) generation. There is no need to have the Thorium reactor in the vehicle, and I remain unconvinced the system could ever be commercially economical and miniaturised to the state that it could fit into a small vehicle. Electronics can be miniaturised, but somethings just cannot!

_{Jack - A supporter of Thorium nuclear power}

"I don't see how this could ever be practical compared to switching to Thorium nuclear power plants for grid (and electric vehicle) generation. "

I'm in favor of both...

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/07/bill-gates-to-build-next-gen-nuclear-reactors-with-china/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

"There is a big difference between a flat screen TV (which is effectively electronics which can be miniaturised) and a nuclear power plant."

No, as it turns out, anything can be miniaturized...

http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/nuclear/4273386

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/29/miniature-nuclear-reactor-to-power-mars-and-moon-colonies/

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0330/Nuclear-power-Obama-team-touts-mini-nukes-to-fight-global-warming

Yes I am aware of the mini reactor designs (and have been following them for a number of years) and also think they may be commercially viable (even down to personal home-sized versions), just not in a format small enough to fit into a vehicle without losing a couple of seats, the whole boot or both in the process.

Looks like it might fit quite nicely to me...

http://www.txchnologist.com/2011/the-thorium-laser-the-completely-plausible-idea-for-nuclear-cars
"Stevens' innovation is to use thorium to make a laser, not a nuclear power reactor."
"A 250-kilowatt unit (equivalent to about 335 horsepower) weighing about 500 pounds would be small and light enough to put under the hood of a car, Stevens claims. And because a gram of thorium has the equivalent potential energy content of 7,500 gallons of gasoline, LPS calculates that using just 8 grams of thorium in the unit could power an average car for 5,000 hours, or about 300,000 miles of normal driving."

Key words are 'concept car', 'R&D firm' and 'no date set for prototype'.

I am eagerly awaiting an actual test vehicle and results to nail down solutions to some of the major engineering problems I see as being needed to overcome (before a viable prototype vehicle can be shown to be a practical product).

I agree that the idea of putting one of these into a car maybe a long way off but the concept is sound. Just think in a larger scale. Put one of these in a train or big rig and think of the saving in transport costs not to mention cargo ships.

So where does a person get more detailed blueprints and schematics of how a mini thorium reactor would be designed and built, at least in theory?

Vehicles may be too small but personal home based power plant systems may not be such a bad investment if the parts and service costs balance out over a practical time line!

The logic I am considering is that in many geographical locations such as where I live heating is the primary fuel energy consumer in any given year. Running a thorium reactor as a home heating system with electrical power via solid state Seebeck conversion directly into batteries or grid tie inverter systems may prove to be a far more efficient use of the initial thermal energy given off and justify the up front purchasing costs as well.

It simply comes down to placing the bulk of the energy output in a form that is most easily wasted with the least perceived cost. I can always find ways to use up extra heat. Heat the shop, heat the garage, heat any other outbuildings, put in a green house for the wife, etc etc. The point being that if generating electricity works out to only be 10% - 20% efficient at best I can still find a load of things to do with the other 80& - 90% if it is just raw heat in one form or another.

"It simply comes down to placing the bulk of the energy output in a form that is most easily wasted with the least perceived cost. I can always find ways to use up extra heat. Heat the shop, heat the garage, heat any other outbuildings, put in a green house for the wife, etc etc. The point being that if generating electricity works out to only be 10% - 20% efficient at best I can still find a load of things to do with the other 80& - 90% if it is just raw heat in one form or another."

Yes, this is true, even cooling can be had via absorption cycle...

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/07/mini-thorium-grand-plan.html

http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.php

"Stevens says that developing a compact turbine and generator set is proving to be more difficult than making the thorium laser itself. "We can build the laser, but the biggest problem has turned out to be integrating it efficiently with the turbine and generator," he notes. LPS' thorium laser itself is simply an adaptation of the MaxFeLaser, a design Stevens built in1985.

Stevens said his company has fabricated a modified Tesla turbine (no relation to the car company) to convert steam pressure into rotary motion. Unlike more familiar turbine types, a Tesla turbine is a bladeless centripetal-flow unit with a set of smooth disks that are placed in motion by directing moving gas, via nozzles, at the edges of the disks. The viscous (boundary-layer) drag on the disk surfaces that is produced by the gas flow causes them to rotate.

Further, after having found no off-the-shelf high-speed generators that fit his special application, his team has had to design a custom unit to efficiently produce electricity for his one-of-a-kind power plant."

http://laserturbinepower.blogspot.com/2010/01/maxfelaser-uses-thorium.html

I read the article and am very suspicious of it. Forgive my cynicism, but when I read about CEO's spouting science, I see a giant red flag.

"Laser Power Systems in Connecticut is exploring a safer alternative. Thorium is a lightly radioactive heavy metal thought (known!) to be fairly common throughout the world. As with other nuclear fuels it's incredibly dense (hyperbole!) and as such stores incredibly high potential energy (more hyperbole!). Charles Stevens, CEO and chairman at Laser Power Systems, says that a single gram of thorium equals the energy of 7,500 gallons of gasoline."

On what basis does 1g of thorium "equal" 7,500 gallons of gasoline? I assume that the energy evolved is the heat from the disintegration of thorium atoms into radium, with emission of alpha radiation. Given time I might be able to calculate the heat evolved, but my gut feeling is that this is highly optimistic.

The "CEO" refers to heating the molecules. What molecules? Thorium is an element. More info needed.

CR4'ers might like to research NASA's SNAP radio-isotope generators on the internet, before making any snap (ouch) judgements. Here is one extract:

"SNAP-7 was designed for marine applications such as lighthouses and buoys; at least six units were deployed in the mid-1960s, with names SNAP-7A through SNAP-7F. SNAP-7D produced thirty watts of electric power using 225 kilocuries (about four kilograms) of strontium 90 as SrTiO₃. These were very large units, weighing between 1870 and 6000 pounds."

Note: 4 kG of Sr-90 (highly radioactive - short half-life) to get 30 watts and very heavy system overall.

Watch out for Laser Systems asking for investors. Don't!

Well @ 11.724 g/cm^3 it's denser than lead...

They might be talking about thorium oxide or dioxide...

See post above, not nuclear battery...

I assume the're talking about BTU equivalency...

Did a quick calc on that and it does seem optimistic.

7500 gal of gas at SG 0.8 and calorific value 44 MJ/kg contains ~ 10¹² joule. Dividing by c² gives loss of mass 0.011 gm = 1.1% of the original thorium. Could be right, but compared with 0.7% mass change when nuclei of hydrogen isotopes fuse the make helium nuclei (alpha particles) it seems high.

Also original thread says it only produces alpha particles which cannot penetrate the skin - in that case why does it need 3" stainless steel to shield it?

Complete Bull.. and the fact that it uses a "tesla" turbine is a dead give away.

Heating a radioactive material doesn't make it give off heat, it needs to be bombarded with slow neutrons

"A Tesla turbine is a quite unique technology. It was invented and patented by Nikola Tesla on the 21st October 1909 at the Untied States Patent Office from experiments done in England. The patent 1061206 was granted on the 6th May 1913. Although, it is thought that a Tesla first showed a 200 hp 16,000 RPM version on the 10th of July 1906 (on Tesla's 50th birthday)."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7nFga2BpGU

You can buy one now on amazon ...with 150w generator....about $400

http://www.amazon.com/Gyroscope-com-Tesla-Turbine/dp/B004U3SVOA

Hi SolarEagle, I know what a Tesla turbine is and know that they aren't widely used due to a number of real world limitations.

My point is that the deluded and scammers alike throw such words in to make things sound impressive. So anytime I hear "Tesla", "Neodydium", "Zero point" etc I start to worry.

But my main point stands - the rate of radioactive decay isn't affected by heat.

ps I don't think my post was off topic.

interesting, but maybe one way to analyze the practicality would be to eliminate the thorium heat generator, and try to estimate what the balance of the system would look like. You need a boiler tank, sized to produce enough steam to spin a 300 HP turbine/generator. This unit alone has much more mass than a typical automobile. You then need the thorium unit, (a nuclear reactor), a power supply for the reactor (the laser), water tank, etc. It's very promising, but not economically feasible, IMHO, because of the mass and volume. Maybe for a train engine?

Good point.

The talking point of the article is to get people to imagine their own car using nuclear fuel, but then again we were all told that our cars should have been able to fly by 1990.

The obvious step before sticking nuclear reactors in every garage would be commercial and military applications. Not just trains, but large tankers, barges, aircraft, construction equipment...

I personally feel better about generating nuclear power anywhere that the reactor is less likely to get smashed into by a 17 year old texting to his girlfriend while searching for just the right track on his iPhone.

but then again we were all told that our cars should have been able to fly by 1990.

Technically they could at this point, but due to land and air transport regulations (safety, etc) products could not be brought to the mass market (thankfully when you think about it). Same with the moon base (although this was more due to cost).

Yeah, and I'm sure it will be no less of a challenge to overcome the regs on portable nuclear power generators.

Quite a bit more of a challenge because although

a) Fixed site Nuclear power is proven and in use at the moment (and standards and regulations have been written and are in place)

b) Fixed site Nuclear power plants are an already accepted (for the most part) method

c) Fixed site Thorium nuclear power plants are in use at the moment with more on the way

That does not necessary translate to acceptance for the portable Thorium reactor for personal vehicle use because

a) Additional regulatory authorities and standards would be needed to be developed and approved for a vehicle-mounted nuclear reactor (and this could take many years to develop and approve even if a product was ready right now for sale).

b) Fixed site nuclear power plants are easy to control and monitor by regulatory authorities and the government, vehicle-mounted nuclear power plants less so.

c) etc

In the end, quite a challenge even if the product is physically practical and economically viable.

Being told that your car should be able to fly is not a technical statement. And if you believed it, well I won't go there. The reason they don't has nothing whatsoever to do with land or air regulations. It is neither practical or economically feasible, and this discussion of a thorium reactor in a car is pure hogwash. It will never be practical to put a nuclear reactor in a car to take your daughter to school.

'Technically' indicates feasibly possible and 'brought to market' covers product viability (including pricing). They in no way guarantee practicality, just that the technology was (mostly) there and there were many different working prototypes (some vehicles others just modified aircraft) from many different companies and individuals proving it was possible.

It just wasn't a viable product at the time.

Thorium will be good for the coming fourth or fifth nuclear power reactor generation.

See www-aecl.ca about the benefits of their power reactor and the last three ICENES conferences

for proposed modifications.

India and China have bought these and are pushing the further development.

This design is heavy water moderated and light water cooled - resulting in some remarkable benefits.

Among the most useful will be the ability to burn highly radioactive transuranium elements thus reducing needed storage time by a factor of 100!

India has vast amounts of Thorium in its coastal sands, other states too in other deposits.

The radioactivity there is higher than in most parts of the evacuated Fukushima area!

This reactor will have the size of quite ordinary other reactors!

Heat transfer is very limited in efficiency so this determines size if power is given.

Alternative concepts (MHD) have not proven viable.

So why a car???

RHABE

Hi to all,

First, apologies if this has been already stated ... I haven't plowed through all the responses yet.

I did some searching for the company Laser Powered Systems, and subsequent group called "Galactic Massive". Sorry to say, from their website, it appears more a group seeking investors than anything else. Nuclear power is well outside my sphere of understanding, so I was hoping for at least a little more information, but found nothing.

Anyone can write a press release, and if the intent is to gain investors by way of publicity only, I can't help but wonder if there is any real science behind this claim.

Does anyone have any real info on this / these companies? At this point I'm putting this in my 'too good to be true' stack.

It also makes me wonder (and I know this has already been stated), why consider an automobile to exploit this 'technology'? If a simple, safe system can be made to generate electricity, it seems it would make much more sense to package them for supliments to other power-generating systems to add to the 'grid'. For me, the 'dream' is supplying my own home and shop, and in the process sell some back to the grid.

Why make it a mobile platform?

Kind regards ...

I think my post #14 explained it. Think tank with an idea seeking funding targeting the transport industry (which has remained largely untouched by nuclear power and is very popular at the moment regarding alternatives to internal combustion engines). No prototype (yet).

Looks like the old 'find a market and fill it', but I haven't seen anything regarding a viable commercial product prototype or design for actual testing (again yet).

Something to watch though, but it may take years (if ever). The real thing to watch is the nuclear power industry, if thorium really starts to take off and gains public support as a proven, green and viable alternative, then perhaps.........But by then capacitor and battery technology may have caught up rendering the expense of on-board power generation a moot point for electric vehicles of the future.

_{Jack - Yea I want a Mr Fusion}

The description of the method to gain energy from Thorium is totally wrong!

Intent or?

To make a power generating reactor: this principle will need a high intensity neutron source. This has to be driven by a particle accelerator.

The neutrons that hit the Thorium induce fission and thus energy, to be released as heat.

Better burn your money directly.

RHABE