The government can power an aircraft carrier for years with one pound of uranium, why are we using gasoline?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon they were working on nuclear powered cars in 1958..let's get busy!

Answer 1

how much will a pound of uranium cost to use ,protect,dispose of

Answer 2

Aircraft carriers rarely get into car accidents.

Answer 3

There are a bunch of reasons uranium can't be used to power a car.  First, uranium generates heat.  On an aircraft carrier there is enough room for the heat to boil water and make steam at high pressures which turns a turbine.  The turbine then spins a propeller to move the boat or it generates electricity by spinning an electrical generator.  All of these things take up more room than is available in a car.

Second, a nuclear reactor generates a lot of radiation that needs to be shielded from people so they don't get radiation sickness.  The shielding is very heavy and takes up a lot of room.  There is enough room on an aircraft carrier for this shielding, but there isn't enough room on a car.  Also, if you forced enough shielding onto the car, it would be really heavy.

Third, nuclear reactors prefer to keep running all the time.  Due to some interesting physics, it is a pain in the butt to turn the reactor on and off every day as you would if you drove it to work.

Lastly, to make enough power in a small enough package to even fit into an aircraft carrier the uranium fuel must be highly enriched, weapons grade uranium.  This is not something you want in the hands of Joe Public.

One more thing, the smallest reactor currently on paper is a 30 megawatt "nuclear battery" being marketed by Toshiba.  A car only requires a few hundred kilowatts of energy.  A nuclear reactor is huge overkill for any kind of land based vehicle.

Answer 4

uranium is radioactive and very dangerous

oil is just expensive

hahaha "just"

Answer 5

call 911 two aircraft carries just hit head on doing 75 mph on old vine hill rd. handle code 3....good thinking

Answer 6

Google Chernobyl,that should pretty explain it all.

Answer 7

I don't want my car to have a meltdown.

Answer 8

Tree huggers

Answer 9

Great Point, Environmentalists have been fighting this Nuclear Technology for years and they have enough clout with Congress to manipulate them.

It is rediculous to believe the Oil Industry has somehow stopped this. Oil production is here to stay whether we drive on it or not. The Plastics Industry as well as others will still need Oil so alternative fuel would really have little effect on the Industry.

Answer 10

The successful protesters prefer we warm the globe and send our money to the mid-east.

France ...of all places... knows what time it is.

Answer 11

Personally, I don't want a bunch of nuclear powered cars out there. How hard would it be to use that uranium to create a nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb. However, I am for more nuclear power plants.

Answer 12

greed!!! and a little thing called safety! lol

Answer 13

Way too expensive and dangerous to be feasible.

Let's work towards hydrogen instead.