Our Nuclear Alternate Future?
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- Опубликовано: 6 июн 2024
- In the 1950s, as the Cold War was heating up and children were being urged to “duck and cover” from nuclear weapons, car companies seriously proposed powering their cars using lead-lined nuclear reactors. It seems like madness today, but while the world saw the threat of nuclear war, they also saw the seemingly limitless potential from nuclear power. Just how were these vehicles supposed to work and how far did they get to reality?
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Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear...
www.quora.com/What-is-the-lon...
large.stanford.edu/courses/201...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nu...
www.yahoo.com/news/ford-nucle...
gtspirit.com/2012/04/08/remar...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard
forum.studebakerdriversclub.c...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Se...
Original Ford Seattle-ite XXI brochure.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tr...
www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/is...
• Thorium explained - th...
#bigcar 
Авто/Мото
You don't get T-boned with this, you get A-bombed
*H-bombed. Dream big!
BOMB BOMB HYDROGEN BOMB
Imagine an engine meltdown with this masterpiece
Nuclear reactors are not bombs, they do not explode, in fact an explosion is impossible.
@@visekual6248 changed the joke in the name of science
@@mr-rk394 You didn't have to, but thanks.
In your garage
@@alphatrion100 "barn find" restorations projects will be a lot more interesting
Sure some dodgy garages would still try scamming middle class women by saying they need their spark plugs changed on one of these
"Fuel lines need replacing"
"Your diesel tank needs some work"
Ma'am your photonic resonance chamber is leaking radioactive unobtainum!
"Ma'am your wheels are photonically disconnected"
@@lorenzamccoy7512 that sounds like something a ratchet and clank character would say
Omg yes! Fallout’s wet dream 🤣
Can't wait for my Corvega!
@@andypre1667 Pffft Corvega, I'll take a Chryslus Rocket 69 thank you very much.
@@andypre1667 Nah, i will take a Chryslus Highwayman. It seems less explodey and has more style.
Hydrogen cars are way more dangerous.
Imagine having a nuclear car in your garage during the 1960s 😂😂
Quite the change from that earlier level of creativity to what we have now - "glue an iPad to the dash and call it good".
Looking at you Tesla
@@nathanjoseph4284 Tesla, classic car panel gaps with a sticker price many times that of a clean example of an old car.
@@nathanjoseph4284
Couldn't agree more with you. Tesla cars are just lazy scams
@@TheKenji2221 Not a total scam but massively overrated. On theyre webside a car that can do 500Km in 1 batterycharge is costing 40K. Waaaaay to mutch.
People like you depress me. Instead of seeing all of the cool things we’ve come up with in the last 20 years like practical Hovercraft, small helicopters the size of standard cars, aircraft that can fit entire shipping boats on them, and REUSABLE ROCKETS. You decided “Wah Elon Musk and his electric cars that are equivalent to gas vehicles (some of the first of their kind) put an iPad in their car (also a thing we’ve never really done) and I think that’s lame”
Go find some positivity to include in your life
I find it mildly spooky to think at some point in time, our timeline could have moved down a very similar route to fallout if we had of figured out some of this technology.
It always can, don't lose hope! We're just one stupid decision of a politician away!
no it couldn't have, nuclear power has nothing to do with weapons
@@AverageAlien It was discovered largely thanks to nukes though
Cold war didn't end, changed to nuclear power, have nukes,
*o shit*
I agree
“ When this baby hits 88 miles an hour, you are gonna see some serious shit!”😳😱🤣
Even more serious when it hits some shit at 88 mph~~~
The quality of this channel really puts 90% of RUclips to shame.
90% of the crap on Discovery & National geographic...
Yep, there are a few channels out there worth watching. This one is right up there as one of my favorites.
I couldn't agree more! 👍😀
True, but that is a low bar ;)
And LEMMiNO puts 99% of youtube to shame.
Designer: (Casually make some plastic models) This is a nuclear car
ENGINEER: ......
ENGINEER: [thousand-yard stare in 'what the fuck are these guys smoking']
Engineer : so how does it work?
Designer : well, that's your job
“The fuck you say to me?”
Don't even call a phisicist to see it...
In the words of Marty McFly “you mean this suckers nuclear?” 🙂
I've watched BttF but can't remember that line. Could you give more context from that moment?
@@alexwhite1624
Doc: "Unfortunately it requires something with a little more kick: plutonium.
"Marty: "Oh, plutonium. Whoa Doc, do you mean to tell me this sucker is nuclear?!"
It happens just moments before the Libyans (from whom he obtained the plutonium) come to kill Doc
Yannow, I was wonderin' if that Ford concept vehicle inspired the design of the DeLorean's plutonium chamber (as it appears in Part I, before Mr. Fusion).
@@sherlockholmes8822 I just gave them a shiny bomb casing full of pinball machine parts !
"No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need."
You must has seen the comedy film “The Big Bus” about a nuclear powered bus. It’s a classic from the early 70’s. It’s got a piano bar and a bowling alley! Classic!
I forgot about that!
Loved that movie!
You eat one lousy foot and they call you a cannibal. What a world...
Loved that film growing up in the 80s!
Never watched it as it's way before my time, but it's quite rare for movies to be called "disaster comedy", so I might give it a watch. Hopefully it's plain dumb comedy like in Gilligan's Island where everything can and will go wrong.
if mad men didn't exist there would be no fun
Aye, true that
“Ford” and “nuclear reactor” two words that should never be used together, does the concept send a chill up anyone else’s spine?
Not me, I'd gladly drive this.
Nuclear reactors aren't exactly fragile from the outside.
@@michaelfixedsys7463 no, but Ford “quality” is...
My last Ford was a 1988 Escort Pony that lived up to the name “Murphy’s Law-Mobile”, so my experience is Ford=unreliable crap
Ford fission reactor? “Meltdown on wheels”
@@MacTechG4
A low-grade fuel reactor would basically just be a steam engine with radiation shielding.
@@michaelfixedsys7463 I know how fission reactors work, all I’m saying is given my experience with Ford “quality” (and yes, I know the ‘80s and ‘90s were a particularly dark time for Detroit, and it’s likely Ford products are better now) I wouldn’t trust them to make anything more advanced than a wheel (they’d probably make it oval, or square) let alone a fission reactor
Just like “water” and “Nvidia Ge-Force 3090” should never go together
Love those 50s showcar designs and ideas. They might look naive from our viewpoint but what will people say 75 years in the future about our concepts ?
How boring and unsatisfying
I hope you do the Jet engine turbine car story!! 😊
Probably, if this one does well.
Jay Leno has one on his channel.
@@BigCar2 The Avanti story has been told, but the story is good and the car seemed to have more comebacks than SAAB.
Speaking of the Brat, what about something on strange vehicles due to Chicken Laws?
@@TheAlignmentGuy_TM I talked a little about that in the Ford Transit video.
@@BigCar2 Roger that. Thanks. Really enjoy your content.
I want to name a band "Nucleon". It's taken, though.
I think these videos are the videos I watch till the end.
I guess I have seen quite a few of those script reading bloopers....
Without even noticing you pass through 4 videos..
Those 60's designs are so beautiful! :)
Seriously, alchemy happened at Chernobyl? I've never heard of this, and I'm now fascinated.
You might want to look up 'transmutation of elements'. I hope that helps.
50000 people use to live here now its a Ghost town. Still people don't live there its too dangerous.
There are dozens of fission products
I highly doubt it, I think he made it up. I've never heard of it before.
@@dutiot2326 People do live within the Exclusion Zone, actually.
And it's relatively safe. You get more radiation from being on an airplane, even.
Those old nuclear car designs is still my favourites, i can still dream at least.
Ikr, they look so nostalgic & well designed
imagine getting rear ended by a corrola in one of these things and turning your town into chernobyl
today: "You hit my car! Why?" "So? It's just a scratch." "Well, you're right."
in this car: "You hit my car! *starts sweating* " "And? It's just a scra-"
BREAKING NEWS: BALKAN BECAME FULL OF RADIATION, LOCAL BIRDS DEAD, ICELAND SCARED, SAYS "wow balkan yes 1000km from me gonna reach me soon oh no im scared"
I just love your posts Mr. Big Car. Thanks so much for creating and providing us all here in the rest of the world with information to learn something that car enthusiasts just may not know. Keep up the great work!. DM.
Glad you're enjoying them!
Well written, produced and narrated. Great Job!
Another brilliant video!
This has to be one of the best channels on youtube, irrespective of subject.
Thanks once again for a well prepared and told story :-)
Thorium molten salt reactor would theoretically get enough miniaturized to get installed in a car. However, till the technology eventually goes so far, the battery technology would already cut it in infrastructure, practicality, market acceptance, etc.
It would be more reasonable for ship transportation, I assume, whereas aviation industry would rather go with Hydrogen fuel cells...
@5:47 - Tremulis was also key in the design and production of the Tucker 48. He is worthy of an entire video of his own!
Your videos are so well researched, both factually and archival video. They are a joy to watch. Your voice-overs are just the cherry on top!
Glad you like them!
Superb work, as always.
Oo sweet memories....the unstoppable reach to the future race and the Jetsons era. By Jove....im getting old😳
Very interesting and some what alarming!
I have spent nearly 40 years in the motor industry and the thought of letting auto technician's loose on an Atomic reactor is frightening, i sometimes thingk that letting them near an internal combustion engine is bad enough ! (:
Just get this, a nuclear powered car would take less than 10 grams of thorium to power for it's whole lifetime. It's a tiny capsule that can be easily contained, although the reactor would be larger than that, for a car you don't need much. While I don't think motor vehicles are the safest candidates for nuclear power, it's certainly not as dangerous as it seems.
Very interesting and well presented. Thanks
Another great and interesting film ...keep up the super work
Can you make "The studebaker story" ?
Good idea👍
No don't do that do a nice car
I live in South Bend and am helping my friend restore a 3rd generation family 46 Studebaker m5 pickup.
Tucker 48
Atompunk at its best ! :)
What an interesting story and one I hadn’t heard. Thanks!
Another brilliant Video! Cheers
Glad you enjoyed it
I love how everything we didn't do is considered "madness", while a lot of mad things we managed to do and refine are now no more that mad... Imagine if someone told us that it was "mad" to try and put electric wires in our walls, cause it would obviously mean we would all die in our houses raging fires..... Scientific bias is a really bad thing
“Pie in the sky ideas trying to show a bankrupt company is forward thinking.”
Sick, Burn 🔥
A great discourse on an intriguing subject, thanks again!
This is a great channel. After all these years being into cars you still manage to show me stuff I have never seen!
What a great channel this is. Always interesting and entertaining.
I love the futuristic outlook of the 50’s. Hopefully the “EV revolution” can capture the spirit while simultaneously succeeding.
old school futurism was always curvy back then
EVs are trash. Trash for bad drivers.
@@n3onf0x Not true, the 80s had a very square and angular vision of the future, we have a very glassy/ see through version of the future
@@AverageAlien which is basically the 1950s style just cleaner
Cyvertruck is the closest we got
The exhibition in the Petersen Automotive museum, where the Studebaker/Packard thing in the pictures shown was amazing! Quirk-o-rama!
Look forward every week for a new video - always so interesting keep up the good work
Check out my "Little Car" channel - I'm producing more content on there now. ruclips.net/user/littlecar
@@BigCar2 Yes I have checked those out too - I especially love the cars and Chopper ones. I was always envious of the "spoiled" kids who got to own a Chopper in the early 1970s but then my mate let me ride one and it was awful - but still looked good :-)
Imagine driving one of these to any Red Rocket for a Mr. handy to do the mainteinance... Damn so close
The moment you think car accidents could literally be BOMBastic!
It's not a bomb its a reactor.
Fun video! Thanks!
My favourite car explanation channel all day long
Quality 😀
You really know how to make even the most worrisome technology sound relaxing and reassuring.
If there is one day a global announcement that the earth is going to crash into something and we're all gonna die, I'd like you to make that announcement.
It will suddenly not seem so bad anymore.
I’ll get right on that!
@@BigCar2 ladies and gentlemen, due to a minor misalignment issue with one of the larger asteroids in the Kuiper Belt, earth will be hit and destroyed in 72 hours.
There is no cause for alarm, since there is absolutely nothing we can do.
Enjoy the remaining time as best as you can. Death by being vaporised into space really isn't all that bad.
Have a nice day.
😁
Just got my Fusion Flea from Chryslus.
I doubt the fusion flea is from chryslus so...
Loved this episode mostly because of the outrageous designs back in the sixties and seventies. Much more fun to look at than all those new cars today.
Thank you 😊 great video stay healthy and stay awesome 😎 greetings from sLOVEnia EU 👏👍🇸🇮🤟😜
"The Dyna-Saur"
I love it that they just made a terrible pun into a real name
i remember running into the rear light of one of those and it doing some 109999 damage to me.
Well done! I love the spin with todays electric cars as nuke cars in France. F*** excellent point of view! Keep on going with your videos - your style and depth of investigation is scarcely found in other car reports. Love it!!!
Nice one!
1961: We're going to have nuclear cars.
2021: Neutral Drop
Such an interesting, optimistic age
A nuclear train, driven by trained operators - yes could have worked
Nuclear cars, thus giving a nuclear reactor to an average American - I imagine the world today to look like in the fallout games.
Your channel is brilliant !!!!
Your comment is brilliant!!!
@@BigCar2 thanks for spreading the love🙏🏾keep up the good work, I love your videos on obscure lesser known cars, I haven’t seen many youtubers cover them but it’s important since they’ve had a significant impact on the industry as a whole
Fascinating!
Its probably best that these didn't make it to market. 50s cars weren't known for crash worthiness, and in this case a minor fender bender would remove a city from the map.
It wouldnt explode like you seem to imply, but yes it could certainly irradiate the surrounding area if the crash really were to anihilate the car.
Thats... not how nuclear power works
Gonna start working at Chryslus to get myself a sweet free Fusion Flea.
This is why we need to develop thorium based reactors. Especially since the waste products of thorium don't need thousands of years to become safe.
Thank you :D
Say what you want about nuclear powered cars but they would be 100% emission free.
Nuclear power is like renewables: the emissions and environmental cost are shunted elsewhere.
In the late 50s people must have felt that they could reach the stars....now i´m not even allowed to reach my lokal underpants supplier without a negative test ... god i hate "the future" ...
Another brilliant and incredibly informative story, wunderbar! :) I absolutely love that Seattle_ite, forgetting about the notion of the nuclear engine, some of those ideas were amazingly forward thinking. It looks so cool too, something straight out of the Thunderbirds. There's car nuts around these days that design and create cars that look much like this just for the sake of doing something different :)
Love the video...
We'd have a lot less greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere if we actually made cars nuclear powered.
Could you do episode on the Lexus LS, & Pontiac Fiero?
I'll probably do the original Lexus at some point. Not sure my mainly British audience knows about the Fiero.
@@BigCar2 for context it’s basically a cheaper and better 1980s corvette (there is the Buick GNX though)
5:44 Now even the cheapest of models have some form of In Car Entertainment or a vehicle monitoring system as an option.
Great video. I always find things like this fascinating.
The outtakes at the end, have you ever thought about doing Rowan Atkinson impersonations ? I guess start with "Bob" ! (from Black Adder) :-D
I loved Blackadder, and I use "Bob" as a name in video games, just 'cause he made it so funny to pronounce! Not sure I could do an impression though.
"I think there`s graphite on the hood"
YOU DIDN’T SEE GRAPHITE !! BECAUSE IT’S NOT ÞERE !!
The world in 1945: "2 nuclear powered bombs wiped out 2 entire cities and hundreds of thousands of people".
The world in the 1950's: "Let's nuclear-power everything: Subs, trains, cars, even toasters!"
Designers in the 1950's: "Heck, why not even sniff a little uranium!"... and so the creations depicted in this video were born.
Great video as usual!
What about a nuclear powered artifical heart ? (no joke, seriously considered)
@@jpq6257 LOL if this is even posible to miniaturise a nuclear core that much , you have to at least carry a wheel car (like luggage) behind you with all parts inside and wiers to you body to power the artificial heard. And you I'll be like a fucking steem locomotive :D, not to mention radiation poisoning if not a proper very heavi led shield is not implemented :D
That comparison makes about as much sense as comparing a gas powered car to napalm.
@@intel386DX I’m supposing it was intended to be an RTG, the kind that runs the Martian rover mentioned and also the space probe which took those pictures of a Pluto.
They directly turn heat into electricity, just with lower efficiency than a steam turbine. But when you only need a small amount of power, long lifetime and small size and weight, an RTG is actually a lot better.
There are actually modern proposals for a “diamond battery” next-generation RTG made from radioactive carbon, and sealed in glass for safety, which would be about the size of a button cell battery and last the lifetime of the pacemaker user.
Utterly bonkers madness, but I love it all the same. Would like to see the Chrysler Turbine Car and the steam car (Stanley, Doble, White etc) covered if this vid does well enough. :)
Funny that the Chernobyl disaster features here, as it's the 35th anniversary in around 16 days (26th April). Honestly feels like it's been longer than that tbh.
that downward-facing fan assembly over the back of the Nucleon did make its way into production -- but as a hubcap design :)
I’d buy one, especially if people would start learning how to drive.
"Not to alarm you son. But if you crash against a car, there is a chance all of us go boom"
Don't worry dad, I don't want to drive anymore
Austin Allegro story please please please
He tried but it was all agro. (I'll see myself out, bye!)
Great vlog as always! Any steam cars?
Great video Andy ... getting steadily more polished.
Wonder if that Ford Seattleite also inspired the Panther Six ?
They were both 6-wheeled, but I doubt it! How are things in lockdown? I hope you're not going slowly mad.
@@BigCar2 yeah not too bad. Getting a bit tired of the same four walls... getting back into guitar electronics as a way to relieve the boredom .... what about you ?
@@aculeus1971 Well, I've got YT videos to keep me interested. It's not as locked down here. I put my keyboard up yesterday and started noodling on tunes again.
Electricity too cheap to meter can't wait
Won’t get it without nuclear dominance
What could go wrong?
Always enjoy your videos. Would love to see one on the Porsche Boxster. That's a car that saved a conpany!
Thanks - that would be a fun one to do.
Very nice. Regards
Gives a whole other stress level to being rear ended. Don't forget to add the mushroom cloud to the accident papers.
But the dashcam footage would be legendary!
Nuclear reactors aren't bombs, they don't explode (unless you're running an RBMK). Regardless, an impact with a nuclear reactor would definitely be far from desirable.
Nuclear is actually extremely safe. Car wise...unsure. but as a power station. Very safe.
Who the hell gave this video a thumbs down? I could have stood for at least another 30 min of that. Also funny you mention France , they recycle their nuke wast .
Great video 👍 keep up the great work
Educational video plus hilarious outtakes? I'm in.
The amount of optimism of those times always puts a smile on my face.
Just think how wonderful it would feel to here about all the crazy things that they were promising and believing whole heartedly that it was certainly going to happen in just a decade or so. With that kinda spirit you might actually change the world.... not in as big of a way as you might have thought, but change it significantly nonetheless!
What's happened to your eyes?
Why do you have those dark shadows underneath them...is something going wrong?
Are you suffering in some way or another??
I'm getting old!
If you want to be fooled through your eyes. Don’t watch this amazingly honest channel.
I think it is nice of you to show concern for host. I'm glad to know it is just growing old.
Since you did a video on electric cars and one on nuclear powered cars, a video on steam-powered cars would be a great follow-up to this! :)
It makes me happy to see you also mess up alot and find errors in the script during recording 😆
Thank you for the most biased video I've yet come across.
Perhaps you should have mentioned the flawed design of Chernobyl. Or high pressure reactors in general and that better designed options where proposed in the late 50s and 60s. Or is balanced presentation beyond your scope?
Or how about nuclear waste from the reactor is dangerous because 94% of the reactor fuel is still in it unused?
You ridicule thorium reactors yet fail to mention that designs of them, called breeder reactors use up almost all of the nuclear waste to produce more power. Or why didn't you mention the fact if a thorium reactor try to melt down it passively shuts itself off.
Ok ill give you trying to put any reactor in a car is silly. Sadly they either did not know that yet 60 years ago, or it was just another government graft program. But dude at least do some research.
I agree I was a little negative on nuclear, probably too much, and I'm not in general a negative person.
However, we had a nuclear reactor disaster just 10 years ago. The reactors around today will have similar deficiencies. I'm unconvinced we won't have another one in the next 50 years.
Having said that, new designs are much better, and thorium looks like it will help with the half life issue (storing waste for 1,000s of years). That's great, and we need something that doesn't pump greenhouse gases to help solve the "duck curve" problem solar & wind gives us.
I'm not sure I "ridiculed" thorium reactors. I just said they won't fit into a car, which was the point of the video - about nuclear powered cars, not nuclear power in general.
@@BigCar2 I believe your condescending tone was very ridiculing on the subject. Also your comments came off sparky. Both together I would say qualify as being condescending.
It does seam silly to suggest putting one in a car. But simply stating the facts of why it's impractical is much more productive to me.
@@BigCar2 To respond to the nuclear disasters over the past decades. One heavy water units are great for ocean craft but not so much for nuclear plants.
It should never have been allowed for the man who held the patients to them head the NRC and set policy what we would build. It smacks of corruption.
Had we taken the better option back then we would now have a distributed network of plants that would greatly reduce fossil fuel use. But that's no excuse not to correct the problem now.
@@BigCar2 But to return to cars, you made the comment about them being "steam" cars.
So what if they are? Burning fuel is much more effective than exploding it. 2/3 of gasoline is wasted in heat, vibration that creates the pollution we know.
If we took the same gasoline and burned it to run a small steam powered generator (think the portable electric generators we already make except steam powered not internal combustion) to power an electrical drive train. You only need a few standard batteries to make it a turn key start and go. The generator takes care of most of the power. Is it zero emissions? No. But if cutting car pollution by half or three quarters or possibly more does qualify then it's not about solving a problem it's about an agenda.
The cold hard facts is that there is no clean portable electrical source today with our current techology.
@@BigCar2 I agree in that high pressure water reactor work for a sub/ship surrounded by water to cool them. But that same reactor on land without an endless supply of water on all sides is a recipe for disaster. To be fair they have made great strides to make water reactors safer. But you don't just slap a bandage on a patient that requires surgery. We have run operational thorium reactors for a 5 year period in th 60s. There is 0 excuse we don't have clean power today.
I have the same LEGO Formula 1 car behind you! Was fun to put it together! :D
We know once shielding gets a little better that Jay Leno is gonna be the first to have a fully working replica built
Aaaaah on one hand I want more content, on the other I RESPECT SO MUCH that you actually go in depth with all these cars. Just love this channel so much all around. Brilliant!
I love that one of the ideas there was clearly a miniature Borg Cube........
Thank you for clarifying, I almost assumed that Mrs Eisenhower would have journeyd through the seas to take out ships from the depths of the ocean.
😁
Good video, but I have to object to 8:58 - Finland has a permanent storage solution. There is even a documentary about it called (iirc) "Into Eternity"
Fun and wildly fanciful ideas!
Um.
Fanciful like nuclear planes or boats?
Or fucking nuclear explosion powered space ships.
@@fastinradfordable calm down. There's nothing to argue about.