Nuclear Powered Vehicles: Cheap, Sustainable, and Potentially Deadly 

Side or mega projects idea: The Object 279, the Soviet tank designed to withstand nuclear explosions

The problem with building a safe nuclear car is that we have never been able to make a truly safe car to begin with

I've played enough Fallout to know where this is going...

"One pound of it could power a nuclear submarine for a long, long, time!" Wow! Bloody amazing factoid today, Simon! hahaha

"Lead and concrete are often extremely heavy" That's what I like about Simon's channels - I always learn something I've never known before

”Where are all the nuclear powered cars?” Just play Fallout and you’ll know😂

"...becoming the latest car accident to claim over 100,000 lives"

"The future of the past was so much better than the future of the future"😂😂😂

Not technically a car but one of the rovers on Mars is nuclear-powered, and about the size of a car.

Fun fact: The Ford Nucleon concept car had the dangerous bit in the rear. While never built, it did provide a template for the later Pinto. _Allegedly!_

"Here are the keys to your nuclear powered car. Also, we HIGHLY recommend not getting into an accident"

I nearly pissed myself !! Nuclear powered, made of plastic, glow in the dark bumpers, could hover over water, and had a force field. More like a glow in the dark driver !! Easily your best video yet Simon.

I just want the flying car from the Jetsons.

Chryslus and Corvega, the kings of nuclear powered cars. BTW, you don't need a fancy automated kitchen, just buy a Mr Handy.

2:00 - Chapter 1 - Nuclear concept cars 3:50 - Chapter 2 - Ford Nucleon 4:40 - Chapter 3 - Arbel symetric 5:45 - Chapter 4 - Simca fulgur 6:30 - Chapter 5 - Studebaker packard astral 7:25 - Chapter 6 - Ford seattle it XXI 8:20 - Chapter 7 - Nuclear powered ships 9:00 - Chapter 8 - The USS Nautilus 10:20 - Chapter 9 - The NS Savannah 11:25 - Chapter 10 - Advantages & drawbacks

K19 - we saw how well that turned out...

Simon "Studebaker Packard, I never heard of that last one" Everyone from South Bend "Hey we were relevant once, we still kinda have Notre Dame and....."

Studebaker was a very old company. They built horse-drawn wagons in the 1800's. They built electric cars decades before your parents were born and lasted into the 70's. Packard was a luxury maker, more deluxe than Cadillac for a time. The two merged.

I like how Simon says powah instead of power. It sounds so much more powahful. Almost as if Gandalf were saying it. Bless the blaze

Similar to this, it would be cool to see Simon and Danny cover the flying Crown Victoria featured in the hit film "Space Cop".

I'm definitely renaming this channel "Side Blaze" in my head

I hope that this innovative vehicle could succeed so that I can invest in this☢️🏎️🚀

Nook-you-lar powwa cahs, like the famous "Homer"!

Packard is well known in the US Simon and was an American luxury automobile marque built by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, United States. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Detroit-built Packard in 1956, when they built the Packard Predictor, their last concept car. Packard bought Studebaker in 1953 and formed the Studebaker-Packard Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. The 1957 and 1958 Packards were actually badge engineered Studebakers, built in South Bend.

If you think about it then it's actually surprising for Nuclear reactors not to be used in transport ships. I mean you could technically build a standardized size and fully self-contained modular reactor which, in case of a Ship sinking related emergency, could be dumped into the sea followed by automatically refloating back to the surface to safely recover it afterwards ( similar to how Federation Starships dump their ship Cores into Space should it go critical ). Such a modular reactor would also provide the possibility of transplanting it to a new ship should the old have reached its service time.

"For a Long, long, time" Love the precision.

First displayed at an art show, and relies on "forcefields" hmmmm, sounds legit

Is "finger tip" steering a term used prior to the standardization of "power" steering?

Nuclear car designers: we can do this we'll use imaginary technologies that don't exist but we want to exist. Self driving cars using 60s era computers... lol gps didn't even exist yet good luck navigating.

“Fingertip steering”. Apparently Simon’s never driven a non-power-steering car..... 😆

Simon Studebaker and Packard were awesome automotive manufacturers at the turn of the century. You should do a megaprojects on them and some of the automotive manufacturers in America at the turn of the century. We had some incredible and brilliant engineers before WWI and WW2 pushed them out.

Well technically we have nuclear powerd cars , just the reactors are in the powerplants and the cars are electric .

"Hey, did you see my friends nuclear powered car? He said it's the bomb😉"

"never heard of Studebaker Packard"? Whoa.

I'm suddenly thankful that nuclear-powered autos never caught on, seeing that Ford actually made a couple of prototypes. I lived through the eras of Fords that were notorious for catching fire -- I have friends whose houses burned down, due to Ford's cost-cutting, incompetent engineering -- and I can only wonder how many mini-Chernobyl Zones would exist today if they'd succeeded in this endeavor.

Would likely be easier to just have a home reactor and charge your electric car you could have something like an RTG or betavoltaic battery sealed in a car though

Never heard of Packard?? Simon... where have you been?? Packard was an American luxury car marque built by the Packard Motor car Company of Detroit, Michigan, United States. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Detroit-built Packard in 1956, when they built the Packard Predictor, their last concept car. With sales dwindling by the 1950s, Packard merged with the much larger Studebaker Corporation in the hope of cutting its production costs. ... Though the company would continue to manufacture cars in South Bend, Indiana, until 1958, the final model produced on June 25, 1956, is considered the last true Packard . During world war 2 they produced the Merlin engine licensed from Rolls-Royce for the P-51 Mustang.

Simon: "Where is all the neclear power?!" NIMBY's: *REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

🎶 I don't want to set the wooooorld, on fireeeee. I just want to start a flaaame in your heaaaart... 🎶

I've been curious about the history of nuclear-powered vehicles for some time, but I hadn't gotten around to digging anything up. And now, lo! Whistler and co. have dug for me!

I was always under the impression that the Savanna was a failure. The weight of the shielding and the cost of a crew trained to operate a nuclear power plant, made it impossible to carry enough cargo to make a profit.

Simon got a buffet of different channels. Never go knowledge hungry.....😎👍✌️

It should be pointed out that by "nuclear powered" you really mean "steam powered".

The Studebaker/Packard company was definitely before your time, young man. My aunt had a Studebaker that she drove from the mid 1950s until it became impossible to repair in the mid 1970s. I was never old enough to drive her Studebaker, but I did get to drive the Chrysler she traded it in on in 1976. (My aunt told me about once when her Studebaker died at a stoplight. The person in the car behind her kept honking their horn, so she went back and said to them, "Would you like to go up and try starting my car while I sit back here and honk?" My aunt was a sweet lady, but she was pretty quick on her feet.)

and I'm once again down the Simon Whistler rabbit hole. Thank you for producing such interesting videos.

Studebaker and Packard were once big car makers in the US. I went to a car museum in LA once and they had some old Packard roadster type cars from the 30s that were beautiful.

Simon powers his router via nuclear power in order to support all his channels. Allegedly.

I laughed watching Simon trying to hold back laughter and maintain a straight face while narrating

Simon: *mentions that Uranium 235 is a extremely potent nuclear* Me, Spiffing Brit, and others in the Energy production fandom: *Deep fry meme mode activated* THORIUM IS THE BESTIUM.

Simon is wrong about one thing. Thorium is actually a more reactive nuclear fuel. It generates more neutrons per fission than Uranium or Plutonium. It was just discovered too late to make a dent in the western and Soviet nuclear fuel cycles. However, India is actually developing their internal nuclear reactor designs based on Thorium because India is home to some of the largest deposits of this fuel in the world.

As far as nuclear aircraft go, the atomic bomber the US was working on only created four things: An immense hangar in central Idaho (still in use), a really weird shielded locomotive for use as a tug for the bomber, and two atomic-powered jet engines. The latter three are on display at EBR-1, the first reactor to produce electricity in the world, and the first breeder reactor, and the first metal-cooled reactor. Quite a scoop! I highly recommend a visit. Also, the Craters of the Moon national park is nearby.

This reminds me of the Chrysler Turbine Car. Whenever a new tech came out it was supposed to "change the world". Jay Leno owns one and there's a vid here on RU-vid. It is pretty cool when he starts it up. It is also a gorgeous bronze color.

And in "Today I Found Out" tomorrow, we find out about **Simon's** little internal nuclear generator that keeps him able to pump out awesome content to a bazillion channels! He **must** be nuclear-powered, eh Simon............ :)

I think a video on the internet and how much content is uploaded to the world wide web every day would be cool. Also, look at just how massive server centres and data storage centres are and how many of them there are and how many we're going to need to build in order to store everything that is being created.

the untold story of how life in traffic went about in the prewar Fallout universe.

Simon, you should look up the Packard Merlin engine, esp as regards the P-51 fighter. I think you may have heard of that.

The Chevrolet Corvette has been manufactured since the 1950’s and is largely made of fiberglass. Quite a few have been in crashes and many of those have been repaired and returned to the road.

Another major issue with nuclear-powered cars: nuclear reactors generally produce their energy as heat, and are not notably tolerant of frequent or repeated power level changes. Turning heat into motion tends to require large, heavy machinery (steam plants), and we've been unable to come up with a practical way to provide such a system for a modern car, notwithstanding early steam automobiles. There is also the matter of minimum critical mass; while one pound of U235 might be able to power a car for years, one pound of U235 cannot be made to fission.

I like how the reactor is placed well away from the driver in the Ford car. Is this telling us something? I was hoping for some technical info on small reactor designs. Someone below mentioned the Mars rovers. I thought they ran using solar panels, but imagine the minimal sunlight they get, often dust covered.

I'd love to see a MegaProjects on the self drive system in self driving cars.

Paccard was the company that made the American-made Merlin engines during WWII. They are the parent company behind Kenworth and Peterbilt

Nuclear powered planes were a thing too. The Soviet Union and the US tested them. They discovered the planes had one slight flaw, they were very efficient spreaders of radioactive contamination.

Thank you

3:10 oh how I remember when that was under construction. I had to double take and sure enough it's the high 5 mix master, 635 and 75 interchange.

"Fingertips steering" = hydraulic or electric servo power steering. Gotta remember the era, power steering was still in its infancy, and driving a car without it can be quite a workout.

An atomic jet engine was developed. The problem was the air accelerated through it became radioactive. The design did not use steam or the associated heavy equipment. It was essentially a normal turbojet with the combustion chamber replaced with controllable fuel rods.

12:10 Whoa that's a fantastic point I never thought about! I guess it's just not cost-effective right now, and maybe never will given advances in battery technologies? Still, a transition tech would be great for cargo ships!

Did you do a megaproject on fusion including JET and ITER? Fusion should solve a lot of issues mentioned here,,, if it ever reaches net power.

Reversing the flow of the Chicago river would be a cool video!

Excellent. Liked the subject.

Fission fragment reactors check out them . 1: invent them . 2: make them smaller. 3:? 4: install into car. 5 : profit.

Can't believe that he has never heard of a Studabaker. Maybe it's an American thing since it was an American car company. One of the many that couldn't afford to retool for new models like the big 3. This left them looking old. You see it today too. Tesla may update their cars often but the appearance hasn't changed. Once they get bigger it may come more often.

I had a chance to go aboard the Savannah many years ago when it was at the Patriots Point Naval Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Luxury was its standard. Not as large as normal cargo ships, it was quite a site to behold, almost blinding white. I would have loved to be a passenger sailing on her. she looked out of place beside an aircraft carrier, destroyer and submarine. She was later moved to Baltimore, Maryland.

I don't think car accidents would be the main danger; these power units would likely be nearly indestructible bricks of shielding material with the nuclear parts inside and be built to withstand all manner of collisions and fires. I think the bigger danger would be having hundreds of thousands of these things scatter around the world, in garages and junkyards, unaccounted for, and having grease monkeys and tinkerers cracking them open to play with them, resulting in orphaned radioactive sources popping up in random places causing lots of radiation injuries and deaths. This happens today with old X-ray machines and other hospital gear containing isotopes from time to time, and those are far less numerous and mostly tracked.

Simon I love your sarcasm. So cheeky!

Simon's business blaze side is strong in this video.

Nuclear energy is only 'clean' in short terms. As soon as the half way depleted and now dysfunctional core has to be removed and stored until infinity, things become much more complicated. One of the issues with Fukushima was, that their cooldown pools lost their controls, too, and the water evaporated, with all the radiation it had absorbed...

really wanted to see details of the reactors and power transfer systems.

I hate to nit pick, but there are a few flaws in this. First, the NS Savannah was not the second nuclear-powered ship. By the time she was launched, we already had about a dozen or so subs, including the Nautilus, Seawolf, and boats of the Skate, Skipjack, and George Washington classes. In fact, even the first nuclear-powered surface ship, the USS Long Beach, was launched about a week before the NS Savannah. Nuclear power is great for large vessels, like ships and subs. Ships have long been powered by steam turbines, and the primary loop basically just replaced the boiler (and was much safer). However, for smaller things, such as cars, they make no sense at all. The small, fairly efficient engines of today run on the expansion of the combustion products of gasoline or diesel. This is direct mechanical energy; the only thing left is to turn it into rotary motion. Reactors, on the other hand, release thermal energy - from the slowing down of fission products, or the decay of isotopes (either fission product daughters or as fuel, itself, such as in the Radio-Isotope Thermal Generator). Converting thermal energy into mechanical energy tends to require heavy, complicated equipment, such as boilers and steam turbines. The weight and size of the secondary side of the power plant would be prohibitive, even if you remove the boilers by going with the less-safe Boiling Water Reactor... let alone the weight of the shielding, which you mentioned. Also, while the weight of the fuel loaded is much less than the weight of gasoline or jet fuel, it's also there for the life of the core. The longer time you have between fuelling, the more you need to load in. And, unlike the exhaust in your car, the fission products remain in the core for its life. Just as a gut feel, I think a locomotive is the smallest vehicle that could sensibly be done with nuclear power... but I still wouldn't recommend it.

Finger tip steering was a way to advertise the new wonderful invention of power steering. See back in the olden days, you didn't have hydraulic or electric motors to assist in steering.

You need to do an episode on Studabaker now.

2:23 I feel you Simon, we all want flying cars and automated kitchens but sadly is not possible at the moment ... :(...something must have happened from the 50s onwards :D

How many channels does this guy need seriously!

It is always great to hear Simon mispronounce foreign words but even funnier when he puts the emphasis on the second syllable of Packard--one of the legendary manufacturers of luxury motorcars.

Simon, have you done any videos are the massive, ultra-modern greenhouse complexes in Spain and the Netherlands?

With a Thorium molten salt reactor, hydrocarbon based fuels could be synthesised as a direct replacement for oil fuel.

The real issue with nuclear-powered cargo vessels is that nobody wants to take the risk of subjecting nuclear power to the typical cost-cutting operating methods of shipping lines. A modern, ultra-large container ship has such a big diesel engine and so much fuel capacity that a nuclear power plant would increase the cargo volume, but unless you followed procedures and maintenance standards as rigorous as US Navy RADCON, you would never be able to guarantee safe operation. There's also the bigger issue of the fact that, even though the USN has never had a seaborne reactor accident, most people don't trust their word.

Many Science Fiction writers of the 1950s through about the mid to late 1960s frequently referred to passenger and cargo vehicles, not to mention combat vehicles, as being powered by "micro piles" in their books and short stories....Yeah I'm that old.

Car go boom-> City go boom

I see this only as a positive. I'm a long haul truck driver and if two nuclear powered cars collided in Chicago rendering the city a radioactive wasteland, I don't really think I'd lose any sleep over it.

Simon, you should read about Studebaker and The Packard company , they have a very interesting history 😉

Maybe a side projects episode on small nuclear power plants for small towns, and at the Murdo Base in Antarctica?

Glass reinforced plastic? Oh. You mean fiberglass 😆

My first thought hearing about nuclear cars was how many accidents we hear about on a daily basis on the news. What a mess!

We had a 1950 Packard when I was a kid. The car that you give to your grandson. They hired somebody from GM to help them gain market share and promptly went bankrupt.

How about doing a segment on thorium now that you brought it up. I think it needs to happen, and yes maybe in a car.

South Bend used to be a totally happening place. Bendix Aerospace in Mishawaka has numerous items in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in DC now.

IN the end its all about economics, i remember the hype about flying cars back in the 1960's.

That ship "Savannah" had really majestic lines...

SIMON DO A VIDEO ON THE ANTARCTIC SNOW CRUISER PLEASE!!!!