Thorium-Fueled Automobile Engine Needs Refueling Once a Century

There are now over 1000000000 road cars traveling around the world directly and indirectly are worth trillions of dollars in material resources, time and toxic emissions. Imagine all the cars running clean for 100 years only 8 grams of fuel each.

Laser Power Systems (LPS) from Connecticut, USA, is developing a new method of automotive propulsion using one of the most dense materials known in nature: thorium. Because thorium is so dense that it has the potential to generate massive amounts of heat. Been experimenting company has little pieces of thorium, creating a laser Heats water, discharge of steam and power mini turbine.

Current models of engines weigh 500 pounds , easily fitting in the engine area of a conventionally - designed vehicles . According to CEO Charles Stevens , just one gram of the drug yields more energy than 7396 gallons ( 28,000 L ) of gasoline and 8 grams would enable the typical car for a century .

The idea of using thorium is not new . In 2009 , Loren Kulesus designed the Cadillac World Thorium Fuel Concept Car . LPS is the development of technology has become so mass - produce.
Broader implications of thorium

According to Robert Hargraves , " should be cheaper than coal low or non - CO2 emitting energy sources are late or fail to displace fossil energy providers . " The United States uses 20 % of energy in the world today and , according to Hargraves , if it cut its CO2 emissions to zero , 80 % made other countries will still have problems . CO2 emissions climb seemed beyond all bounds , pessimism is widespread and bold ideas are needed .

Thorium can also be the answer to the puzzle of the world nuclear energy and Wikipedia gives some of its advantages :
Weapons -grade fissionable material ( 233U ) harder to get safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor ; This means , for example , might ask Iran to develop thorium based reactor only , almost eliminating the issue of developing nuclear weapons .
Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste ;
Thorium mining produces a single pure isotope , while the mixture of natural uranium must be enriched isotopes to work with the most common reactor designs . The same cycle could also use the fissionable U - 238 component of natural uranium , and also contained depleted reactor fuel ;
Thorium can not sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming , [ 29 ] so fission stops by default in an accelerator driven reactor .

Hargraves see factories and other industrial concerns using thorium as well . Stay tuned as we track this idea and its development .

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