James May of Top Gear presents an interesting idea on how to make electric cars practical:
1: Make ’em hybrids
2: And give em the long antenna-like power connectors that are used on dodge cars, and build overhead power systems along major roadways.
The cars would use gas engines along minor roads, and overhead electrical power along major roads. This would reduce or eliminate the need for the large, massive, crappy batteries that currently make electic cars useless jokes. He also suggests that the cars be given “autopilos” so that they could drive themselves while on the overhead power grid. To provide the electicity, he suggests nuclear power, in particular fusion. And to provide the fusion power, he suggests that the US go back to the moon.
So far, it seems like an intriguing set of ideas. But its here where his lack of science knowledge comes into full force, and throws the whole idea (and his editors ability to, you know, edit) into serious doubt:
President Barack Obama should reverse his decision to cut funding for further Nasa Moon missions. Once established on Luna we can mine it for tritium, or hydrogen-3, which could be the basis of ultra-clean nuclear fusion. One space shuttle-load of tritium could, I’m told, satisfy the entire energy demand of America for a year.
Tritium? Really? Not, you know, helium-3?
Sigh.
16 Responses to “The Dodge-Car Answer”
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Shouldn’t we get nuclear fusion working at level suitable for commercial use before we start mining the moon?
The problem is, nuclear fusion without helium-3 is *really* hard. Nuclear fusion with helium-3 is supposedly “easy” (to certain definitions of “easy”). But there’s virtually no heluum-3 on Earth, while it can be processed out of the lunar soil with some ease (again, to certain definitions of “ease”).
So it seems that the only way to make nuclear fusion economically viable would be to first have lunar He-3 processing facilities.
Imagine if the industrial revolution in Britain required coal-burning foundries and steam engines… but the only coal available in industrial quantities was in, say, China. Britain of 1700 or so would be left with the options of remaining a minor wood-burning nation, or manning up and sailing around the planet for something they’d have to expend a whole lot of blood and treasure to get.
To be fair, James May is a car guy, not a physicist or engineer of any kind.
yesterday was in Brüssel (Belgium, No goverment since 235 days)
a EU minister metting about the Rare earth element (ReA) problem
because China got a monopoly on it
one proposal to secure ReA source for Europe
is go to the Moon and exploitation for KREEP
so wat decided the Stupid EU minister ?
we gona recycling of reusable Rare earth element
so Billion of Euros gona dissipated to gain little amount ReA…
> To be fair, James May is a car guy
Sure, but doesn’t the Telegraph have editors or something?
Yeah,and I was just talking to someone a short time back about how we have to kiss China’s butt just to get lithium for better electric cars because they seem to have it where no one else does.
If fusion can be made to work then hydrogen can be used in internal combustion engines until batteries are practical. Until then it is all pipe dreams.
Jim
Hydrogen is a *terrible* fuel for internal combustion engines. While it clearly works… fuel storage is a problem with no known good solutions. Even with liquid hydrogen, the range you could get out of a car with a reasonably-sized cryogenic tank is pretty pitiful. While hydrogen has about 3.5 times the specefic energy of gasoline (143 vs 46.4 megajoules/kg), due to it’s pitifully low density, liquid hydrogen has only a third the energy density of gasoline (10.1 vs. 34.2 MJ/liter). This means that in order to drive as far as a gas car, a hydrogen car would need a tank three times the volume. But while gas tanks can be virtually any shape, cryogenic hydrogen tanks need to be spheres or hemisphere-ended cylinders, with thick walls and very thick insulation.. Additionally, such cars would need either active refridgeration systems or emergency relief valves to keep pressure from getting too high as the temperature of the LH2 ioncreases. This would mean that if you left your hydrogen car in a structure – your own garage or a parking garage, say – it would sooner or later start leaking hydrogen. Which would need to be evacuated, otherwise it might build up and cause an explosion hazard.
Fair point.
Jim
The problem is, nuclear fusion without helium-3 is *really* hard. Nuclear fusion with helium-3 is supposedly “easy” (to certain definitions of “easy”).
Err, no.
Helium 3 fusion is much harder, requiring significantly higher temperatures due to the larger Coulomb barrier. The theoretical appeal to Helium 3+Helium 3 reaction is that it does not produce energetic neutrons which generate induced radioactivity in the surrounding structures. He3+deuterium would be a little easier, but then there are deuterium+deuterium side reactions that produce neutrons, negating the whole point.
The idea of Helium 3 fusion, in the absence of any deuterium+tritium reactors (the easiest reaction), is a fantasy. It is a little like saying that single stage to lunar surface rockets would be really cool when you can yet even do single stage to orbit.
What about space solar power to provide electricity to the greenmobiles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiU9MibyBJ0&feature=player_embedded
> Helium 3 fusion is much harder…
Fusion reactors ain’t my schtick, so I was just going off of some faint memory. I could well be wrong.
Heavy Sigh. I’m so tired of these “if only we had XXX” arguments. Hell, if I only had Jennifer Anniston’s legs, boobs and face I’d be, well, Jennifer Anniston. And baring some really scary medical technology, that ain’t gonna happen.
We can generate electrical power from nuclear fission NOW. Why don’t do the things we can do NOW, NOW, and work to prefect better technology in the meantime.
A perfect example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
> Why don’t do the things we can do NOW
Because everything we can do NOW, is politically incorrect. Hell, we *should* have spent the last forty fricken’ years stamping out gigawatt and terawatt-class breeder reactors. But noooooo, that’d irritate the enviroweenies. How the hell such a pack of superstitious, ignorant screeching baboons managed to hijack the government is a tale that future historians will spend millenia argueing about at symposia discussing the fall of Classical American Civilization.
That was a rhetorical question, but yes to your response!
How long has a fusion reaction been sustained, and how much excess power was produced?
Back in the 7s0, when the first energy crisis was unleashed, NASA did a lot of work on hybrid cars. I ended the decade with about six inches of NASA stuff on how to build a hybrid system. What happened to all that? Right now, most of it seems to be available online, of course. No one is going to modify their car today because the cars are too heavy and the laws are too funny when the time comes to license the new vehicle. (I wish I’d the plans for converting a Vega to electric power. It used a 24v jet engine starting motor. I had a Vega with a melted engine.)