Can Nuclear Power SAVE The Car Industry? 4K

The idea of nuclear-powered cars has never caught on in the past, but as technology continues to develop, could nuclear power contribute to our automotive energy needs in the 21st century?

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[barryemery]

As a former submariner that served onboard nuclear powered boats, I am somewhat dismayed that once the boats are taken out of the fleet, their reactors are not used to add power to the national grid whilst the various authorities and scientists come up with a way to safely dispose of them, which, I am sure, they will do in the future. Now, when I was serving, I was told that the reactor on just one boat could provide enough power to service a city the size of Portsmouth. I know that we have an area in Devonport dockyard where the boats that are now decommissioned and out of service are sitting. Now, these boats, when alongside, used to switch to shore power, surely some boffins could come up with a way of using that connection to have the boat put power into the grid. Just a thought. (It would also provide jobs for the submarine nuclear trained engineers that have done their time in the navy and are looking for a job in “civvy” street).

[LazarkGaming]

I thought this would be a great idea as a child. My parents told me I was both insane and it wouldn't work. Well now I'll tell them that Ford has already thought about it.

[markiliff]

I love the way Rory keeps widening the discussion, and doing it in such a balanced & clear way. A treasure.

[GranSkyline]

Nuclear in regards to power grid generation is actually a lot safer these days, and public opinion (which is not based on fact) is the main reason new plants don't get made. SMRs have been in development for years now, and likely to be used in the near future.

[santtumakinen]

Nuclear power for hydrogen production is more efficient than when using renewables because the extra heat from the plant can be used to heat the water used for electrolysis making the hydrodgen production more efficient

[dominicrusho]

5:08 You need to correct this Rory - Rolls-Royce PLC has nothing to do with the car industry. It is a completely separate entity to the BMW owned Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.

[AlexPeka]

For the record, Rolls-Royce engines is entirely disconnected from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the car industry RR has nothing to to with modular reactors.

[freddaniali]

As a nuclear physicist, I am hoping that the industry could one day get serious and put me to work! lol

[JohnSmith-zvkm]

Every car crash results in a nuclear incident.

[ramdas]

This is better than a lot of "science" channels. I'm not really into cars but it's nice to see there are still youtubers putting in the work to research things and present them in a factual way.
Keep up the good work!

[FllnThBlanks]

Fission idk, fusion however, fusion is the future of power I believe. However we're still not quite there yet but we're getting closer on large scale. However for automobile transportation.. I feel like we're still a long while off, but I'd definitely say it's the future in the longer term.

[sdry]

"nucler waste" is pretty much harmless.

[alsmith]

4:05 Even if you make synthetic fuels with clean renewable energy, using it in an ICE still produces the same air pollutants and smog as normal fuel. It might be used in race series, but it'll never catch on for daily drivers.

[kings_chronicle]

We are not at that level of tech yet.but we will find a sustainable power source in time that wont require any maintenance

[griffogriff]

Interesting stuff, maybe nuclear in a car sounds terrible but so does an explosive charge in your steering wheel… the levels are everything I suppose, but from what you found, the levels would need to be high so will probably never happen, well explained 👍

[Aditzu]

Also, you can't turn a nuclear reactor on and off with a switch. It takes ages and the output power is fairly constant. So the only application for it that makes some sense is for huge cargo ships

[Hofferman]

The Commonwealth cirka 2050 was successful in this, the Corvega plants produced tens of thousands of nukelear powered cars. Diamond City was littered with them

[mrsoisauce]

I’m pretty sure that, while Nuclear power does have some very bad consequences if a reactor does blow, those were either ancient or the reactors were terribly out of date. Besides, the casualty levels were much lower than u might expect. Nearly everyone within the vicinity of every nuclear power plant explosion ever was safely evacuated b4 the explosion. And on modern power plants, there r safeguards in place 2 defend against nuclear meltdown. In the case of a nuclear meltdown, there’s a rod that melts that drops the rest of the nuclear material under the facility and into storage (it something like that), effectively preventing an explosion. On the nuclear waste problem, 2 solutions have been identified. One of them is an alternative fuel (I’m pretty sure it’s an isotope of Thallium) that produces substantially less waste than Uranium-235 (the current fuel we use for nuclear fission). The other solution is 2 recycle the nuclear waste into nuclear fuel that can b burned again

[spclifford]

Surprised you didn't mention probably the most famous nuclear powered car in modern history - the Delorean from Back to the Future!

[bobdouglass]

You ask a guy off the street and he'll say no way is nuclear power safe. If he knows his stuff, he'll mention the three major accidents - Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Fukushima. What he won't know is the cumulative death toll was 31 people, all at Chernobyl. And that far more people die drilling for oil every year in the US alone. But you can't change people's minds with statistics, you have deal with them at an emotional level. That's hard to do.