Car Runs For 100 Years Without Refueling - The Thorium Car


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"If your car was powered by thorium, you would never need to refuel it. The vehicle would burn out long before the chemical did. The thorium would last so long, in fact, it would probably outlive you. That's why a company called Laser Power Systems has created a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. The element is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laserbeam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.*" Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks discuss.

Car Runs For 100 Years Without Refueling - The Thorium Car - YouTube

Additional news from Wikipedia is India, which has about 25% of the world's thorium reserves,

Sources
Thorium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
One Day, Thorium Could Power Everything
 
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Concept is nice. If its radioactive, definately its going to be a lots of headaches in ways of safety as radioactive material is very harmful at base level. This may work well where movement is stable (like in railways etc) but given our ways to drive and dash, I am not sure how it will evolve as it carries lots of radioactive spill during an accident. May be days of coal locomotives of our older days will be active with radioactiveness!!
I think we are atleast decades away before this becomes a reality!![thinking].
 
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Concept is nice. If its radioactive, definately its going to be a lots of headaches in ways of safety as radioactive material is very harmful at base level. This may work well where movement is stable (like in railways etc) but given our ways to drive and dash, I am not sure how it will evolve as it carries lots of radioactive spill during an accident. May be days of coal locomotives of our older days will be active with radioactiveness!!
I think we are atleast decades away before this becomes a reality!![thinking].
you could be right. At-least it is a good start. We are desperately need of an alternate fuel.
 
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Essentially a car with a nuclear reactor! The only thing good about it is they made it pretty compact to run a car.Guessing the front of the car is where the cooling of the water occurs.
Have a little accident with the car & the place(or road) is radioactive for 20,000 years ,hmmm.

This is similar to 1950s where people believed every home would have a nuclear reactor in the basement so they can have unlimited power [:)]
 
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thank you Rekharam for the information. there was always this fear with the usage of nuclear fuels but once the safety is taken care off then it would surely be the fuel for the future
 
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It is interesting to know that people are trying to develop car powered by nuclear reactor. We already have Nuclear powered submarines, Russians are developing nuclear powered train (source: Russia designs nuclear train | Barentsobserver).
As above mentioned concept is Thorium based I was expecting greater Indian contribution as Indian scientists are known to be pioneer in Thorium research (Nuclear Power in India | Indian Nuclear Energy) thanks to ban imposed by developed countries on Uranium sale to India even for research purpose.
 

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