Why Nuclear powered trains aren't really a thing 

You seem to have missed the point of the video. It's about the impracticality of _nuclear_ trains NOT electric trains.

@@misterflibble6601 The quote is from a segment of the video talking about how electrification is a better idea than on-board nuclear reactors. And tot makes the classic mistake of excusing north America's lack of electrification, just because it's big.

And the Milwaukee Road

@@vulduv While I think there's a lot of reasons why America hasn't electrified it's freight rails, I think the one to keep in mind, in the context of the video, is the age these ideas came from. During the start cold war, Nuclear Energy was considered the new hotness, and long distance electrification was probably difficult (or at least building it was). It took the Solviet Union and Russia 70 years to electrify the Trans-Siberian Railway after all. It probably seemed like a better long term idea to put a reactor in a train rather than electrify, with the bonus of the idea being hype (almost a literal hype train, if you will) at the time is probably why it got so much traction. In our present day, America could probably retrofit their railroads to be electrified easy. ...if they could agree to do so. I'd also like to note that some of these ideas seem to use a engine that uses a larger gauge than normal, which would be counterproductive if you don't want to rework your rails to be electric.1:24 is a good spot to see what I'm talking about, the train car has two full floors and is as wide as a average living room.

@@strcmdrbookwyrm I was just responding to someone who had completely missed the point of the original comment. (And ironically, that guy was accussing the original commenter of missing the point of the video.) Also it feels like your reply was intended for the original commenter, and not me...

Or anything Gerry Anderson related

One Can simply put a nuclear reactor in the fire box instead of coals. It Is how nuclear plants Are made, except they have turbines instead of pistons

Welcome to French high speed rail

Under this same logic I refer to my mom's electric car as a coal-powered vehicle. It's probably still better in terms of carbon emissions per mile than a gasoline car, but it's not totally harmless and "guilt free" as electric vehicle owners like to believe.

@@quillmaurer6563 Not really. EVs aren't any better for the environment.

@@kozzy18 There's a lot of debate over that, but what's clear is that - especially if running on mostly coal-generated electricity - they aren't as clean as people like to think they are. I've thought it would be interesting to compare the CO2-per-mile of her electric car versus my motorcycle, I'm guessing they would be comparable. But that's not counting the energy and other environmental impact of manufacturing the electric car.

@@quillmaurer6563 I was talking about as a whole. The rare earth elements needed and their extraction is pretty detrimental. It's catabolic. If people were serious about reducing carbon emissions, they would want domestic manufacturing. Shipping and power generation is the largest CO2 emitters.

The 50s were good at that sort of thing in general. The who decade had a distinctive style of what's now become retrofuturism, fueled in part by the ongoing Space Race and the resulting boom in science fiction's popularity.

Yes, but a deep sea submersible have a few pro's going in it favor for this. 1) It doesn't require a lot of instantaneous power to move. Trains are really efficient but they still draw several kilowatts of power when accelerating. A fridge size nuclear reactor does NOT produce that power. 2) If something were to go wrong on a nuclear submersible, it will fall to the bottom of the ocean. Sure, it's a disaster but it's still at the bottom of the ocean where the effects are way more limited than they would be on land. There are also nuclear powered space craft. Again, they are quite small and lightweight so the argument "it can be done" is true but then you realize why it can be done. They are after all in space so should something go wrong they have all of space around them to disperse the radiation into background noise. And they are light and doesn't need to accelerate in minutes, they can spend days accelerating. Something a train can't afford. And they don't need shielding to protect what's outside of them. The only shielding they need are around their electrical components.

And they have just enough to power a microwave

@@RealCadde Those spacecraft use radioactive decay, not fission, and are far less efficient. They also do not use it for propulsion, but instead for electricity. Nuclear propulsion is possible and should be used, but so far it has not been. Somebody designed a hot tub sized nuclear reactor that can produce 1.5 MEGAwatts. It has not been built, but it seems like your concerns about size may have been resolved. Obviously, safety and cooling are the remaining concerns.

Why would a Diesel-electric locomotive be stronger than a 100% electric one? The electric motor that actually spins the wheel is pretty much the same in both cases. The power of a locomotive is nowadays usually only limited by traction on the rails and avoiding overheating of the engine. So a Diesel could haul more if it's just heavier hence has more traction, but the electric locomotive could be made heavier artificially to get the same result.

It took 70 years for the Russians, and they havent electrified the rest of their networks. So it may not be practicle.

@@jailbird1133 Considering the state of the Russian economy during the late Soviet era and the 90s, that's probably more a mark of how feasible it is than how unfeasible it is. The American economy could absolutely do it.

train is already a moving power plant connecting it to another power plant is not only redundant ,it is stupid

Hahaha 😂😂😂 yeah

Yeah, no one was hurt. *But did get radiation posioning after wards.*

@@ThatScottishAtlantic57 💀

@@ThatScottishAtlantic57 they would not do that in TTTE lmao

Meanwhile, Plainly Difficult is working on a new research project.

It's not horrible, unless the Engineer leeches out cash meant for armoring the reactor

Oddly enough, the train I saw in Fallout New Vegas looked like an EMD F7.

@@jd_the_cat *Image searches:* Huh. Never came across that in my time playing New Vegas, but that's definitely an F7.

That's precisely right, most of the nuclear hysteria comes from those on the left side of the aisle (no intention to get political just stating the facts) that believe that every and anything should run on solar and wind. They take for granted and dismiss the promise of the atom, why would have nuclear ships, trains, aircraft, maybe even cars, if it weren't for the unnecessary fear of nuclear power.

People really don't know that most nuclear waste is low level radiation waste and that it would be safe quite quickly, bit hey, let's gloss over the deaths attributed to general poisoning due to other non renewable sources like the mentioned coal and oil, it's not like they are any safer....

Your so called safety is in the mind. At the end of the day the outcome of the disaster is bigger than the risk. If a plane crashes and it is the lowest statistic in mass transit it doesn't have to cause a disaster outside the potential deaths of those on board thanks to the pilot. But Nuclear Reactors aren't meant to take a major battering and the prime example of recent times is the Tsunami in Japan that caused a meltdown. Now it was contained better than Chernobyl but this is concentrated energy in one place people can choose to live away from and evacuate. Trains would put the risk on the move and suddenly you can't be sure where is safe and when. It's unnecessary to create a situation where we'll be living in fear.

@@ChimpManZ1264 Have you seen nuclear transportation carriages? Indestructible. Just put a reactor in one instead of waste and no amount of crashing will cause any damage whatsoever. Fukushima was a rare natural disaster and even then the primary cause was...improper construction decisions by placing the back up generators under the water table. I'm not sure how many Tsunamis are going to happen in Siberia or the mid west US. I don't trust the Russians with lighting a candle though tbf.

@@cleanerben9636 Nothing is indestructible. There is a limit. Yes I have seen transportation that survives head on collisions but these aren't carrying they are the reactor and they are a walking disater. We don't live on Jupiter and I don't want to.

More realistic than just an overhead power line? The difference in price between a nuclear sub and a non nuclear sub is well over double the price, meaning this one nuclear trai engine will cost 560+ million, which would be over 560km up to 2,000km of overhead power lines.

@@Alex-cw3rz This nuclear substation would feed an overhead power line or a third rail, and normal electric trains would ride on the line. It would just be a dedicated power station for the railway. For 90% of the world, using power from the grid is of course more interesting, but my idea was for something like the most remote sections of the transiberian... There is probably other, and even better, ways to improve theses remote lines, but if you want to get all the advantages of the electric traction, I think it's a possible solution.

@@NQR-9000 most remote sections of transsib were electrified just fine without mini-Chernobyls along the way.

@@Volodimar So, there was a better way! 😅 All that makes the whole nuclear train idea redundant, I guess.

Until you derail and hit one

I was about to say the same. Nuclear trains work...provided the reactor doesn't move!

But they use overhead wires

@@FunAngelo2005 but the power comes from nuclear reactors

@@ww32 but they are indirectly powered

@@FunAngelo2005 They're indirectly use their nuclear reactor to power which is alt idea that works at least. And plus the nation is less hysterical vs USA

Also keep in mind that hydrogen isn't an energy source, just a storage medium sort of like batteries. It requires energy to create hydrogen from water, and that energy (well some of it, with some energy lost as heat) is then returned as electricity in a fuel cell. I suspect batteries would be more suitable for trains, as they aren't really weight limited - if one locomotive loaded with batteries isn't enough, you can add as many battery-filled "tenders" as needed.

I think they are actually in regular use on some smaller lines in Germany.

@@quillmaurer6563 You would need several rail cars worth of batteries for any meaningful range. That replaces weight/length that can be used for paying cargo. And unless you want to reconfigure the train to swap batteries, recharging time will be a nightmare. With hydrogen, it could still be stored onboard the locomotive just as diesel is today.

@@dgthe3 Depends on what "meaningful range" is. I could see a system with an electrified main line and unelectrified branch lines or industrial spurs, only needing say 10 or 20 miles range (or perhaps much less in some cases) could avoid the need for either using diesel locomotives or elecrifying those lightly-used branch lines. The battery tenders replacing paying cargo is a consideration, a trade-off, but if it saves cost on running it might be worthwhile. If say you're replacing one of your 20 freight cars with a battery car, but it saves 30% of operating costs (not just the fuel but also maintenance of the diesel engine), that's a huge plus. I don't know if it would be anything like that, if it would be that favorable, but I could imagine it being that good or better - someone more knowlegeable than me would have to figure that out. But just losing some cargo capacity (or the battery electric locomotives needing to be more powerful to haul their own batteries along with the train) might still be advantageous. As for battery swapping - that's the easiest part, and one of the reasons trains could do this easier than anything else. Simply put the battery tender on a charging siding, remotely raise the pantograph to an overhead wire (nobody having to leave the cab,) uncouple it, move over to another that's charged, couple it, lower pantograph, off you go. I can't imagine any other vehicle having it that easy, the great thing about trains is the train as a whole (not an individual locomotive) are entirely modular. The other option, depending on the network it's running on, is that part of the system could be electrified (such as the main line with unelectrified branch lines I mentioned), and the batteries could be charged with a pantograph while in motion just like any other electric train, so it would never be necessary to stop to charge. Again, another thing trains can do that isn't really feasible with any other vehicle (I've seen concepts of doing this exact thing with trucks, but that would be far less straightforward). Comparing hydrogen, I think that would be worse in the regards you're talking about. Hydrogen is more energy dense per weight, but far less per volume - the hydrogen and its tanks necessary for meaningful range for a train wouldn't be all that heavy, but would be very bulky. Would probably end up the same way with "tenders," this time tank cars. Refueling would be faster than recharging batteries (maybe), but more complicated, requiring hydrogen be provided at needed locations, either shipped there or generated on-site, and the train wouldn't be able to recharge while in motion like a battery train could. This would be similar to how it's done with diesel fuel, but having to deal with shorter range, much larger volumes, and either highly pressurized or cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which is both more complicated and more dangerous to work with than diesel. Electricity for batteries on the other hand can be wired to anywhere on the network much more easily, can be fed into a locomotive or battery tender via overhead wires without anyone having to get out of the cab, and recharging can be done while in motion using century-old highly refined technology. So in many cases I suspect battery electric locomotives would actually be logistically, operationally, safety, and effort-wise simpler, cheaper, more efficient not only than hydrogen but even than getting diesel fuel into locomotives (not even considering the cost of the fuel itself). Only needing what comes through wires is actually really helpful versus needing some sort of fluid fuel. A good point of comparison is my gasoline car versus my mom's electric car. The electric car can be a hassle for occasional road trips (though with fast charge stations and the car having almost as much range as gas cars that's not a huge problem), but for most uses she just charges it in the garage, no hassle whatsoever, while I have to go to a gas station once a week.

I'm not expert on the geography of Russia, but I don't think that they have a massive mountain range cutting the nation in half like the Rockies. So there's a possibility it's down to the fact that pure electric locomotives might not have the power to traverse such difficult terrain with the loads that freight trains in the U.S. do. So it's probably more complicated than "takes effort" or "more expensive than doing nothing", there might be some technical limitations that prevent it at the moment. Again I'm no expert on this, but that might be another possiblity.

The Milwaukee Roads electric divisions where built to deal with the Rockies in the 20s. The Virginian's where built to deal with the Appalachians with coal trains, again in the 20s, and Russia has several mountain ranges across the route of the Trans-Siberian

Eyyy I'm with you brother!!

They tend to derail... Considerably safer to just build a big stationary power station and use the trains to fuel it.

I thought of that too, and started to realize how much alike the systems steam engines and nuclear engines would be. (For example, for those who don't know, the firebox of a locomotive has to be underwater at all times to prevent it from getting to hot and damaging itself. Sound familiar?)

​@@strcmdrbookwyrm The Thing is that Steam Locomotives just exhaust the spent Steam. There have been Attempts at Condensing Locomotives (either to save Water or to make Trains harder to spot by Aurcraft), and all these Attempts were very unreliable because Condensers are to delicate for the Shocks and Vibrations encountered on Steam Trains. A PWR-Plant could theoretically be built to exhaust too, but you'd not only have to carry a ridiculous Amount of Water, but also couldn't use just pretty much any River Water as you do on Steam Locomotives. Just like Water Tube Boilers, the Steam Generators of PWR Plants are very sensitive to Water Quality.

@@Genius_at_Work The impurities of a river fill-up don't enter the core of a PWR (separate steam generator), but in a BWR it would; creates intensely radioactive steam with all the impurities.

But who knows what energy we will use despite us being in this world only for 200,000 years and still not having advanced technology to reach the moon or even other planets

Biofuels all have the same problem of being questionably sustainable since often the biomass comes from farming and most farming is not organic and thus not sustainable.

The trans Australia railway was not mentioned in the video. It also runs for "hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere".

Technically, we already have nuclear-powered trains. It's just that the nuclear reactors are stationary (in the form of power plants), and the trains are powered via overhead power lines.

The more tenders you have, the less freight you can haul.

@@jailbird1133 True, but the tender would be the equivalent of one freight car, so not a huge loss of capacity. A trade-off, but it is an option no other mode of transport really has. Was seen as acceptable in the steam era, or even the Union Pacific "Big Blow" gas turbine electric locomotives. Gives me another funny thought - just for the hell of it, have a battery locomotive pull a train of nothing but battery tenders and set a record for the longest unrecharged journey by a battery electric vehicle, could probably make it all the way across the Continental US, maybe even multiple times.

@@quillmaurer6563 Well technically that record is infinite if you include solar powered drones.

That is basically what's already being planned for small branch lines in Europe, Schelswig-Holstein has been operating battery powered commuter trains for a few years now and DSB is testing them.

@@hedgehog3180 Makes sense - figures that Europe would be the place to try it. Sounds like for passenger trains rather than freight that I had in mind, but same idea. Are they locomotive-hauled or EMUs?

You wouldn't need to stop for water on a closed loop system, the trains would need massive airflow through the heat output section instead. Heavier, but works as well. Could have been done to steam engines as well but I guess the need for coal stops anyway kind of negated the intent given the added weight.

We never entirely Left the age of steam. When it comes to generating electricity, coal, oil*, nuclear, and solar* all use the stated fuel as a heat source to power a Steam Turbine. *while these are also used in other ways at smaller scales (photovoltaic cells, internal combustion engines), as large, grid scale generators, my understanding is that the above is true. Which is to say, Electric trains are often basically steam trains, in a sense. heh.

@@laurencefraser It's like carcinization, but with power generation!

@@Kalvinjj I was operating under the assumption that there are two halves to the cooling loop, one which is closed and the other open. The idea being that you needed to refill the open loop, which I guess could suplement the air cooling.

@@strcmdrbookwyrm This is correct for a power plant system, it is indeed how open loop cooling works, it's a valid proposition for the heaps of power a locomotive would generate. A closed loop would be quite akin to a car radiator in other hand, not requiring refills, but I wonder about the size, likely would need heaps of forced air flow too.

Looks like I'm not the only one to recognize the music :)

@@widmo206 same

Thorium has all of the same issues since it produces just as much radiation. The main theoretical benefit to thorium is the lack of radioactive waste. And well “progressing quickly” means jack shit for a technology that has been “just around the corner” for 20 years yet still has seen no comericial use.

_I see you're a man of culture as well_

Meanwhile Germany figured out that wires are cheaper and better than H2, but you ought to go all in with wires…

Instead you'll need to modify your rolling stock and fueling system. Just electrify frickin lines!

@@Volodimar bonus for electrics: they have the same motors that your diesels have, but can keep them at the limit for longer, thus either pulling away better or pulling faster at little more cost… and you get back energy from dynamics…

A sub's reactor core is still pretty large. They last up to 30 years between fuellings because the fuel used is weapons grade uranium, very potent stuff compared to the low enriched uranium used by civilian reactors. NS Savannah is a good example to look at for a civilian nuclear vehicle.

RTG will give you about 10w.