Why Nuclear Energy Could Power Tesla Vehicles Sooner Then You Think!

let's talk about nuclear-powered cars sounds crazy right and it is but hear me out because this is actually a really interesting topic we know that elon musk is a huge supporter of nuclear energy we know that nuclear power is a clean and efficient method for producing electricity and we know that to achieve the stated goal of tesla and elon musk to transition the world to sustainable energy we are going to need a hell of a lot of electricity one way to accomplish that is to accumulate vast quantities of batteries that we can use to store energy from sustainable yet somewhat unreliable sources like solar and wind but what if instead of constantly gathering and storing energy like a chipmunk we could produce a continuous stream of green electricity imagine an electric car that powers itself without any need for batteries or recharging what if a nuclear-powered world isn't just some pipe dream from the 1950s could it be the new key to a sustainable energy future let's try and figure it out okay luckily we don't even need to imagine what a nuclear-powered car would look like because the 1950s already did that for us america in the 50s must have been one hell of a time to be alive the sheer optimism the big dreams for the future where everything was automated electrified and powered by clean atomic energy there's no good reason that we shouldn't be living in the jetsons world right now and that's kind of annoying anyway here's what ford imagined the nuclear vehicle of the future would be the 1958 nucleon concept car unfortunately they never built anything larger than a 3 8 model but the idea is that there would be a nuclear fission reactor in the back that would power an electric motor each micro reactor would have a life span of about 5 000 miles before it had to be swapped out for a new one so instead of getting an oil change you'd get a reactor change another good one is the studebaker astral also originating from 1958 this is a single wheeled vehicle that is stabilized by gyroscopes and powered by atomic energy that generates a protective force field around the car and allows it to fly through the air and even into outer space now of course those concepts never happened but people did figure out how to make nuclear-powered vehicles those do exist the uss nautilus was the first ever nuclear-powered submarine launched in 1954. an onboard nuclear fission reactor powered two steam turbines that generated over 13 000 horsepower for the propulsion system and powered the electrical systems of the ship this allowed the nautilus to stay underwater indefinitely and marked a gigantic leap forward in submarine technology before this they were mostly like regular boats that could go underwater for a little bit but still had to spend the majority of their time on the surface then there's the ns savannah the united states first nuclear-powered merchant ship that set sail in 1959 this was a project launched by dwight eisenhower in the mid 50s the president wanted to show the world that atomic energy could be used for peaceful advancements in technology that would create positive change for humanity the savannah was a showpiece in a greater effort to demonstrate peaceful uses of atomic energy that included things like preserving food products using radiation yes that is real and no it's not as stupid as it sounds i googled that expecting to read about how everyone got cancer but turns out that irradiating food with ionizing radiation from gamma rays and x-rays does not hurt people or turn them into the incredible hulk but it does do a very good job of killing off microorganisms that cause spoilage and foodborne illness the more you know anyway that was all great and everything worked exactly as it was supposed to it was just too damn expensive the savannah cost 47 million dollars to build in 1959. there's been about 1 000 inflation since then so the modern day equivalent would be over 478 million dollars which is just shy of the cost of that super luxury yacht owned by jeff bezos that's so big it wouldn't fit under a bridge and got stuck in rotterdam if you have a hard time falling asleep focusing on daily tasks or working then today's sponsor endel is just for you i've been using endel for over a year because i was having trouble falling asleep so i'm excited to share them with you today i've had trouble falling asleep since i was in high school and the one thing that's made the biggest impact is endless science-backed soundscapes to soothe you into a deep sleep at night i couldn't imagine trying to fall asleep without endle now the number of health benefits related to sleep is enormous so this has made a big impact on my life the sleep portion is what i use most but they also have a relaxed mode and a focus mode the focus mode helps boost your productivity by helping you concentrate for longer periods of time i use it while writing scripts and emails i seriously cannot recommend endl more it's a fantastic app backed by neuroscience and brainwave studies and right now the first 100 people to download endo by clicking on the custom link in the description will get a free week of audio experiences so download endl now those free experiences are going to go quickly okay so if a nuclear reactor could power a boat in 1959 then shouldn't modern technology be able to scale that down to the level of powering a car you would think so and the answer is that we sort of can small modular nuclear reactors or smnr have been a hot topic the last couple of years this is something that was supported by president trump in late 2020 with a 1.4 billion dollar department of energy grant to fund testing of the new technology and that carried over to president biden who greenlit the construction of the country's first smnr in 2021 it has yet to be completed but they are working on it previous to this in 2018 nasa had already developed their own prototype of a small module fission reactor that could potentially energize a future moon base nasa's project kilopower reactor was very compact being only about a foot and a half across and about three feet in length in fact it likely would have fit nicely into the back of that ford nucleon so is this the futuristic nuclear generator that was imagined all those years ago well the nasa prototype only generated one kilowatt of energy which is equivalent to 1.3 horsepower so i would say no and that's unfortunate 60 years of technology and i could still push a car faster than any reasonably sized nuclear engine could propel it that's such a humongous gap between where we are and where we need to be that there's no reasonable amount of innovation that could solve this anytime soon it's just not going to happen and of course that's before we factor in the safety of it all unfortunately studebaker's energy force fields didn't pan out so it would be very difficult to prevent a chernobyl level atomic disaster every time there was a serious car crash the human race wouldn't even survive one rush hour in los angeles without entering a nuclear winter also wanted to give a quick shout out to our amazing discord community here is our question of the week and this was our favorite answer and here is the meme of the week winner join our discord community to participate next week through the link in the description below okay so a nuclear reactor in the car is probably a bad idea sorry if that's a disappointment but we do have some ideas about a possible middle ground solution and this actually ties back to elon musk and spacex the company radiant was formed by a group of former spacex engineers and they're in the business of developing highly capable micronuclear reactors the idea is that a unit the size of a shipping container would function as a lightweight cost effective portable zero emissions power source the company secured over one million dollars in funding last year and have already managed to prototype their micro reactor which is already generating one megawatt of energy which would be enough to power 1 000 homes for up to eight years so here's the idea if we can't power a tesla with a nuclear reactor could we recharge a tesla with a nuclear reactor if these things are as reasonably priced and portable as they're made out to be and only come with the footprint of a shipping container then it's hard to imagine why there couldn't be one at every tesla supercharger station or two or however many are necessary this solves two major problems with electric cars number one being dirty grids even if your car doesn't produce carbon emissions if your local power grid burns coal and you're using that electricity to charge the car then it's still problematic no matter where your electricity comes from evs will always have a much lower carbon footprint than ice vehicles but it would obviously be better with green electricity and number two is a big one that i hear from a lot of people when we talk about electric cars what if the electrical grid goes down if there's no electricity then they can't charge the car and they'd be doomed it's hard to argue with that one because to a degree they do have a good point but park a mini nuclear power plant at the charging station and that problem goes away completely is it safe though there's a reason that elon musk is such a massive supporter of nuclear power and that's because contrary to what many people believe it is actually very safe and non-polluting i think it's because of the giant hourglass shaped stacks that always have gas coming out of them that people think nuclear power plants create pollution this probably has a lot to do with the simpsons actually but there is no combustion involved in nuclear power the heat from the reaction evaporates water which creates steam which spins a turbine the only byproduct released is water vapor so those aren't smoke stacks they're steam stacks and then there's the meltdown if you know anything about chernobyl you'd know that was like 90 human error three mile island very similar deal fukushima was the only one that wasn't directly preventable by anyone on the ground at the time but we can learn from that disaster and use it to design more resilient nuclear systems that wouldn't meet the same fate in a worst-case scenario radiant is already tackling the meltdown issue by using something called triso particle fuel also known as the most robust nuclear fuel on earth radiant describes their reactive material as consisting of poppy seed sized capsules surrounding tiny grains of fuel these particles can't melt and if they were dropped on the ground they could be easily scooped up they also use helium coolant which uniquely doesn't become radioactive so a helium leak would be insignificant while the existing water cooled reactors and even newer molten salt reactor leaks would still be hazardous and have potential to contaminate the ground so i think that we actually ended up with a pretty reasonable answer through all of that no we can't power a single car with a nuclear reactor as much as we would love that but we definitely could make use of the latest in micro reactor technology to create zero emissions nuclear charging stations that are entirely self-sufficient and that would be pretty damn cool what do you think yay or nay to nuclear power let us know your thoughts in the comments below don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it that is so important for getting our content out to more people if you enjoy the content then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter so sign up the link down below at the teslaspace.com a huge thank you to all of our patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now you help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: The Tesla Space

Views: 124,456

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Id: wyH7UjO6qXI

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 14 2022