Comments on: Cadillac World Thorium Fuel Concept Car

By: Peter A

Peter A — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:54:16 +0000

looks amazing. Hopefully the public will be able to accept and car designers again will really be able to think out of the box like the 50′s.

By: marksyzm

marksyzm — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:38:23 +0000

Thorium is far safer than uranium, R2K. Look it up. Yeah it ain’t safe but neither is an exploding car.

By: nishandh

nishandh — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:09:33 +0000

Sure, many things can be adopted from it !except that nuclear fuel based thing. its disaster for daily use on streets. may be we can use it on some Independance day parades!

By: dude

dude — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:53:20 +0000

Here you would have a car that is capable of powering your house…no transmission lines from the Utility company, no outages from storms, no utility bill.

\no trips to the gas station, no batteries to replace, no greenhouse gas emissions.

The stationary plants can be used to safely consume our current stockpile of nuclear waste.

lets work out the bugs on this…..

By: luanpa

luanpa — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:34:05 +0000

nice CAR

By: CoraX

CoraX — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:15:23 +0000

governments wont even allow it, who’d buy fuel with a car that needs basicly no maintenance, noone would need power becouse they have their own powersupply. besides, no maintenance on the powersupply? before i even consider buying a car like that i’d like to know for damn sure the thing wont explode on the middle of the road

anyways, governments will miss a lot of money if this hits the market, so they wont allow it.

By: ujjwal sharma

ujjwal sharma — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:31:43 +0000

hey,this is a brilliant looking car,but talking abt its possibilities it can only be a concept car.ya we can say wow as for its concept model but its really not practical,its a high fuel consumpting car and even at accidents it will evolve high radiation as it’s running from thorium.

By: ladykiller

ladykiller — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:30:27 +0000

I doubt the engineers of this future would be foolish enough to make and sell a car to the public unless its safe. And if this wth car is not practical enough,
i think scientist could still use thorium as a more stable fuel for nuclear reactors.

from (wikipedia.org/thorium/)
“Thorium as a nuclear fuel
Main article: Thorium fuel cycle
Thorium, as well as uranium and plutonium, can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Although not fissile itself, 232Th will absorb slow neutrons to produce 233U, which is fissile. Hence, like 238U, it is fertile. Theoretically thorium is more suitable fuel source than uranium: thorium is about 550 times more abundant in nature than uranium-235, potentially all of thorium fuel can be usefully burned in nuclear fission (current state of the art uranium based reactors burn only about 1-2% of fuel), thorium is fairly evenly spread around Earth with a lot of countries having huge supplies of it, thorium fuel cycle creates mainly Uranium-233 contaminated with Uranium-232 which makes it ill suited to weapons proliferation.

Problems include the high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of 233U which is a result of its contamination with traces of the short-lived 232U; the similar problems in recycling thorium due to highly radioactive 228Th; some weapons proliferation risk of 233U; and the technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing. Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available.

Nevertheless, the thorium fuel cycle, with its potential for breeding fuel without fast neutron reactors, holds considerable potential long-term benefits. Thorium is significantly more abundant than uranium, and is a key factor in sustainable nuclear energy. ^^Perhaps more importantly, thorium produces several orders of magnitude less long-lived radioactive waste.^^….”

By: Uncle B

Uncle B — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:22:17 +0000

An Unemployment rise is heralding in the early arrival of the (GRD) great republican depression in my country. My government is planning for huge deficits and GM in Oshawa ON Canada is closing its doors. Stores are shutting daily, foreclosure notices litter the front yards, suicides are up, joblessness is leading to wife beatings and petty thievery around towns, food banks are running on empty and the car lots are filled to the brim with very large, impractical machinery suffering planned obsolescence, with paint hardening, getting ready to chip, rust showing here and there, and rubber parts curing, cracking and hardening each day. We need whimsy like this prototype vaporware to enchant us while we drink sorrows away and drug ourselves to sleep. It give us hope to see that somewhere in this terrible world, some asshole still has a sense of humor, and laughs hysterically every time he thinks of the crap he actually got paid money for! I love it too! It makes me think of the Volt, another cruel joke on the coupon clippers of the world.

By: sam

sam — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:33:38 +0000

This is what we could have if we could only embrace technology. Cars that run for one hundred years without the need for refueling. Terrorists would have no interest in blowing us up anymore because we wouldn’t be so involved in the middle east.

Unfortunately we’d rather spend our time figuring out new ways of killing each other in an effort to clutch to our century old infernal combustion technology which causes more problems on this earth that it seems to solve.

And for those who said that storing radioactive material is too dangerous, youtube “nuclear waste container tests.” They ram rocket powered trains into nuclear waste containers to see if they can break them or cause a hazard.

Anyway, the problems with the technology are small compared to the benefits. If we spent half our defense budget on technology we wouldn’t NEED a defense budget.

By: Staxeon

Staxeon — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:05:09 +0000

Easy to know who peed in your fuel tank. They’re the one with the glowing weiner.

By: Enodnevni izlet v Benetke

Enodnevni izlet v Benetke — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:25:52 +0000

A great car for TERRORISTS! Just drive it into the BIG BEN and BUM – and all they can give you is a fine.

By: Ziga

Ziga — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:24:23 +0000

A druk driver driving a Cadillac WTF caused a minor atomic accident on the A1, so the road will be closed for the next 30 YEARS – we advise all drivers to use side roads for the time being…

By: Gail Pink

Gail Pink — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:08:47 +0000

I was actually wondering if this was a joke, since “World Thorium Fuel” car = WTF car.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:16:46 +0000

I’m with you, Drukus. It seems a bit pranky to me,too. (For folks who might not know, WTF is popular internet short-hand for “What the F*ck?”)

By: drukus

drukus — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:04:56 +0000

So, the Cadillac WTF? Sounds like an early April fools prank to me.

By: Rocky Rook

Rocky Rook — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:10:36 +0000

If it really lasted 100 years, I’d be interested. It’s nice to know that engineers are getting closer to that point. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone only had to buy one car for their entire life rather than owning multiple cars? I’d think it would be better on the environment to produce less cars.

By: Staxeon

Staxeon — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:10:50 +0000

No no, those are the hard streets you can patrol if you buy this vehicle.

By: SenorMysterioso

SenorMysterioso — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:00:20 +0000

Shouldn’t it be parked(or at least rendered) in a nicer neighbourhood

By: Staxeon

Staxeon — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:19:51 +0000

Unless it deploys a smoke screen and oil slick too, I’m not impressed.

By: lindsay brothers studios

lindsay brothers studios — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:07:33 +0000

Also if you press this button, it converts to a sub and you can drive it to your villain’s underwater lair and launch a sneak attack.

By: DonS

DonS — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:26:28 +0000

Wasn’t the 60′s Batmobile nuclear powered? Nice Try Cadillac but Bruce Wayne beat you to it.

By: chet

chet — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:31:59 +0000

Can anyone say “Knight Rider”?

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:23:31 +0000

This isn’t the flux capacitor model. It is the Mr Fusion upgrade.

By: Nathan Miller

Nathan Miller — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:02:07 +0000

@iamevovled – Yeah, I can’t wait to see the flux capacitor in cars, then we really will have cars that last forever, or at least that can visit forever…

Again, should GM really be wasting time on this instead of a viable business plan? TARP money won’t last forever…

By: iamevovled

iamevovled — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:40:33 +0000

I prefer the Flux Capacitor. What the hell happens in the event of a major collision with this baby??

By: lisanocap

lisanocap — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:14:28 +0000

the name fits it well.
those wheels look like rocks and sticks and other things would get stuck in them.

By: Gail Pink

Gail Pink — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:47:30 +0000

So.. how much moola to drive that baby home?

By: R2K

R2K — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:46:03 +0000

Nice thats is great for the environment: radioactive fuel. Not only will it cost too much money, and use too much energy to refine and package the fuel, but it will also pose a hazard in accidents in fires. The fuel can not be put in a very thick container if it uses the RTG method: it has to be close enough to a cooling surface or the air to function well.

Great idea. Maybe for the moon or mars, but not earth.

By: TronStuck

TronStuck — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:39:10 +0000

How about the Ford Nucleon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

Personally I think it is a great idea. The containers they can put the fuel source in can be practically impenetrable, just like the containers they move power waste in.