Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hei there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks the future and says in for an
Speaker 1: evening of light entertainment. I'm Jonathan and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and today we've got what will be hopefully a very
Speaker 1: funny and illuminating topic. Particular, lady stand too close right
Speaker 1: yourself might be illuminated. Yes, so with a with a
Speaker 1: healthy blue glow of the cheering cob variety. Um, because
Speaker 1: we wanted to ask a rather strange question. Today. We've
Speaker 1: talked about traditional vehicles of all kinds, post fules, we've
Speaker 1: talked about electric vehicles. We've talked about fuel cell vehicles.
Speaker 1: Here's a question that may have sort of an obvious answer,
Speaker 1: several obvious answers right off the bat, but it's also
Speaker 1: more interesting than you might expect. Why don't we have
Speaker 1: nuclear powered vehicles? Now, stay with me for a second. First,
Speaker 1: we do well, yeah, okay, we have some. We we
Speaker 1: will talk about some. But I got this bizarre image
Speaker 1: in my head of a nuclear powered airplane. Now, the
Speaker 1: airplanes we have today that we fly, you know, they
Speaker 1: use jet fuel. And they use a lot of it,
Speaker 1: and burning all that jet fuel of course comes with
Speaker 1: some problems we've talked about on the podcast before. I mean,
Speaker 1: those emissions are not without consequences. And of course the
Speaker 1: jet fuel is very expensive and it limits the range
Speaker 1: of the plane. Yeah, you have to refuel basically all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, and then we've got all these nice
Speaker 1: little alternatives like these solar airplanes we've talked about, But
Speaker 1: of course those are great. Not to downplay that at all,
Speaker 1: Like the solar impulse is a very amazing and interesting
Speaker 1: achievement in techno coal designs. Sure, but it's a very
Speaker 1: delicate thing. It's incredibly limited in what it can do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a lot of payload capacity it you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's got those problems. It's not generating enough electricity
Speaker 1: for it to do much else than keep it aloft.
Speaker 1: So it can't it couldn't be something that we would
Speaker 1: convert into, say a passenger jet. Right, So what about
Speaker 1: the possibility of something like a nuclear powered airplane, Because
Speaker 1: when you talk about nuclear energy, suddenly there you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you can generate massive amounts of power, right, you can
Speaker 1: have lots of range, like you don't need to refuel
Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor for potentially years, depending on you know
Speaker 1: what your fuel is and how the reactor is designed
Speaker 1: and things like that. You could build the kind of
Speaker 1: airplane that we always imagine as being the perfect solution
Speaker 1: to a zombie outbreak on Earth, the airplane that never
Speaker 1: has to land, at least at least a solution that
Speaker 1: would allow you to find, you know, a more permanent
Speaker 1: place to stay, because eventually you would run out of food,
Speaker 1: but you would definitely be able to fly around until
Speaker 1: you were able to discover that perfect uninhabited island that
Speaker 1: as yet uh completely covered with food generating resources. You
Speaker 1: could hunt birds, and you could grow crops on the
Speaker 1: top of the plane. Makes perfect sense, Alane, My objection
Speaker 1: is withdrawn. Okay, So but extending that beyond airplanes, airplanes, cars, motorcycles, boats,
Speaker 1: what what is the possibility of actually creating nuclear powered vehicles?
Speaker 1: And I know you at home are thinking, we'll wait
Speaker 1: a minute, what about all the radioactive waste. Yes, we
Speaker 1: are considering that and we're going to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but let's just play with this for a second and
Speaker 1: see if anything comes of it. Sure, and the wacky
Speaker 1: thing is You're not the first person who this has
Speaker 1: occurred to, Joe. No. In fact, there have been entire
Speaker 1: government agencies dedicated to trying to figure out, oh if
Speaker 1: we could create a nuclear powered aircraft. For example, Yeah,
Speaker 1: weirdos in the Air Force asked this question way back
Speaker 1: in y so, so you know, embrace your fellow weirdos. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This This was from a long line and a proud
Speaker 1: hyt period total. So in n the U. S. Army
Speaker 1: Air Forces, which would later just be called the Air Force,
Speaker 1: created the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft NIPA.
Speaker 1: Eventually that would be replaced by a different UH acronym
Speaker 1: program called Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion or or just A and P.
Speaker 1: And they were looking at the potential of using nuclear
Speaker 1: power to generate enough electricity to power and air craft
Speaker 1: keep it in the air UH, specifically for military purposes.
Speaker 1: So this was during the the era, the post World
Speaker 1: War Two, entering into the Cold War era. We're having
Speaker 1: the capability of keeping an aircraft in flight perpetually in
Speaker 1: case you needed to, I don't know, drop bombs on
Speaker 1: your enemy. Was of a very high priority at the time.
Speaker 1: So this was predating the Inner Condoo ballistic missile, right you.
Speaker 1: So people were still very much concerned about the possibility
Speaker 1: of using bombers instead of missiles. And uh, the program
Speaker 1: ended up eventually converting to convey B thirty six aircraft,
Speaker 1: which were hybrid prop jet engine aircraft bombers, all right,
Speaker 1: So these these were pre existing aircraft that had been
Speaker 1: in use already, and then said, well, why don't we
Speaker 1: go ahead and try and convert one of these to
Speaker 1: see if it could carry a nuclear reactor and do
Speaker 1: so safely. So this was just a test platform. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the nuclear reactor was not if you think of
Speaker 1: it this way, it wasn't hooked up to anything, it
Speaker 1: wasn't powering the planes systems. But it was an air
Speaker 1: cooled nuclear reactor that was put in the bombing bay
Speaker 1: of these two different convey B thirty six aircraft and
Speaker 1: operated to see if it would in fact be safe.
Speaker 1: And there they had to obviously drastically alter the aircraft
Speaker 1: to make certain that the crew would remain safe, and
Speaker 1: they were shielded by twelve tons of lead and rubber
Speaker 1: between them and the reactor. Uh. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this particular type of aircraft is also known as the peacemaker,
Speaker 1: because of course it is exactly. Uh. You might just
Speaker 1: refer back to our double Think episode. Uh. It made
Speaker 1: forty seven test flights over Texas mainly, and ultimately they
Speaker 1: decided to not incorporate this as a full design, mainly
Speaker 1: because the engines that they were using had evolved to
Speaker 1: a point where it was no longer practical to use
Speaker 1: that particular approach, so it was abandoned, largely because the
Speaker 1: surrounding technology of aircraft had gone further while they were
Speaker 1: still testing out the the viability of having a nuclear
Speaker 1: reactor on board and aircraft. H Yeah, yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: back on text stuff. A long time ago, you and
Speaker 1: I did a Lockheed Martin uh series, like two or
Speaker 1: three episodes that talked a lot about the advances that
Speaker 1: were going on in jet engines in that era exactly,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of them coming here after
Speaker 1: World War Two. People were really interested in it, RAM
Speaker 1: jets and that kind of thing exactly. Yeah. But of course,
Speaker 1: as we alluded to, there are some both obvious reasons
Speaker 1: and perhaps less than obvious reasons why we don't really
Speaker 1: have nuclear powered airplanes today. And we'll get to the
Speaker 1: obvious one. First. Safety sure. I mean, what if a
Speaker 1: plane crashed and sprayed radioactive material all over the place.
Speaker 1: That would be very bad. And if it's military, then
Speaker 1: there's always the possibility it could be shot down. So
Speaker 1: it's not not just not just a mechanical failure, but
Speaker 1: you're talking about specifically placing some of these aircraft in
Speaker 1: harm's way because that is their purpose, right, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: happens if there's a meltdown? Um, what happens if it
Speaker 1: leaks in some way like you've seen, Like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a full meltdown for there to be
Speaker 1: some kind of leak of like water or steam radiated material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then of course there is the issue of passenger safety,
Speaker 1: like you were talking about in uh in this other
Speaker 1: aircraft that had actually been created, you'd have to shield
Speaker 1: the people on the plane to protect them from what
Speaker 1: was happening in the reactor. And I'm sure that that
Speaker 1: introduces problems for aircraft design. You typically don't want to
Speaker 1: be introducing lots of heavy materials like lead and stuff
Speaker 1: into your aircraft, especially depending on what it's purposes. If
Speaker 1: it's for cargo, you are impacting how much cargo you're
Speaker 1: going to be able to carry, right, because the heavier
Speaker 1: you make that aircraft, the more powerful it needs to be.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you know, the design has to change.
Speaker 1: So when you get to a point where just the
Speaker 1: power system alone on the aircraft is that heavy, it
Speaker 1: starts creating the other other things you have to consider
Speaker 1: before you ever get to the point of actually loading
Speaker 1: the plane up and taking off. Yeah, and then of
Speaker 1: course on top of that, it's got the problems that
Speaker 1: just come with all nuclear power, right that you have regular, stationary,
Speaker 1: non flying nuclear right, you end up with this with
Speaker 1: this hazardous material that you have to find some way
Speaker 1: of dealing with and hoping that nobody gets into it
Speaker 1: for ten thousand years. Yeah, we talked about that in
Speaker 1: previous episodes, and that is I mean, that's that's a
Speaker 1: non trivial problem. The solutions of nuclear power where you
Speaker 1: have lower carbon footprint or non existing carbon footprint depending
Speaker 1: upon the implementation, and the fact that you don't have
Speaker 1: to refuel all the sort of things, are fantastic. But
Speaker 1: the downside of having where do you put the spent
Speaker 1: fuel that's still is very potentially dangerous is a big issue,
Speaker 1: and it's one that that governments have not fully agreed upon,
Speaker 1: yet there have been a lot of of debates about
Speaker 1: what's the safest way of dealing with that, and so
Speaker 1: really that the answer to that question is nobody knows. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there may be. It may be one of those situations
Speaker 1: where like, well, if if we decide that nuclear power
Speaker 1: in fact makes the most sense out of you know,
Speaker 1: all the different arrangements that we could have, we still
Speaker 1: have to figure out, like what's the maybe the least
Speaker 1: bad option of dealing with nuclear waste. No one really
Speaker 1: wants to do deal with that problem. We're in a
Speaker 1: kind of like ongoing kick the can mode. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so kicked the big old nuclear can't. So, so that
Speaker 1: is something that has obviously been a deterrent in developing
Speaker 1: nuclear powered vehicles. It's not the only one. Cost is
Speaker 1: a big one, sure, yeah, yeah, All of these problems
Speaker 1: that we're talking about are technically solvable, but at great expense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really great expense. I mean, designing a nuclear reactor is
Speaker 1: not cheap, and then designing one specifically litill fit within
Speaker 1: a vehicle also not cheap. Outfitting that vehicle so that
Speaker 1: it shields anyone from potential radiation not cheap. So eventually
Speaker 1: you get to a point where the cost of the
Speaker 1: vehicle may be so high that from a financial perspective,
Speaker 1: it makes no sense to go with that as opposed
Speaker 1: to a more conventional style vehicle, whether it's an aircraft,
Speaker 1: a car, or whatever. So that's the fact that you
Speaker 1: don't have to refuel for a hundred years balanced out
Speaker 1: by the fact that it took you more than a
Speaker 1: hundred times, for example, that the cost of what that
Speaker 1: fuel would have been in the first place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's interesting. The other thing, I think one
Speaker 1: of you made this note, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: really good point. How do you like do the work?
Speaker 1: So you're talking about not just carrying a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: on board, but somehow using the the energy created by
Speaker 1: that reactor to do mechanical work like spina propeller blade, right,
Speaker 1: and that that actually. Know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I just thought, oh, it's just you got the glowing
Speaker 1: pellet and you put the glowing pellet in this this
Speaker 1: this chamber, and then you close the door in the
Speaker 1: chamber and then the wheels move like you know. It
Speaker 1: just it didn't occur to me, what is the actual
Speaker 1: process that we you know, what is nuclear power. Doing
Speaker 1: that allows us generate electricity or mechanical power, and more
Speaker 1: often than not, this is not the only way, but
Speaker 1: it's the main way. We're talking about nuclear fission where
Speaker 1: you're having adams split up and uh, and those particles
Speaker 1: end up going on to create more nuclear reactions within
Speaker 1: the fuel rod. That generates a lot of heat. That
Speaker 1: heat ends up superheating water, converting it to steam, which
Speaker 1: then turns turbines. So you've got like a superpowered steam engine.
Speaker 1: And what it comes down to really at its core,
Speaker 1: you are to sing the power of the heavens in
Speaker 1: order to get a steam engine. Yeah, you're just yeah
Speaker 1: everything that I mean, it's one heck of a steam
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, extremely efficient. Yeah. So you know, those turbines
Speaker 1: are what generally speaking, generate electricity or mechanical motion to
Speaker 1: turn and propeller that sort of thing. Uh. That's not
Speaker 1: the only way. We will talk about some other ways
Speaker 1: that you can I'm not necessarily you, but that we
Speaker 1: can use nuclear power to generate electricity in order to
Speaker 1: do work that is not directly related to nuclear fission.
Speaker 1: But that's the that's probably the most common way. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get away from my my nuclear plane fantasy and
Speaker 1: ground this podcast in some reality first, and we will
Speaker 1: talk about some more wacky stuff towards the end. But
Speaker 1: there actually are vehicles right now that use nuclear power.
Speaker 1: They exist, yeah, and then they exist for good reason. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One big example, of course is nuclear submarine. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen the Hunt for Red October? Well, you know
Speaker 1: there is the scene where they have what they believed
Speaker 1: to be ye don't react well to bush. You remember
Speaker 1: the scene in it where suddenly they have radiation leaking,
Speaker 1: or at least they say they do, and they have
Speaker 1: to evacuate. They have to vent with the outside air
Speaker 1: and have the crew come outside and stand on top
Speaker 1: of the submarine up in the ocean. UM. I mean
Speaker 1: that's a real concern because the submarines have nuclear reactors
Speaker 1: inside them. Yeah. First we should stress not all submarines
Speaker 1: are nuclear powered, certainly not not not all navy vessels
Speaker 1: are nuclear powered, but a lot of them are. And
Speaker 1: when you when when you think about the reasons, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Like a submarine's purpose for the military anyway,
Speaker 1: is it's a it's kind of a stealth vehicle, right,
Speaker 1: It's able to pass underneath um and to be used
Speaker 1: in and various uh military applications and including warfare, and
Speaker 1: you want to limit the number of times you need
Speaker 1: to surface in order to preserve the safety of that
Speaker 1: vehicle and its crew. It's kind of like the upside
Speaker 1: down version of My never Landing Zombie escape Plane. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So the nuclear reactors aboard submarines allow for the generation
Speaker 1: of electricity and the propulsion of the submarine so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to surface unless you need to resupply
Speaker 1: or uh, you know, the a tour of duty or
Speaker 1: whatever is over. So during the Cold War, the United
Speaker 1: States was looking at developing this technology because before they
Speaker 1: were all diesel powered submarines, so they would eventually have
Speaker 1: to reservice to refuel and then they could go back
Speaker 1: down again. Uh. So they started looking at developing nuclear
Speaker 1: propulsion systems specifically for submarines, and the first one was
Speaker 1: the U. S. S. Nautilus, which was launched in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. Uh. It was also the first submarine to
Speaker 1: uh to to reached the North Pole underwater. Obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think it would fly over the North Pole
Speaker 1: it's a submarine, but I don't know. They get some
Speaker 1: great airtime Yeah, they can. You know, if you've seen
Speaker 1: if you've seen a Hunt for October again, the captain
Speaker 1: has forced them out of the water. Um. In the
Speaker 1: early nineties sixties we started seeing other navy vessels used
Speaker 1: nuclear fission to power propulsion. The first aircraft carrier to
Speaker 1: do so was the U. S. S. Enterprise, which is
Speaker 1: actually the second Enterprise. UM. And if you want to
Speaker 1: hear more about that, Scott Benjamin and I did an
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff on how aircraft carriers work and
Speaker 1: we talked about the the transition from the traditional steam
Speaker 1: powered submarine aircraft carriers, i should say, to the nuclear
Speaker 1: powered ones. So that was that was pretty cool. Another
Speaker 1: benefit of putting this type of engine on a submarine
Speaker 1: is that it's it's really easy too cool nuclear engines
Speaker 1: using water. Yeah, that is in fact, how many nuclear
Speaker 1: power plants cool there reactors. Right, You'll often see a
Speaker 1: nuclear power plant right next to a body of water,
Speaker 1: and submarines are in the water. Yeah, it's so the
Speaker 1: naval reactors use very similar methodology to the power plants
Speaker 1: that you would see on land. And you know you
Speaker 1: have a nuclear core. Um, you've got nuclear rods that
Speaker 1: are able to once once you initiate a nuclear reaction,
Speaker 1: they're able to sustain it. You have some material that
Speaker 1: can absorb neutrons. That's one of the things that are
Speaker 1: given off in nuclear reactions, So you put the absorbing
Speaker 1: material down to help dampen the reaction. That's what allows
Speaker 1: you to have a controlled reaction as opposed to an
Speaker 1: uncontrolled reaction, which is bad. Yeah, uncontrolled reaction is essentially
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb. That's what you get with an uncontrolled reaction.
Speaker 1: So this allows to prevent things like a melt down
Speaker 1: it and then the water cools the system as well.
Speaker 1: And plus the water gets superheated remains in pressurized lines.
Speaker 1: So because the line are pressurized, it keeps the the
Speaker 1: water under such pressure that it doesn't boil off into steam.
Speaker 1: It stays in liquid form, but it's superheated. It then
Speaker 1: goes to an area where it will be able to
Speaker 1: turn turbines. At that point it's allowed to expand, so
Speaker 1: the pressure is removed. That means it immediately boils off
Speaker 1: into steam. Very high powered steam turns these turbines. Now,
Speaker 1: the turbines may only be used to generate electricity, or
Speaker 1: they might do two things. They might generate electricity and
Speaker 1: they might have a gearbox associated with them that can
Speaker 1: translate the rotation of the turbines into a rotational force
Speaker 1: for the actual propellers the middleman. Yeah, so you could
Speaker 1: have you know, some vessels use essentially a giant electrical
Speaker 1: motors to turn the propellers and then you just generate
Speaker 1: the electricity with the nuclear power. And some have this
Speaker 1: combination where you're generating electricity for the ship, but you're
Speaker 1: also generating mechanical energy for the propellers. Uh, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: So those are the vehicles that use new clear power
Speaker 1: right now as propulsion systems. And again some you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that every nation uses this, but many do,
Speaker 1: so it's not it's not rare. What I want to
Speaker 1: know is when I can get a nuclear powered luxury sedan. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: you know there's there have been some some talk about
Speaker 1: nuclear powered cars. Talk yeah, sure, talk practical. The practical
Speaker 1: answer to your question is never. Sorry, this was the
Speaker 1: thing that when I had this hair brained idea for
Speaker 1: an episode. This was the thing that made me say, okay,
Speaker 1: well we have to do this because I looked it
Speaker 1: up and I was like, oh, somebody thought it would
Speaker 1: be funny to actually design a forward concept car with
Speaker 1: a nuclear propulsion system. Not just funny, but but an
Speaker 1: effective marketing tool for the Ford Motor Company. Right, I
Speaker 1: gotta say that thing looked like a major boat. Oh man,
Speaker 1: it looks it looks like it looks like the Batmobile
Speaker 1: if the Batmobile had been designed for George Jetson. I'm
Speaker 1: fine with the design. I love the design. I just think, yeah,
Speaker 1: finding a parking space for that thing would be a nightmare.
Speaker 1: We are talking about the Ford Nucleon board Nucleon Okay,
Speaker 1: so first things first, it should come as no surprise
Speaker 1: to anyone that this car was never actually built the concept.
Speaker 1: It never made it out of the three eights size
Speaker 1: model stage. Yeah, what was the deal with this concept?
Speaker 1: So well, it's a little little complicated in the sense that,
Speaker 1: you know, it was such a concept that they didn't
Speaker 1: really define a lot of things. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: be nuclear powered, um, and they said that you could
Speaker 1: drive five thousand miles, which is more than eight thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers before needing to refuel or recharge, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, actually, according to Stanford University, if you really
Speaker 1: had a nuclear powered car, you might be able to
Speaker 1: go between three to five years before you have or
Speaker 1: needed to refuel, which sounds pretty nice really, Uh, but
Speaker 1: of course you still have radio activity. You still have
Speaker 1: to shield everybody from the nuclear core itself. So that
Speaker 1: would end up adding a lot of weight to your car.
Speaker 1: So your car being incredibly heavy, um, possibly so heavy
Speaker 1: that you would have to worry about certain elements of
Speaker 1: infrastructure like old bridges, things like that, things that you
Speaker 1: might not want to you know, you might not otherwise
Speaker 1: consider because you'd be you'd be in a car that
Speaker 1: might not seem that big, but would be really heavy
Speaker 1: and could potentially outweigh like your giant Mac trucks or
Speaker 1: at least be on an equivalent weight. And also, I
Speaker 1: mean with that weight comes problems with the momentum, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're traveling at a certain speed in
Speaker 1: your car is a certain weight, then your brakes need
Speaker 1: to be extra good. You know, there's some problems there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like like Lauren was saying, they never they
Speaker 1: never build a full one, and they never really defined
Speaker 1: how the nuclear power worked. Yeah, since they never really
Speaker 1: intended for it to be a production car. It was
Speaker 1: really just a just a concept published in a brochure
Speaker 1: in or so, uh, they weren't even interested in the
Speaker 1: sticky details of whether this thing would be powered by
Speaker 1: nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. They were kind of like whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever scientists on the power of the atom, right, totally.
Speaker 1: The last line of the brochure is is such a kicker,
Speaker 1: it said, and I quote cars such as the Nucleon
Speaker 1: illustrate the extent to which research into the future is
Speaker 1: conducted at Ford Motor Company and point up the designers
Speaker 1: unwillingness to admit that a thing cannot be done simply
Speaker 1: because it has not been done. Right. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: this is right there in the smack dab middle of
Speaker 1: the the atomic age, where where atomic was going to
Speaker 1: be considered the solution to all our problems energy and otherwise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was also that that crazy nifties car
Speaker 1: boom where everyone in America was buying different cars so
Speaker 1: that they could have so much freedom. Of course, it
Speaker 1: was also right in the middle of when every movie
Speaker 1: plot was well, there's a regular animal that's been made
Speaker 1: into a giant, dangerous animal because of nuclear atomic radiation. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was there was a not a consensus on the matter,
Speaker 1: and so it turns out in pr terms. Also, uh
Speaker 1: you know, I think they talked about it just being
Speaker 1: like it would be powered by an atomic pellet. That's
Speaker 1: about as close as they got to explaining how it
Speaker 1: was working. So, you know, with since this was such
Speaker 1: a concept when you when you talk about a concept car,
Speaker 1: you can't get much more conceptual than this very vague description.
Speaker 1: But the design is pretty pretty sweet. It was pretty sweet,
Speaker 1: and you know, but so yes, I would pause it
Speaker 1: that it is really just an artifact of the atomic
Speaker 1: age and that no one would obviously take anything like
Speaker 1: that seriously outside of that contemporary culture. Yeah, yeah, clearly
Speaker 1: we left all that behind the nineteen fifties, right, Uh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. What why? In two thousand none, at
Speaker 1: the Chicago Auto Show, GM via Cadillac presented a concept
Speaker 1: car that looked like a Ford Nucleon designed for modern Batman. Actually,
Speaker 1: uh no, George Jetson in this one. No sorry, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the Cadillac World Thorium Fuel. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a picture of this now, so it's so so the
Speaker 1: so the nuclear engine idea here had been updated to
Speaker 1: a proposal for a thorium based system, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about previously on the show not for cars, but but
Speaker 1: you can check out our full episode on it from
Speaker 1: March one, two thousand and fourteen, if you would like.
Speaker 1: But basically so, thorium is a radioactive material that's more
Speaker 1: abundant than uranium and has a greater energy yield, possibly
Speaker 1: two times greater. And it's hypothetically safer than a uranium
Speaker 1: reactor because it won't melt down when you lose power.
Speaker 1: The process just stops naturally, all right, So you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about lowering that that material I was
Speaker 1: telling about that soaks up those neutrons sure, and the
Speaker 1: materials and byproducts are not quite as easy to weapon
Speaker 1: to weaponize as a normal uranium reactor. The design for
Speaker 1: this concept car from Cadillac was done by one Lauren Clessus,
Speaker 1: who created it with the idea that it could go
Speaker 1: largely without maintenance for a hundred years, which seems just
Speaker 1: optimistic to me. That this was partially due to having
Speaker 1: backup systems for everything in case of failure. I think
Speaker 1: the engine itself was the only thing that didn't have
Speaker 1: a primary backup. And this is my favorite part. It
Speaker 1: included these these really like weird looking deep well wheels
Speaker 1: that actually consisted of six mini wheels, each powered by
Speaker 1: its own induction motor, so you never have to change
Speaker 1: the tires, only take them in for realignment every five
Speaker 1: years or so. I'm looking at this picture. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine it having that many backup systems because this thing
Speaker 1: in certain areas looks like it's paper thin. I don't know,
Speaker 1: So I don't know, you know. Even though even though
Speaker 1: Klissus thought the idea through maybe a little bit more
Speaker 1: than the Nucleon designers, GM was not really planning on
Speaker 1: taking the concept any further. Top Gear nicknamed the concept
Speaker 1: the Cadillac W T F, which, to be fair, is
Speaker 1: the acronym classic top Gear. So you know, again, like
Speaker 1: who would possibly try to make a thorium engine? No
Speaker 1: one would actually be working on that. I sense that
Speaker 1: you're going to say they are. You know, someone's totally
Speaker 1: working on that. Charles Stevens with the Massachusetts Connecticut R
Speaker 1: and D firm Laser Power Systems around two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: started hyping this model of a thorium based motor that
Speaker 1: they had been developing. They the concept is this, you
Speaker 1: use the thorium to create a laser to create steam
Speaker 1: to turn a turbine to generate electricity, need to power
Speaker 1: a vehicle. So this is a steam powered car using
Speaker 1: a thorium laser to to generate the steam. Yes, wow,
Speaker 1: this is so Dr Evil drives his cars while I'm here.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Uh. And and Charles Stevens, who's who's
Speaker 1: the CEO of this company, said that it would weigh
Speaker 1: about five hundred pounds, which is the approximate weight of
Speaker 1: a regular car engine, so that checks out. And could
Speaker 1: He said that it could run on eight grams of
Speaker 1: thorium for about a hundred years a k a. Some three.
Speaker 1: According to their website, they're working on scaling the system, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, they call the max Fee Laser. I
Speaker 1: think I'm saying that right, Wow, max f laser. Max
Speaker 1: Flazer for use in all kinds of vehicles, you know,
Speaker 1: boats and airplanes and spaceships and etcetera. And also for
Speaker 1: powering homes and businesses. Huh well, I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: the idea of some sort of thorium based power for
Speaker 1: homes and businesses is not on your usual No, that's
Speaker 1: the more common way of thinking about thorium fueled where
Speaker 1: we stand on this well. Digital Trends reached out to
Speaker 1: Laser Power Systems back in and they responded that Stevens
Speaker 1: didn't and I quote have time to comment. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: how busy that cat is. Huh. But Laser Power Systems
Speaker 1: is still soliciting to investors through their website to help
Speaker 1: them create and test their designs for the system, of
Speaker 1: course they are. Yeah, I mean he's not too too busy.
Speaker 1: Ticks some money, right, Yeah, I guess I'll have to
Speaker 1: register my skepticism not knowing that much more about it,
Speaker 1: but I mean, at least sounds interesting to read more
Speaker 1: about that. I don't know that. I don't know that
Speaker 1: the proposed system is implausible. I do wonder more. Again,
Speaker 1: I mean, we still have some of the same issues
Speaker 1: that we have with the other examples we've talked about about.
Speaker 1: You know, you do have to still we are still
Speaker 1: talking about radiation. We are still we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: need for shielding and all that kind of stuff. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the question I have ultimately is
Speaker 1: assuming that actually goes forward, what will the law have
Speaker 1: to say? But we're still not there yet. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: way back from the law needing to worry about it.
Speaker 1: Is it legal to possess enriched uranium and the trunk
Speaker 1: of your car? Are you asking for a reason? No,
Speaker 1: I mean because if you're about to tell me that
Speaker 1: we need to go and unload your car, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say I am not going there. I'd have to check,
Speaker 1: but I suspect not. I consider you all friends, but
Speaker 1: y'all aren't those friends for me. I've got other friends
Speaker 1: I called to help dispose of my enriched uranium. That's fair,
Speaker 1: thank you, Joe. Okay, But while these concept cars are
Speaker 1: not a real thing, and maybe we shouldn't never expect
Speaker 1: them to be a real thing. Nuclear powered rolling vehicles
Speaker 1: there are actually nuclear powered rolling vehicle is just not
Speaker 1: so much on planet Earth. Are you referring to the
Speaker 1: Curiosity rover? Well, yeah, and just generally the idea of
Speaker 1: using some form of nuclear based propulsion in space vehicles. Sure,
Speaker 1: because that's really clever because again, like you can't there's
Speaker 1: no gas stations on Mars that we've found, and if
Speaker 1: you're sending a probe out to the deep reaches of space,
Speaker 1: they are on any rest stops. So that we found
Speaker 1: that we found, right, So I remember back in the day,
Speaker 1: I think years ago, we were recording a podcast about
Speaker 1: the Curiosity Rover and I made a mistake. I just assumed.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, well, it's powered by solar panels
Speaker 1: like all, you know, like rovers are. But then I
Speaker 1: was like, better check that, and I went back and
Speaker 1: checked it out. It turns out that was not true.
Speaker 1: It was powered by it. It has a nuclear based
Speaker 1: power source, but it's not like the nuclear reactors that
Speaker 1: power our homes, right, It's not based on fission. It's
Speaker 1: based on just radioactive decay. Uh. So you can think
Speaker 1: of it kind of like a battery in nuclear battery. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's five kilograms in mass or about ten pounds in weight. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it is consists of plutonium, one of my favorite plutonium.
Speaker 1: Absolutely lovely, isn't it? Is it not? And it uses
Speaker 1: what's called a thermocouple, which is something that you will
Speaker 1: find in a lot of electronics here on Earth, specifically
Speaker 1: digital thermometers. Uh. And it's principle is pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: you take two different metals, all right, and you join
Speaker 1: them in a couple of different places, and the difference
Speaker 1: in temperature from one joining to another creates voltage, which
Speaker 1: is a difference in charge. Difference in charge means electrons
Speaker 1: can flow, you can create a current. Now, with digital thermometers,
Speaker 1: we use this to UH to indicate what the temperature
Speaker 1: is in a room. So the temperature difference between the
Speaker 1: two joints ends up creating this vole digit electricity flows
Speaker 1: and the amount of electricity that flows indicates what the
Speaker 1: temperature is, which is told to you in a little
Speaker 1: digital readout, because clearly just saying it's this much electricity
Speaker 1: would be meaningless to us, but it would end up
Speaker 1: translating that into saying it is seventy two degrees in
Speaker 1: this room. I'm using the example in room it is
Speaker 1: four pies hot. So anyway, a thermocouple is used in
Speaker 1: the Curiosity rover as well. So the plutonium to thirty
Speaker 1: eight ends up generating heat, and that heat is used
Speaker 1: to heat the one of the joints on the thermocouple
Speaker 1: and the other one is unheated, so that you get
Speaker 1: this difference in heat that creates the voltage, which then
Speaker 1: allows electricity to flow, which allows the UH, this nuclear
Speaker 1: battery to provide electricity to the Curiosity rover system, and
Speaker 1: it's called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator or RTG. Right, And
Speaker 1: it's not just the Curiosity Rover that has used this
Speaker 1: as a power source for space right. In fact, we've
Speaker 1: used this since the Apollo program. We've used also on
Speaker 1: things like UM the Voyager probes. But in the case
Speaker 1: of Apollo, it was not the device that created electricity
Speaker 1: for the actual capsule. Uh. This is still dealing with
Speaker 1: a radioactive material that is decaying over time. It was used, however,
Speaker 1: on the Moon's surface. So you know, Apollo's twelve through seventeen,
Speaker 1: they had lunar landers that were designed to UH to
Speaker 1: create operations on on the Moon. They used RTGs to
Speaker 1: generate the electricity they needed for the experiments they did
Speaker 1: on the Moon's surface as well as the lunar rovers
Speaker 1: I believe to charge them. So out of all the
Speaker 1: ones that we created for the Apollo program, five of
Speaker 1: them are on the surface of the Moon. One of
Speaker 1: them is in the Pacific and that's thanks to Apollo thirteen.
Speaker 1: So if Tom Hanks never made that movie, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had the RTG. And actually I don't think it
Speaker 1: works that way, uh, Buddy. At the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Pacific is enjoying a plutonium snack at this very moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you seen the host? I think this is how
Speaker 1: it starts at any right, No, No, obviously I am
Speaker 1: making light of what was really a very serious situation.
Speaker 1: RTGs clearly like again, you've got plutonium there. There is
Speaker 1: a concern. In fact, there were a lot of concerns
Speaker 1: about using RTGs in the space program, specifically because there
Speaker 1: was a fear that if there were a launch issue,
Speaker 1: then you could potentially spread a radioactive material over a
Speaker 1: very large space, depending upon how high in the altitude
Speaker 1: you were when that problem happened. It's similar to the
Speaker 1: one of the concerns about flying a plane with the
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor. Right. Uh. Now, we have still used RTGs,
Speaker 1: including the hygens probe, which was sent to Titan, Saturn's moon.
Speaker 1: Titan I did an episode of Forward Thinking about that
Speaker 1: where we talked about what the hygens probe did and
Speaker 1: the images that sent back. The Cassini hygens probe used
Speaker 1: an RTG for it's electrical power, So it's something that's
Speaker 1: still being used. And again it's using radioactive decay, not
Speaker 1: the process of fission, in order to generate that power.
Speaker 1: So it's very different. Right, So these RTGs are going
Speaker 1: to be great to do something like drive around and
Speaker 1: power electronics on the Curiosity River, but you probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: use something like this for a vehicle here on Earth.
Speaker 1: Probably not. I mean you are still talking about radiation again,
Speaker 1: that's an issue. Also, radioactive decay over time is like
Speaker 1: you have a certain amount of radioactive material, right as
Speaker 1: a decay is less of that is going to decay,
Speaker 1: thus giving you the ability to create electricity. However, whatever
Speaker 1: method you're you're playing on using um and the decay itself,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this, you know, we talked about truly random.
Speaker 1: So the decay itself is something that is not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be consistent over the entire lifetime of the
Speaker 1: nuclear battery or whatever you want to call it. So
Speaker 1: for a vehicle, it's not necessarily going to produce an
Speaker 1: enough electricity to power something like a spacecraft uh for
Speaker 1: uh an an indefinite amount of time. Nor is it
Speaker 1: going to be something that's always going to be dependable.
Speaker 1: And if you think your car is undependable, now, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a long slow burn of it's it's stronger's
Speaker 1: engine whether yeah, every morning, I don't who knows if
Speaker 1: it's decayed enough for me to drive? I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a crazier and dumber idea. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear it. What if we just basically use
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs to sort of push us through space? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe, you say that's a crazy idea, as
Speaker 1: if you were the first person to have it. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. No, Uh, this was something and and it's
Speaker 1: funny because just before we started recording this, we were
Speaker 1: chatting with Joe, and I were chatting with Jason, who's
Speaker 1: our our kind of our head hauncho here at how
Speaker 1: stuff works. And we were talking about a particular project
Speaker 1: called Project or Ryan, which before it was Project or Ryan,
Speaker 1: was just this crazy idea some guys had about, you know,
Speaker 1: a tom of reactions create there's so much energy associated
Speaker 1: with them, right, I mean, you see an atomic bomb,
Speaker 1: you realize that's an enormous amount of energy that's released. Um,
Speaker 1: And we talked about that being like the uncontrolled release
Speaker 1: of energy from an atomic reaction fission specifically in that case. Well,
Speaker 1: also you could do it with fusion like a hydrogen bomb,
Speaker 1: and there were some folks who were looking at hydrogen
Speaker 1: bombs and thinking, so much energy is being released, what
Speaker 1: there were a way for us to harness that, not
Speaker 1: in a reactor, but to actually use that to propel something.
Speaker 1: One of these guys name was A Theodore Taylor, who
Speaker 1: had worked on weapons programs at Los Alamos and UH. He,
Speaker 1: along with several other physicists, started looking at the possibility
Speaker 1: of using hydrogen based explosions to propel as spacecraft into space.
Speaker 1: We call it project orion. This was this was an
Speaker 1: idea that was brought under the auspices of DARPA, which
Speaker 1: was ARPA at the time, UM in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and essentially the idea was that you would drop behind
Speaker 1: you a pellet of some sort and a hydrogen bomb.
Speaker 1: The bomb explodes, it ends up plasma ifying the pellet,
Speaker 1: and the combination ends up propelling you further along your path.
Speaker 1: They called it pulse propulsion nuclear clear pululse propulsion, meaning
Speaker 1: we're talking a series of hydrogen bombs, not not you
Speaker 1: drop one bomb like a whole bunch. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen geeks on the internet discussing this is one potential
Speaker 1: way to get a spacecraft to keep accelerating towards the
Speaker 1: speed of light as you you have nuclear pulse propulsion
Speaker 1: continually blowing up behind it. Yeah, clearly this would be
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing to uh for lift off, you know,
Speaker 1: but if you were using I don't know, chemical rockets
Speaker 1: to get into orbit and then switch to this method
Speaker 1: of propulsion, and that would be one thing. If you
Speaker 1: were using one dangerous thing, it's less dangerous than an
Speaker 1: actual nuclear explosion on the planet's surface. But yeah, um
Speaker 1: so yeah, that mean it is an interesting idea that
Speaker 1: no one has really pursued since that time. But there
Speaker 1: were people, I mean like top scientists really working on
Speaker 1: the potential of using this as a means of getting
Speaker 1: getting into space. Well, this again was in the middle
Speaker 1: of that atomic age where everyone was like yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Then again, I don't know, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: has necessarily been discredited as a future potential propulsion system.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's well, the only thing I would imagine
Speaker 1: it being uh discredited would be in the sense of
Speaker 1: arms treatise, because you would have to build huge numbers
Speaker 1: of hydrogen bombs as your propulsion system. Meanwhile, the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: rest of the world has to sit there and say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fine for you to build an arsenal of hydrogen
Speaker 1: bombs that could destroy the world three times over because
Speaker 1: you're just going to Mars. Sure, and there's also I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure international laws against putting hydrogen bombs in space.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, Yeah, the weaponization of space is completely against
Speaker 1: the rules. There was a space treaty. Weapons of mass
Speaker 1: destruction are not allowed in space, let alone a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of them. So I think that for I mean, also,
Speaker 1: just just the material science of trying to build out
Speaker 1: a spaceship that could withstand multiple hydrogen bombs going off
Speaker 1: right behind it into perpetuity sounds difficult. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure like years will have it worked out. It
Speaker 1: also makes me think like one of the one of
Speaker 1: the byproducts of atomic explosions tends to be an electromagnetic pulse,
Speaker 1: which generally speaking, is not good for electronics. So I'm
Speaker 1: curious as to how that gets avoided to Okay, that's fair,
Speaker 1: that's fair, But how about a different version. How about
Speaker 1: the thermal nuclear drive. It's another proposed method of propulsion
Speaker 1: using nuclear power. Right, Well, this would be using nuclear
Speaker 1: reactions to generate heat, yeah, to trigger a reaction engine. Right. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you are superheating a gas and then you have a
Speaker 1: nozzle that that allows you to exhaust that superheated gas.
Speaker 1: You know, by superheating it, you are increasing its volume, right,
Speaker 1: but if you have it pressurized so it can't increase
Speaker 1: beyond the confines of it. The pressurization increases increases, you
Speaker 1: open up a nozzle, allows the gas to escape. It
Speaker 1: creates an opposite force on the you know, in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, equal but opposite reaction type deal like fire
Speaker 1: extinguish in a cartoon, yep, exactly, and then you just
Speaker 1: you know, you go super fast. That's actually the technical
Speaker 1: terms it actually is. It's it's very difficult to spell.
Speaker 1: There's like a p in like fourteens is um. So
Speaker 1: the the information I've read has suggested that this approach,
Speaker 1: which by the way, would still be using nuclear fission
Speaker 1: for the actual reaction. So you'd have a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: the way you would on a power plant here on earth,
Speaker 1: except obviously designed for spacecraft. Um, but it would be
Speaker 1: in theory twice the would give you twice the performance
Speaker 1: of chemical rockets. However, it would also necessitate a much
Speaker 1: heavier UM spacecraft because you would have to have all
Speaker 1: the things we've talked about before, the shielding and the
Speaker 1: nuclear um fuel itself, and also the gas that you're
Speaker 1: going to be using as the propellant. All of that
Speaker 1: would still be consideration. But the US began exploring use
Speaker 1: of nuclear propulsion for spacecraft in the nineteen fifties. They
Speaker 1: formed the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application called also
Speaker 1: called NERVA to explore the possibilities, and they proved the
Speaker 1: feasibility of such a propulsion system. There was even talk
Speaker 1: of using it in a manned mission to Mars back
Speaker 1: in the seventies, but it never very never went very far.
Speaker 1: By then, the space race was starting to wind down.
Speaker 1: People had essentially said, we've proven what we need to prove.
Speaker 1: Congress was cutting funding, so UH programs are being canceled,
Speaker 1: and this was one of the ones that got canceled.
Speaker 1: But I had heard some interesting stories about how using
Speaker 1: this we could get to Mars much faster than if
Speaker 1: we were using traditional chemical rockets, like within three months
Speaker 1: instead of eight, which is you know, pretty pretty significant
Speaker 1: um and and by that significance it also means that
Speaker 1: you expose astronauts to to radiation for much less time
Speaker 1: except for the radiation that they're being exposed to from
Speaker 1: the vehicle itself. That's a fair point. I was thinking
Speaker 1: specifically cosmic radiation, but sheer terrestrial radiation is still a
Speaker 1: very fair concern. But yeah, it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know, maybe in the future will be
Speaker 1: explored again. But anytime we get to nuclear propulsion, there's
Speaker 1: also always the concern about could that be used for
Speaker 1: other purposes? Sure, and and actually I'm sure that if
Speaker 1: you were shielding a nuclear propulsed I'm just gonna hearb
Speaker 1: that now. And yeah, totally U vehicle like that, you
Speaker 1: would come up with really great shielding for cosmic radiation
Speaker 1: as well. Sure. Yeah, I mean, uh, we're talking about
Speaker 1: protecting ourselves against very high energy particles, whether it's from
Speaker 1: you know, the again, a radiation from a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: or cosmic sources. Uh. There are some other means of
Speaker 1: generating electricity using nuclear processes that don't require you to
Speaker 1: undergo fission. Uh. There are these things things that are
Speaker 1: in development called nuclear batteries, not like the one on
Speaker 1: the Curiosity rover. That's a slightly different approach, but they
Speaker 1: again would also generate electricity through radioactive decay. But we're
Speaker 1: talking about harnessing beta particles, which are kind of midpowered,
Speaker 1: essentially electron They have a negative charge, they have very
Speaker 1: little mass, but they are expelled from the nucleus of
Speaker 1: radioactive isotopes. Yeah, so like in beta decay. For example,
Speaker 1: when carbon fourteen decays back into nitrogen fourteen, it has
Speaker 1: beta decay at objects a beta particle, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: it's got one more proton inside the nucleus. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you can use all sorts of
Speaker 1: different isotopes and clean things like heavy hydrogen as and
Speaker 1: hydrogen three, a couple of different versions of heavy hydrogen,
Speaker 1: but this is specifically hydrogen three we're talking about, and
Speaker 1: if you harness those using semiconductors, then you can actually
Speaker 1: use that as a source for electricity. But similar to
Speaker 1: what we were talking about before, since you're depending on
Speaker 1: radioactive decay, it could be too slow to provide the
Speaker 1: electricity needed to power a vehicle. However, this might be
Speaker 1: something that eventually ends up recharging your cell phone without
Speaker 1: you needing to plug your phone in, like your phone
Speaker 1: is constantly charging using a nuclear batter that could just
Speaker 1: be generating enough electricity to recharge your your traditional battery
Speaker 1: to keep your phone going so you never have to
Speaker 1: plug it in. Like your phone, your phone's battery would
Speaker 1: essentially last as long as you wanted to use that phone,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that most of us end up upgrading
Speaker 1: our phones after a few years. Anyway, for me, that
Speaker 1: is worth putting a nuclear thing on my face. I
Speaker 1: just hold it right up to your brain pan. That's
Speaker 1: that's where I like to put nuclear things. Well, they
Speaker 1: always said I had the brain pan of a stagecoach tilter.
Speaker 1: Is that what they always say? Okay, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's let's take one look at another possible use some
Speaker 1: nuclear power. Yeah, we have been talking all of this
Speaker 1: time about radioactive decomposition and also fission. Right, the only
Speaker 1: time we mentioned fusion at all was using hydrogen bombs
Speaker 1: to propel a spacecraft. But what about fusion reacts. We've
Speaker 1: we've mentioned that about them there. Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know we we have
Speaker 1: them yet kind of yes, yes, we do a fusion reactors, okay,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing we've done entire episodes about this,
Speaker 1: and they do work, just not efficiently at all. Right,
Speaker 1: it takes more energy to make them go than you
Speaker 1: get out of them, right, Or if you if you
Speaker 1: are able to get enough energy out where it's equivalent
Speaker 1: or more than the energy you put in, it's still
Speaker 1: only consumes a tiny percentage of the fuel, which means
Speaker 1: you end up with a bunch of unused fuel at
Speaker 1: the end of your reaction. And it's not it's still
Speaker 1: not efficient. You're you're getting more energy out than you're
Speaker 1: putting in, but you're not you're not using efficient use
Speaker 1: of the fuel itself. Uh. So we've seen some very
Speaker 1: dramatic improvements in the technology because for the longest time
Speaker 1: it was like you would pour in a energy and
Speaker 1: get six back from the reaction. Clearly, that's not going
Speaker 1: to be sustainable. You're just it's an energy loss at
Speaker 1: that point, right, Right, It's not an engine so much
Speaker 1: as it is an interesting science experience. It's it's a sinkhole,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. But we've gotten much better about that.
Speaker 1: So fusion could actually be far more um powerful than
Speaker 1: chemical rockets. Fusion powered rockets. Uh, you would be like
Speaker 1: the name sounds. You fused two nucleus is together to
Speaker 1: create a new one, and in the process that releases
Speaker 1: a lot of energy um and it could potentially make
Speaker 1: things like a trip to Mars take much less time
Speaker 1: than what it does now. So we talked about this.
Speaker 1: When the Curiosity was sent to Mars, it took about
Speaker 1: eight months I think, from the point where it launched
Speaker 1: the point where it's set down on Mars. And that's
Speaker 1: because again we have to wait for the ideal amount
Speaker 1: of time where Earth and Mars are going to be
Speaker 1: close to being in alignment to share the best window.
Speaker 1: And then I mean, obviously it's a rover. It's not
Speaker 1: traveling at the speed of light. It's traveling at the
Speaker 1: speed of rover, right right, So, and then if we
Speaker 1: want to send people there, the big concern was that, well,
Speaker 1: they're going to have to wait for two years before
Speaker 1: we get to that point where the Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: are getting close together again, because we won't have enough
Speaker 1: fuel to send them there and then have them come
Speaker 1: back and have that trip last a really long time.
Speaker 1: We have to make the best use of physics in
Speaker 1: order to conserve fuel and give them a chance to
Speaker 1: to get there. And get back. But we've mentioned this before,
Speaker 1: Mars is totally trying to kill you. Mars is not
Speaker 1: a nice place, is not going to be a cake
Speaker 1: walk for anyone who goes there, So you don't really
Speaker 1: want people to spend a long time there if you
Speaker 1: can prevent it. So one of the possibilities is using
Speaker 1: fusion based rockets, which could get you to Mars in
Speaker 1: around three months. In fact, the the UH the estimation
Speaker 1: I saw was that a proposed mission would take eighty
Speaker 1: seven days to get to Mars. You could spend thirty
Speaker 1: days on Mars and then it would take It would
Speaker 1: be like a n ady three day trip back to Earth.
Speaker 1: So you would end up having much less exposure to
Speaker 1: things like cosmic radiation UH, at least during the trip.
Speaker 1: Once you're on the surface of Mars you gotta figure
Speaker 1: out something there. But on the trip there you would
Speaker 1: be UH. You would spend less time in space. Therefore
Speaker 1: you would have less of a risk of being exposed
Speaker 1: to things like cosmic radiation, which is bad news. UM
Speaker 1: so interesting proposal. It would be fusing things like UM.
Speaker 1: The two different versions of heavy hydrogen UH, deuterium and tritium.
Speaker 1: The hydrogen two and hydrogen three in other words, and
Speaker 1: that would create a plasma. So you get these bubbles
Speaker 1: that are in this plasma. And this is the super
Speaker 1: weird way that I I think it's fascinating, uh weird
Speaker 1: way to actually create fusion. You got these bubbles in
Speaker 1: the plasma. You then capture the bubbles, you surround them
Speaker 1: with metal rings, and you use a magnetic field to
Speaker 1: compress that bubble. And the magnetic field is powerful enough
Speaker 1: to compress that bubble to the point where fusion takes place.
Speaker 1: The release of the energy from fusion is so great
Speaker 1: that it vaporizes the metal that has surrounded that bubble,
Speaker 1: and that metal is then that vaporized metal is then
Speaker 1: released in a nozzle to create the propulsion that pushes
Speaker 1: the spacecraft forward, which is kind of crazy. Vaporized metal
Speaker 1: as you're propelling can propelling exactly. Well. It makes me
Speaker 1: think it's kind of like a super souped up version
Speaker 1: of what the cylinders in a car engine do, like
Speaker 1: they compressed the gas and pelod ignites, except now we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about a different level of ignition. Well, and
Speaker 1: another interesting point is that when you get to the
Speaker 1: moment where that compressed gas ignits within a cylinder. Typically
Speaker 1: you're talking about a temperature that's higher than the melting
Speaker 1: point of the engine of your car. But because it
Speaker 1: happens so quickly, it's such a short amount of time
Speaker 1: that it is that temperature, it's not enough to actually
Speaker 1: melt anything. That's the same principle of this fusion approach, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't have anything on Earth that would withstand the
Speaker 1: temperatures were talking about, but it happens so quickly, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to. Don't worry about it. Put it
Speaker 1: inside a twinkie. So there are other other ways to
Speaker 1: create fusion rockets that would that would propel the spacecraft
Speaker 1: in a in a way different than the metal rings
Speaker 1: being vaporized and injected into space method I just talked about.
Speaker 1: But they didn't sound as science fiction, awesome crazy as
Speaker 1: the method I described, So that was the one I
Speaker 1: focused on. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta have you gotta have your standards, So you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't even mention I don't think ice breakers, No,
Speaker 1: I think icebreakers are cool. That I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: have the research sitting in front of me, so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense to talk about. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: gatherings where like a bunch of people get together and
Speaker 1: then is kind of try and have casual conversation in
Speaker 1: a very forced environment. You know very well what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Jonathan. They're talking about ships that probe the
Speaker 1: icy reaches of the poles when they have to they've
Speaker 1: got a pound through some ice because that stuff gets thick.
Speaker 1: So how do they generate enough thrust to crack the
Speaker 1: ice shelf and move through it? Well, they have these
Speaker 1: nuclear powered engines. I don't think all of them do,
Speaker 1: but some of them do it. Certainly the one that
Speaker 1: that found Franking Science Monster didn't obviously, No, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that there are some other, you know, vehicles that are
Speaker 1: similar to that. Were largely talking naval vehicles. Whether we
Speaker 1: ever see any other vehicles that that rely heavily upon
Speaker 1: nuclear power, Uh, I'm a little more than a little skeptical.
Speaker 1: I mean, it may end up being that you could
Speaker 1: argue there are going to be plenty of vehicles that
Speaker 1: will be indirectly powered by nuclear power in the sense
Speaker 1: that nuclear power will generate the electricity and you plug
Speaker 1: your car and sure, yeah, when you when you think
Speaker 1: about it, that way all. I mean, many electric vehicles
Speaker 1: right now are nuclear power, right right, But as for
Speaker 1: direct nuclear power, I am skeptical, but never seen never Well,
Speaker 1: if we want to go down that route, we could
Speaker 1: just say that all of our things are big bang powered.
Speaker 1: That's true. You just go back, go back far enough,
Speaker 1: like yeah, we're all related. If you go back far enough,
Speaker 1: eventually you have to you have to sit there and say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, for practical purposes, for this conversation, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to just ignore that and move forward. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I agree. I'm also kind of skeptical, at least at
Speaker 1: least for the near future. I don't see how it
Speaker 1: could be economically or or safetly feasible to. I'm so
Speaker 1: good at English words, you guys, I'm yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a degree in this. It would also be politically difficult to.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many a lot of barriers. But
Speaker 1: but I can certainly envision a future hundred tw years
Speaker 1: out wherein it becomes feasible due to material science and etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: one day I'm going to live on a nuclear powered
Speaker 1: fan boat and I'm going to dominate the swamps of
Speaker 1: southern Louisiana. I can't wait to hear about how you
Speaker 1: wrestled the Great robo Gator and uh claimed dominance of
Speaker 1: all your domain. I don't believe in your future, Joe,
Speaker 1: but I like it better than mine. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: I want to hear about what our listeners have to
Speaker 1: say about this, about this or any other topic, really,
Speaker 1: anything that you're you wanted to hear more about. Maybe
Speaker 1: you've heard an episode that we've done in the past.
Speaker 1: You think that we need to do an update. Because
Speaker 1: here's the crazy thing about the future. It keeps coming
Speaker 1: and then turning into the present, and sometimes we get
Speaker 1: things totally right, and sometimes we get things totally wrong. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you have anything you want us to revisit, or
Speaker 1: you've just got a new topic that you would love
Speaker 1: us to talk about, you should get in touch with us.
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