What is Digg?88 Comments
- Arramol, on 10/12/2007, -2/+96Put down the bottle and back away slowly. That's enough booze for one night.
- Arramol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+47A nuclear-powered car....what could possibly go wrong?
- EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+45Most of the stuff posted on digg is not news anyway. It's stuff people are interested in.
- eradicator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+34http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_events
- eradicator, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Now all it needs are Firestone tires...
- goatrandy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21A nuclear reactor (fission, or fusion) wouldn't make sense. They should have just used a SNAP generator, with some sort of alternative to the uranium (any radioactive material will do). I dont know why more R&D isn't put into these things.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/GALLERIES/ATTM/nojs/la.s27.1.html
They used them in buoys in the early 50's to provide a continous 120v DC for the full half life of the material. If every house had one, we wouldn't need a power grid, and if every car had one we wouldn't need fossil fuels AT ALL. - HeavyMetaler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Translation
"but bomob if use car hehe nto gud like magashori or what it was bombed ti not good infact wquite bad!"
DeDrunkText 2.0
"But if you put a nuclear reactor in a car that would not be good. Like Hiroshima that got hit with the a-bomb. In fact that would be quite bad."
Excellent - EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -8/+26Can't help myself: o rly?
- noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14That's right. It's not "News for Nerds". It's "Stuff that matters".
Hang on, wrong website. - RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Did you study Physics at the University of Utah under Stanley Pons (google him) by any chance?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13the main problem, is peoples insane unreasoning fear of the nuclear boogy man.
- goatrandy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11RyeBrye - Nope. Just a dropout junkie with a neverending supply of curiosity. Anyhow, I wasn't talking about cold fusion. Follow the link.
SNAP generators work be exploiting the principle that when dissimilar metals touch electricity is created, and if one of the metals is radioactive a LOT of electricty can be generated. - drum_bum, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14It's just like carrying around a mini-Chernobyl in the back of your truck.
- l0ne, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11The main problem of nuclear reactors in cars is that you are going to have a huge problem in case of a crash... much more than gasoline.
- tjl2015, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I think this was just a concept car. I think I saw it on the history channel, and if I remember correctly, it was never more than a vague concept. They only created the car's body, probably the easiest part in something like this. They never actually created the reactor components, the charging stations, or even any of the basic engineering necessary.
This project was one of the many fantastical ideas people had at the dawn of the nuclear era. This is the time of "our friend, the atom!" and "duck and cover." People had all sorts of wonderful ideas about nuclear power, and they kept heaping on expectations, like with many new technologies. Power would be to cheap to meter, we would never need gasoline, we would be able to transmute elements. There were all sorts of hair-brained schemes people came up with.
One of my favorites is the so-called "flying crowbar," courtesy of our friends at Damn Interesting:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=56
They basically tried to come up with a NUCLEAR POWERED NUCLEAR MISSILE! Apparently, ICBMS weren't good enough. The thing was a nuclear-ramjet. Basically, suck in air, bring it in contact with a really hot nuclear core, and eject it out the back, creating tremendous thrust. This thing was a cruise missile, and was designed to fly over the Soviet Union, dropping multi-megaton nuclear bombs as it went. Thankfully, the thing never got off the drawing board. To make it light enough to fly, you couldn't exactly have a lead-shielded core. So the thing would basically just keep flying indefinitely, spreading nuclear fallout wherever it went.
Ultimately, the nuclear car failed for two main reasons. First, nuclear reactors can generate a lot of power, but they are really good at putting out large amounts of steady power. This makes them really good for a dependable, base-load power plant, but really bad for an automobile. A car needs something like a gasoline engine or a battery, some power source that can rapidly change its output, as the car accelerates and changes its cruising speed. Secondly, yes, you can make a nuclear-powered car, but you can't drive the thing. Even with the large power output of a nuclear reactor, it can't provide enough energy to move the massive amount of shielding required to make it safe. Ford basically came up with a neat body for the Nucleon, sat down for a few minutes and said, my God, this thing is impossible. As this thing went rolling down the street, the driver, the occupants, and any pedestrians would get a steady, lethal dose of gamma radiation. - radu79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The issue is not the explosion, it's the radioactive material getting all over the place.
- evangelion01, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15god dammit MARCO, why are you always a first poster, but i can never understand what the ***** you're trying to say? just dont post, you all was get digged down...
- GodlessMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I've seen this car!!!!! Its in the movie "Repoman."
"Nice friends Otto..."
"Thanks! I made them myself." - TheslaminJ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8My translation of :
"but bomob if use car hehe nto gud like magashori or what it was bombed ti not good infact wquite bad!"
=
"But if a bomb is used in a car, hehe it would not be good, kinda like Nagasaki or whatever. It was bombed and it wasn't good, but in fact quite bad!"
Wow. - Migdilio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"Tired of having your wallet raped at the pump? Come and test drive the car preferred by most everyone except, for some reason, the Japanese. Try the new Ford Nucleon. You'll have a blast."
- gamabunta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Someone was watching the History Channel.
- Clearz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Probably seemed like a good idea at the time until governments realised that individual humans are to retarded to be trusted with uranium.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Imagine the car accident traffic reports on the news...
"And there was a car accident on I-75 this morning, which managed to annihilate the town of River Creek. A day of mourning for the country. Next up, Pongo's review of Scary Movie Five.. Thousand. Pongo?" - ronin9, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ford + Nuclear Technology = Imminent Disaster
- ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As far as i know... Fusion its supposed to have no radioactive products. Because in the process we combine hydrogen to produce helium... or something like that. The power released by those two protons getting closer to each other is far greater than the fission of a huge uranium atom. So there. Fusion is cleaner and its our ticket to the future. I don't understand why aren't we doing all the possible research to find a practical way to produce energy from fusion. Do we need to wait until we burn all the oil and all the coal, have wasted all of our atmosphere, to realize... hey... why not fusion?... Ohh yeahh.. i forgot.. lets do it!.
..and i'll stop my bitching there. - goatrandy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sheilding is for pussies. Real men WANT to glow in the dark, it's keeps the electricity bill down.
- SuperSloth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ChileanGoD: No, fusion can create just as bad radiation as fission. Nuclear reactions generally emit energy/particles along the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, and that will include everything from alpha, beta, and gamma radiation to X-rays to visible light. If not for the magnetic field and the atmosphere, life on the Earth would quickly be scoured away by solar radiation (from fusion, of course).
Solar radiation exposure is one of the main factors limiting space walk times, IIRC. That was one of the limits for Apollo astronauts on moon walks, I know. I even seem to remember hearing that U2 pilots had to wear radiation detectors to record the dose of extra radiation they got for flying so high in the atmosphere. - alexw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"... are you telling me that this sucker's nuclear?
"No, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty-one gigawatts of electricity that I need." - lnxaddct, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ChileanGoD,
I can assure you that the brightest minds in the world are working on the fusion problem. I work at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Labratory, which is little more than a big 88 acre facility dedicated to nuclear fusion research (currently mainly focused on the national sperical torus experiment (NSTX)). Billions are dumped into fusion research every year across the globe. Fortunately for us, the first international fusion reactor is already being built (the location chosen is in France). It is called ITER (latin for "the way") and is expected to be completed in 2015. It will produce a net gain of energy (yes, we've gotten past that barrier), but not be used for creating electricity. ITER is kind of a prototype for a reactor after it that will be designed to produce 6 to 8 times as much energy and will probably will be used for creating electricity. Unfortunately, these things are expensive and take years to build, but things have finally gotten underway. Less than a decade until the first viable reactor, and probably under 2 decades until its powering people's homes (yea I know scientists have been saying that fusion is 10 years away for 50 years now, but they're serious this time :), after all, the reactor *is* being built which is kind of an importat first step ) Fusion is a very safe source of energy, with no harm to the environment. Unfortunately people hear "nuclear" and freak out, even green peace appears to not understand it, as they've tried to block fusion research many times over the years.
-Steve
http://krenzel.info - goblindegook, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Lead is bad enough as it is, it doesn't have to be radioactive.
- goatrandy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5l0ne - Did you even read my post before you responded? I'm was actually making the same point, and pointing out a non-exploding alternative.
- Cabal, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@radu79
can't be any worse then all the lead in the water around here.. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Don't let the Iranian Government see this, they'll be in production by next week, used as car bombs the week after.
- akuma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Good thing this missed being put in the Pinto by 20 some-odd years....
- tkcom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2WMD... in your trunk!
Blow it up and you got yourself a bite-size Chernobyl! - ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@SuperSloth
Sure there will be radiations. That's the main problem with Fusion today, too much energy is lost into radiation. That's why a fusion reactor should be always SHILEDED so the radiations dont go outside. In the end, i agree that the reactor should may become radiactive but you aint producing tons of toxic waste. At least its a plus. Anyways... that' what I meant by doing alot of research into find a useful and practical way to do it without ending with radioactive ractors. - vspazv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Apparently Doc wasn't very careful parking the Delorian after having the Mr. Fusion reactor installed.
- londoneconomist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Good post tjl2015, full of interesting and relevant information.
I'd like to know how they expected this car to use the nuclear "engine" in the back. Nuclear power plants operate by essentially using the hot uranium to create steam, which drives old fashioned turbines to generate electricity. How exactly would they manage to take the heat energy and use that in a car? Any theories? - DeadlyCouncil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I bet it goes from 0 to Cancer in about 2 seconds.
- noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not if you were two at the time.
- electromagnetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, everyone worries about another Chernobyl and cites three mile island after it, well if you read the history books three mile island has had no effect on anyone everything was contained... it was a SUCCESS for the containment vessels.
If we used RTG's in vehicles they would be extremely safe, the ones NASA launches are capable of surviving the entire explosion of the launch vehicle without releasing radioactive material. They alert people in the rockets launch arch because anything falling from orbit is going to hit like a bitch no matter what it's made of it's likely to be trashed.
For the terrorist threat the obvious answer would be to equip anti-tamper devices to it, GPS locator's and the works. The alternative would of course be use a non-fissionable isotope, for example synthetic Thorium as their decay chain leads down to lead where as real Thorium leads to U233 (see operation teapot) but even that's unlikely to be used in anything other than a dirty bomb as the military struggled putting them together.
I would personally recommend this in heavy vehicles like trucks as they tend to come out of crashes with little damage and would be able to support a strong containment vessel for the RTG. I also wonder how efficient they would be in a plane?
Oh and lets not forget people we all have readily available sources of radioactive material, generally in the smoke alarm everyone should have in their house. So don't get in a hissy fit every time someone mentioned radioactive because you more than likely already have it in your house and haven't even noticed! - angryredplanet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Just imagine the insurance premiums... :(
- electromagnetic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd buy radiated drinking water, I'm not stupid enough to know that gamma radiation isn't residual and dosing water with it would mean you could keep it in a sealed container for a billion years and it still be drinkable. However putting something like uranium in my drinking water isn't something I want, unless it's uranium salts and then you could always make a salt-water rocket which would just be fun (in space not on the ground).
- gavwvin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now all we need are uranium filling stations!
- rspeed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ SuperSloth
I believe he was referring to the waste products. - boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The front looks rather like the Batmobile.
http://www.1966batmobile.com/cave1.jpg
(Not entirely surprising, considering one's a Ford and the other's a Lincoln [Futura, modified], and they're only eight years apart in time.) - Roger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1After WWII people thought everything would be nuclear powered - cars, radios, planes, you name it.
They even sold radioactive drinking water. - isny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11.21 jigawatts!
- Splitt3rxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Orly?
- fronta1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1didnt they just come out with an alternative for uranium
arent we looking for alternative fuel?
what are they waiting for!? -
Show 51 - 85 of 85 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 