Nuclear Fusion Powered Cars…it will happen.

[Lordbenny]

I say ‘it will happen’….Probably not in my lifetime (I’m 55 you know!) but maybe in the lifetime of some of you young’uns. Which begs the question…what’s the point in spending squillions on an electric infrastructure now when it will be all change in, potentially, 50 years time?

Remember Betamax, Video 2000, Laser discs…whatever happened to them? I’m just saying that we are on the edge of something amazing here so why put all our eggs into one basket now especially when we have a few more years of fossil fuels and hybrids to keep us going! Or will the planet not survive that long?

[Equus]

Yeah, but compared to electric, they'll have no soul.

[thewarlock]

Not an idea I've really seen before. How will these cars be propelled? Electric motors? Steam turbines? Something new?

[Dave Hedgehog]

gonna be quite a large car to support the 23,000 tonne cylinder

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

thewarlock said:

Not an idea I've really seen before. How will these cars be propelled? Electric motors? Steam turbines? Something new?

JET powered

[Mave]

Lordbenny said:

I say ‘it will happen’….Probably not in my lifetime (I’m 55 you know!) but maybe in the lifetime of some of you young’uns. Which begs the question…what’s the point in spending squillions on an electric infrastructure now when it will be all change in, potentially, 50 years time?

Remember Betamax, Video 2000, Laser discs…whatever happened to them? I’m just saying that we are on the edge of something amazing here so why put all our eggs into one basket now especially when we have a few more years of fossil fuels and hybrids to keep us going! Or will the planet not survive that long?

Sorry, are you asking "why do something now, when there might be something else available in 50+ years which may or may not be better?"

Edited by Mave on Wednesday 9th February 14:14

[SturdyHSV]

I can see the road signage now.

! Accident Ahead !
10km exclusion zone
for 3,000 years



Oh apologies, I'm thinking of fission...

Either way, it seems pointless making millions and millions of nuclear fusion reactors to go inside cars and a distribution network of Deuterium and Tritium etc. to power them, when you could just have some large scale nuclear power plants that provide electricity to the existing grid (which will no doubt already be happening in this future where energy efficient nuclear fusion has been 'solved') and use that to power the existing network of electrically powered cars?

[Dr Jekyll]

Much of the technology used in an electric vehicle is relevant whether the electricity comes from a battery or a reactor. The fundamental weakness of an electric vehicle is the battery, batteries not being a very good way of transporting potential energy, not compared with tanks of petrol.

I believe there have been locomotives using electric motors powered by diesel generators. So generating electricity in the vehicle must have some advantage over batteries.

[Krikkit]

Dr Jekyll said:

Much of the technology used in an electric vehicle is relevant whether the electricity comes from a battery or a reactor. The fundamental weakness of an electric vehicle is the battery, batteries not being a very good way of transporting potential energy, not compared with tanks of petrol.

Energy density in batteries is poor, you're quite right.

Dr Jekyll said:

I believe there have been locomotives using electric motors powered by diesel generators. So generating electricity in the vehicle must have some advantage over batteries.

Many applications of this (ships, trains, large vehicles), it's more efficient because you can run the diesel engine at its most efficient operating window.

If fusion is cracked we'll end up with hydrogen-powered cars, as the relative inefficiency of splitting water into H2 + O is irrelevant.

[thewarlock]

Dr Jekyll said:

Much of the technology used in an electric vehicle is relevant whether the electricity comes from a battery or a reactor. The fundamental weakness of an electric vehicle is the battery, batteries not being a very good way of transporting potential energy, not compared with tanks of petrol.

I believe there have been locomotives using electric motors powered by diesel generators. So generating electricity in the vehicle must have some advantage over batteries.

You know what a train weighs though?

Battery powered trains have been about for a while, but they tend to be slow, and with poor range. As in, 100km range, top speed of about 80km/h.

Using diesel generators to power electric motors have been happening in ships for a while, although ships, and to a lesser extent, trains, tend not to have the same spatial limitiations as a car.

And whilst batteries are big, and heavy, you can at least position them where you like. Where you putting your reactor and generator in your road car?

[mike74]

Lordbenny said:

I say ‘it will happen’….Probably not in my lifetime (I’m 55 you know!) but maybe in the lifetime of some of you young’uns. Which begs the question…what’s the point in spending squillions on an electric infrastructure now when it will be all change in, potentially, 50 years time?

Remember Betamax, Video 2000, Laser discs…whatever happened to them? I’m just saying that we are on the edge of something amazing here so why put all our eggs into one basket now especially when we have a few more years of fossil fuels and hybrids to keep us going! Or will the planet not survive that long?

Haven't we been ''on the edge of an amazing breakthrough'' in fusion tech for pretty much your whole life?

[HustleRussell]

It absolutely won't happen.

[Dr Jekyll]

thewarlock said:

You know what a train weighs though?

Battery powered trains have been about for a while, but they tend to be slow, and with poor range. As in, 100km range, top speed of about 80km/h.

Using diesel generators to power electric motors have been happening in ships for a while, although ships, and to a lesser extent, trains, tend not to have the same spatial limitiations as a car.

And whilst batteries are big, and heavy, you can at least position them where you like. Where you putting your reactor and generator in your road car?

I wasn't suggesting putting a diesel generator in a road car. Just making the point that generating electricity in a vehicle isn't necessarily worse than generating it elsewhere and using batteries.

As for the space required for a fission reactor, the whole point of the thread is about what might happen if and when such reactors become small enough to put in a car. IE, if it was possible to fit a reactor in a car, would it be have any advantages compared with fossil fuelled ICE, batteries, hydrogen ETC ETC,

[Olivergt]

Lordbenny said:

I say ‘it will happen’….Probably not in my lifetime (I’m 55 you know!) but maybe in the lifetime of some of you young’uns. Which begs the question…what’s the point in spending squillions on an electric infrastructure now when it will be all change in, potentially, 50 years time?

Remember Betamax, Video 2000, Laser discs…whatever happened to them? I’m just saying that we are on the edge of something amazing here so why put all our eggs into one basket now especially when we have a few more years of fossil fuels and hybrids to keep us going! Or will the planet not survive that long?

Let's say you are correct, what do you propose we do for the next 50 years while we wait for it?

P.S. I don't think we will ever see fusion powered cars, better to use fusion to create clean electricity in large fusion plants and use EV's. We could even start planning for that now, by building an electric infrastructure that will support EV's now and in to the future, however the electricity is generated.

And don't forget battery technology will also improve over the next 50 years, probably to the point where weight/range won't be an issue at all.

Just to show how long and how far we have (n't) got with fusion so far:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/0...

Edited by Olivergt on Wednesday 9th February 15:00

[anonymous-user]

Can't see it myself, few kg of semtex equals instant dirty bomb but even without that it would only take a few tinkerers or the I can fix anything types and the only safe to live will be the Falkland Islands.

[Olivergt]

gottans said:

Can't see it myself, few kg of semtex equals instant dirty bomb but even without that it would only take a few tinkerers or the I can fix anything types and the only safe to live will be the Falkland Islands.

Don't get your fission and fusion mixed up, fusion is much safer than fission.

Fusion is fantastic in that in theory it produces more energy than it consumes, but it consumes a huge amount of energy to start and control the fusion process, for that reason it will never scale to something that can fit in a car.

[HustleRussell]

OP how do you propose to drive the wheels from the Fusion reaction?

Because if it's

• Use the thermal energy from the fusion reaction to convert deionised water into superheated steam
• Use the superheated steam to drive a steam turbine
• Use the steam turbine through a gearbox to drive a generator
• Use the electrical power to drive a motor
• Use the motor via a transmission system to drive the wheels
• Capture the LP steam, condense it back into water and recycle into the beginning of the process

...then I don't see what the appeal is at all.

[thewarlock]

Dr Jekyll said:

I wasn't suggesting putting a diesel generator in a road car. Just making the point that generating electricity in a vehicle isn't necessarily worse than generating it elsewhere and using batteries.

As for the space required for a fission reactor, the whole point of the thread is about what might happen if and when such reactors become small enough to put in a car. IE, if it was possible to fit a reactor in a car, would it be have any advantages compared with fossil fuelled ICE, batteries, hydrogen ETC ETC,

I wasn't suggesting that you were suggesting putting a diesel generator in a road car.

But once you've used your reactor to generate all that heat, what are you going to do with it? How do you make electricity?

With a generator. Like an alternator. Only much, much bigger.

Some ships do use gas turbines and diesels to generate electricity, and use that to power electric motors. But only big ships. Because it takes up extra space. With an ICE, you slap a gearbox and a shaft on the back of it and use it to turn stuff.

With electric drive, you still need that combustion engine, with a large generator slapped on the back. Which tend to be somewhere between 50 & 100
% of the size and weight of the engine. Then you still need electric motors, maybe a gearbox, some batteries/way of storing power/switchboards.

Takes up a lot of space. One benefit is the ability to run the engine at a single speed where it's more efficient. In naval ship design the main benefit is being able to place your combustion engines wherever you like from a redundancy/damage POV.

But I personally highly doubt we'll see cars using reactors to generate electricity, and power electric motors in our lifetime. Far too much complexity and cost compared to remote means of creating electricity and battery/supercapacitors in vehicle.

[Jag_NE]

Will farmers be able to jet wash the interior if this technology is under the bonnet?

[Dr Jekyll]

I was thinking in terms of a thermionic converter as with a Topaz fusion reactor. But how big and heavy it would be I've no idea.