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Asked by ClassHimid to Gemma C, Dorota, David, Cliff W, Chloe L, Caroline, Amber VW on 23 May 2024.
Question: Can nuclear power be used soon to run cars?
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Caroline Roche answered on 23 May 2024:
Maybe someday, Ford and a few other car companies did some designs for a nuclear powered vehicle back in the 1950/60s that treated the reactor like a battery. But I’m not sure if there will be one anytime soon due to safety and trust issues, plus the cost for putting in all the required infrastructure. (Similar to the work that’s been done for electric vehicles over the last decade.)
Nuclear power is used to charge electric vehicles at the moment so they might just expand on that and create nuclear powered charging stations using SMRs.
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Amber Villegas - Williamson answered on 11 Jun 2024:
Nuclear power is being investigated as a way to power data centres, which are much bigger than cars but just like mobile phones things start of big but then we find ways of making them smaller and smaller.
Here is an interesting article
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/next-gen-data-centers/welcome-to-the-era-of-the-nuclear-powered-data-center -
David Threlfall answered on 17 Jul 2024:
In several ways Nuclear Power does power all cars!
Fossil fuels – petrol & diesel are refined from crude oil which is the remains of living creatures & Plants from pre-historic earth – all grown under the large nuclear fission reactor in the sky (the Sun)Electric cars need power which is derived from fossil fuels, sunlight (solar panels), wind (caused by the heating of the earth, by the Sun) and Nuclear Power stations.
A small enough Nuclear Power plant to power 1 car is unlikely but Rolls-Royce is developing small reactors to use in space and as emergency power stations, these might be used to charge batteries on lunar or mars rovers in thre future.
Comments
Hannah commented on :
Hello! This is a good question. Nuclear reactors are gradually getting smaller, with Small Modular Reactors being developed currently, however it is not looking like Nuclear Reactors will be put into cars soon. There is a lot of security involved in using nuclear fuel sources, such as enriched uranium and plutonium (which are elements on the periodic table), as there is the risk of this being used to create atomic weapons. Perhaps, nuclear power could produce hydrogen, which is being looked into as a potential source of energy for cars.
Will B commented on :
We have already, just not on earth. The Mars rover uses nuclear batteries as described by Caroline as a power source. These use the heat from atomic decay to create electric current. Its very expensive any only makes sense to do so if you need a permeant fuel source in a remote area. The Canadian government is looking into using SMR’s to replace diesel generators in remote communities in the far north. But only as stationary power sources, not cars. However, you could charge electric vehicles using them.