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Thorium powered car

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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by Relax   » Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:20 pm

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Thucydides wrote:Heatpumps work just fine in Soutwestern Ontario, which is north of Michigan and New York State. Air to air heatpumps do have issues, but most installations around here use the ground or a pond as part of the circuit, giving a large heat sink/reservoir to work with.


Uh, if you aren't using the ground, ditch, well, pond, lake, stream, your COP(Coefficient of Performance) will suck abysmally. A value of 2 means that for every 1 Watt you put in you get 2 Watts of heat back. IE cut your heating bill by 50%. COP is legislated down here in moron land, at greater than 3.5. Absurd. A COP of 1.1 saves energy. Ponds work best though. Really cheap. All you have to do is dump a thousand feet of Polyethelene pipe in it and Viola, enough heat for a typical house.
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by Daryl   » Sat Oct 26, 2013 2:13 am

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Domestic heating in Australia is provided by a number of methods. Reverse Cycle air conditioners cool in summer and heat in winter, and are very efficient unless the temperature gets down to 5 degrees C or below. Gas heaters (flued and un flued), modern slow combustion wood burners, and of course straight electric heaters (cheap to buy but expensive to run).
Our wood burner does an excellent job for free and the reverse cycle air con is used very occasionally if we need a quick heat up. Mind you our ambient temperature falls between 16 and 30 degrees for the great majority of the time so it's not a big hassle here.
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by Ensign Re-read   » Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:20 pm

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viciokie wrote:http://www.adguk-blog.com/2013/10/car-runs-1-million-miles-with-new-fuel.html

While i strongly suspect the government is already using this type of engine, i dont see this type of car being used except by the super rich because it would ruin big oil in a heartbeat.


I only just noticed this old topic.
I am a big supporter of Thorium reactors.

But...
Check some more links, including the YouTube videos.
They illustrate why we FIRST have to recreate the reactor from the 1950's.

I argue that we then need to make semitrailer/cargotainer sized modular reactors.

Only THEN I would start the discussion of Thorium versus battery cars.

Let's not forget that all this is happening in the US without government support, and that the Chinese, etc. are going full speed on their R&D.


.
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The Celestia "addon" for the Planet Safehold as well as the Kau-zhi and Manticore A-B star systems, are at URL:
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/weber/.
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by cthia   » Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:08 am

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Relax wrote:
viciokie wrote:http://www.adguk-blog.com/2013/10/car-r ... -fuel.html

While i strongly suspect the government is already using this type of engine, i dont see this type of car being used except by the super rich because it would ruin big oil in a heartbeat.


Where to start. Oh boy. Ignorance still astounds me in its comprehensive ability to make people say stupid things and do stupid things out of ones innate laziness to even think for a few moments about the consequences of ones statements.

Lets not even address the first moronic tin foil hat statement, or the oil is evil statement, lets just keep it very simple, Try buying Thorium...

Lets assume you can actually buy said thorium and make this engine work, you can't buy thorium so its a non starter, but lets assume you can. Where would the first application for thorium, "magic" energy source be used? To power a car? Or to power nations? Hmm. Hmm.

Thorium has long been positioned to power non proliferating nuclear reactors for power generation. Problem is its efficiency stinks and one can still make "dirty bombs" with it just fine thank you very much. Not like "giant mushroom in thy sky bombs". Like seeding bombs in water sources, fields, cities, etc.

So great, buy a few hundred cars, remove the thorium, and create dirty radiation contamination bombs. Yup, that energy source is going to fuel the worlds cars... In someones utopian universe that is where no one litters or jay walks, let alone covets or kills.

Brilliant deductive reasoning. But deductive reasoning would require not being ignorant, lazy, or both.(Simple research on what Thorium is)

What a needlessly rude, astonishing and aggressive post. Do you normally address women that way?

Appalling. An apology seems in order, if she would care for it at such a late date. Still.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by aairfccha   » Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:49 pm

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viciokie wrote:http://www.adguk-blog.com/2013/10/car-runs-1-million-miles-with-new-fuel.html

While i strongly suspect the government is already using this type of engine, i dont see this type of car being used except by the super rich because it would ruin big oil in a heartbeat.


This idea is the Ford Nucleon squared. Even leaving aside issues like problems of mini-turbines, this unexplained thorium laser, minimum critical mass or the minor issue that thorium-232 in itself isn't fissile so you have to use a starter fuel (U, Pu?) and a breeding reactor to get U-233 from Th-232...

Relax wrote:Thorium has long been positioned to power non proliferating nuclear reactors for power generation. Problem is its efficiency stinks and one can still make "dirty bombs" with it just fine thank you very much.


... one of the reasons why thorium is often touted as proliferation-safe is the very same reason why it isn't really used: Breeding U-233 from thorium also yields U-232 which in turn has a few nasty gamma emitters in its decay chain. This is annoying enough in a stationary reactor but a likely showstopper in mobile applications. Is there any reference to shielding calculations?

And then there is this gem:
a vehicle that will wear out before the engine. there is no oil, no emissions – nothing.”
Does this mean the engine (or the entire car?) has no moving parts? Usual bearings benefit from some form of lubrication.

Memo to self: Google first, write second. Some background on and a further demolition of this story can be found here.
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by The E   » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:22 pm

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One question I'm asking myself about these things is, if nuclear-powered transportation is desirable, why not do it like the french did with the TGV and leave the nuclear parts of the power generation inside large, safe structures and ship the energy around to where it's needed?

In other words, how is a live nuclear reactor in a car better than a battery pack that is charged through a power outlet that receives its power from a regular power station somewhere else?
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:59 pm

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The E wrote:One question I'm asking myself about these things is, if nuclear-powered transportation is desirable, why not do it like the french did with the TGV and leave the nuclear parts of the power generation inside large, safe structures and ship the energy around to where it's needed?

In other words, how is a live nuclear reactor in a car better than a battery pack that is charged through a power outlet that receives its power from a regular power station somewhere else?


When someone has a battery pack economical method that allows for 500 miles plus in a day. If you had asked me this question 10 years ago I probably would have said 1,000 miles in 15 hours or less.

Which this system isn't. Just another pie in the sky idea like a reasonable electric powered car(Leaf at 75 miles a charge isn't even close, IMNHO).

Though some of the stuff Relax has been posting is making me wonder about some of it. Though the cabling and power converters required probably make it questionable for a motorcycle. As I haven't owned a car since the 80's ...

Also you have to convince the "greenies" and such that nuclear electric power generation is safe to use. A daunting task. Ask Germany or Japan.

Have fun,
T2M
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A: “No. That’s just the price. ...
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by The E   » Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:07 am

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thinkstoomuch wrote:When someone has a battery pack economical method that allows for 500 miles plus in a day. If you had asked me this question 10 years ago I probably would have said 1,000 miles in 15 hours or less.

Which this system isn't. Just another pie in the sky idea like a reasonable electric powered car(Leaf at 75 miles a charge isn't even close, IMNHO).

Though some of the stuff Relax has been posting is making me wonder about some of it. Though the cabling and power converters required probably make it questionable for a motorcycle. As I haven't owned a car since the 80's ...

Also you have to convince the "greenies" and such that nuclear electric power generation is safe to use. A daunting task. Ask Germany or Japan.


As a german greenie who is decidedly pro nuclear energy, I take offense with that statement :P

That being said, sure, the battery model has its drawbacks in that it is ill-suited to the needs of people living in rural areas. But it's great in areas with the necessary infrastructure, and introducing it there can alleviate the pressures in terms of fuel demand, which makes would lower the cost of operating a standard IC engine in the areas where said infrastructure does not exist.
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Re: Thorium powered car
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:39 am

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The E wrote:As a german greenie who is decidedly pro nuclear energy, I take offense with that statement :P

That being said, sure, the battery model has its drawbacks in that it is ill-suited to the needs of people living in rural areas. But it's great in areas with the necessary infrastructure, and introducing it there can alleviate the pressures in terms of fuel demand, which makes would lower the cost of operating a standard IC engine in the areas where said infrastructure does not exist.


"Greenie" and "Treehugger" are to me in the same category as "Denier" and such.

IMO you are neither at least as I use the term. You are willing to look to what makes sense. Your values to judge what makes sense are different than mine. You are willing to to think about it though which is the important thing.

Unlike that American I met at Mount Rainer Nation Park to whom everything was the logger's fault. "I saw a logging truck this morning." Or "We need to spend a family's yearly average income to save each desert turtle from the solar molten salt plant." Which too many US politicians pander to. Just like too many in the pander to "Deniers" (of which there are precious few around here). Though I have been called it.

Have fun,
T2M
-----------------------
Q: “How can something be worth more than it costs? Isn’t everything ‘worth’ what it costs?”
A: “No. That’s just the price. ...
Christopher Anvil from Top Line in "War Games"
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