Ford Nucleon nuclear powered car coming soon (1958)

[kristopher]

And electricity will become "too cheap to meter" now that the atom has been harnessed to serve mankind's will...

Ford Nucleon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Ford Nucleon concept car.

The Ford Nucleon was a scale model concept car developed by Ford Motor Company in 1958 as a design on how a nuclear-powered car might look. The design did not include an internal-combustion engine, rather, the vehicle was to be powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle, based on the assumption that this would one day be possible based on shrinking sizes.<1> The car was to use a steam engine powered by uranium fission similar to how nuclear submarines work.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

Nuclear-Powered Car and Other Dead Ends in Futuristic Auto Design
What looks like a spare tire at the back of the 1958 Ford Nucleon is really a small atomic reactor. In the late 50's, a personal-use nuclear power plant, with scaled down reactors and shielding, seemed within grasp. Engineers estimated a range of 5000 miles before refueling. The one-piece, pillarless windshield adds to the futuristic style of the 3/8 scale study. With perfect hindsight, we see that the Ford Nucleon was not just a few years from an assembly line, but would remain a footnote in history, alongside so many other totally cool concept cars.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/nuclear-powered.php

[Historic NY]

1. Think about all those mini-disasters that were averted.

[madokie]

2. Reading that almost makes me want to quit buying fords

Thats never going to happen though. Anyways have you seen the picture of fords prototype, ugly as home made sin. At least they realized that it would weight a bunch so they put the driver up out in front of the front wheels to kinda offset the load on the rear axle. To maybe help carry the heavy reactor and related hardware.

[Kolesar]

3. But wait, there's fuel cell cars coming

hydrogen cars!
Syn-fuel!!
I know, Flex-fuel!!!

[txlibdem]

4. We weren't ready to make iPad 2's in 1958. Likewise, we weren't ready for that Ford

We couldn't make a journey to the moon... until we did it.

But we all know that you are against anything nuclear, no matter what it is. I am sure that if you or a loved one becomes very ill, you will refuse the MRI or CAT scan because it uses some nuclear material. To do otherwise would make you a hypocrite... and I don't think you are. Maybe in 2020 they'll have a coal or natural gas powered MRI machine... then you'll be on board, I'm sure.

This OP has no redeeming value.

[kristopher]

5. Partial list

List of confidence tricks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This list of confidence tricks and scams should not be considered complete, but covers the most common examples. Confidence tricks and scams are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the “con artist” or simply “artist”, and the intended victim is the “mark”.Contents
1 Get-rich-quick schemes
1.1 Salting
1.2 Spanish Prisoner
1.3 Televised infomercial
1.4 Wire game
2 Persuasion tricks
2.1 Missionary conspiracy
2.2 Romance scam
2.3 Fortune telling fraud
3 Gold brick scams
3.1 Coin collecting
3.2 Pig-in-a-poke
3.3 Thai gem
3.4 White van speaker
4 Extortion or false-injury tricks
4.1 Badger game
4.2 Clip joint
4.3 Coin-matching game
4.4 Foreign object in food
4.5 Hydrophobia lie
4.6 Insurance fraud
4.7 Melon drop
5 Gambling tricks
5.1 Barred winner
5.2 Fake reward
5.3 Fiddle game
5.4 Football picks
5.5 Glim-dropper
5.6 Lottery fraud by proxy
5.7 Three-card Monte
6 Online scams
6.1 Fake antivirus
6.2 Phishing
7 Other confidence tricks and scams
7.1 Art student
7.2 Beijing tea
7.3 Big store
7.4 Cell phone grab
7.5 Change raising
7.6 Counterfeit cashier's check
7.7 Empty car lot
7.8 Fake raffle
7.9 False charity
7.10 Gas can
7.11 Jaywalking Scam
7.12 Landlord
7.13 Money exchange
7.14 Neighbor's false friend
7.15 Paranoia
7.16 Pigeon drop
7.17 Pseudoscience and snake oil
7.18 Psychic surgery
7.19 Rainmaker
7.20 Real estate
7.21 Recovery room
7.22 Rip deal
7.23 Robbed traveler
7.24 Stranded traveler scam
7.25 Street mechanic
7.26 Subway attendant
7.27 Ticket inspector
7.28 Tow-truck scam
7.29 Undercover cop
7.30 Newspaper swindle
7.31 Wedding planner scam

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCwQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_confidence_tricks&rct=j&q=List%20of%20scientific%20scams&ei=IdN3TvTiBaXnsQKu6uDDCg&usg=AFQjCNFYMI9iHPwEt3znew67wd9w1EqNPA&cad=rja

Number 8 OF TOP 10
The Perpetual Motion Machine

Cars that run on water and fusion machines that generate more energy than they use are staples of inventors’ fantasy. They pop up all the time. Charles Redheffer raised large sums of money in Philadelphia with a perpetual motion machine and then took it to New York in 1813, where hundreds paid a dollar each to see it.

?w=400&h=241

It did, indeed, seem to keep itself turning. In the end, skeptics offered a large sum of money to “prove” that the machine was in fact a fraud. Redheffer took the money and the skeptics removed some wooden strips along the wall from the machine. When they did so, they found a cat-gut belt drive, which went through a wall to an attic where an old man was turning a crank with one hand, and eating a loaf of bread with the other.
http://listverse.com/2008/04/09/top-10-scientific-frauds-and-hoaxes/

I think you should put your money where your mouth is and invest everything you can lay your your hands on in your thorium car.

[txlibdem]

8. Thank you for pointing out the tactics anti-nukers use to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt

It's become a habit with certain posters, mostly used when they know they have lost the argument with logic and reason.

[PamW]

6. BNCT and Ted

But we all know that you are against anything nuclear, no matter what it is. I am sure that if you or a loved one becomes very ill, you will refuse the MRI or CAT scan because it uses some nuclear material. To do otherwise would make you a hypocrite... and I don't think you are. Maybe in 2020 they'll have a coal or natural gas powered MRI machine... then you'll be on board, I'm sure.
==================================

Reminds me of a research project undertaken jointly by MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School.

It was called BNCT - Boron Neutron Capture Therapy.

The aim of the research was to find a way to treat a very nasty type of cancer called glioblastoma multiforme, or "glioma". It's a very nasty type of brain tumor in which the tumor has dendrites; it sends out little tentacles in every direction to wrap around healthy brain tissue. Because of the dendrite nature of the tumor, it is inoperable.

MIT and Mass General / Harvard came up with a clever treatment modality. The brain is very selective about what chemicals it will absorb from the blood. Physicians call it the "blood-brain barrier". However, in cancerous cells, this selectivity is compromised; the cancerous cells are less selective than healthy cells.

The job was for pharmacologists at Mass General / Harvard to develop a drug that would be absorbed by the cancerous cells, and rejected by the healthy cells. That drug also had to have Boron as one of its elements. You then make that drug with Boron-10 and give it to the patient. The cancerous cells will absorb the drug and be loaded with Boron-10 while healthy cells reject the drug and do not have Boron-10.

The patient is then brought to the MIT reactor and irradiated with epithermal neutrons from the reactor. The neutrons react with the Boron-10 in what is called an "(n,alpha)" reaction. The reaction is:

B-10 + n --> Li-7 + alpha + energy

The reaction produces 2 high energy ions, a Lithium-7 and an alpha particle. Because the Lithium has a charge of +3 and the alpha has a charge of +2; they deposit their energy in a very short distance. The distance is so short that they don't make it out of the brain cell they were born in. However, the cell that they were born in is one with the Boron-10, and hence must be a cancer cell. Therefore, this technique will kill the cancerous cells and leave the healthy cells unharmed.

You can read more about it at:

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/bnct/

(The introductory page shows the core of the MIT reactor)

Unfortunately, the technique was never developed to fruition. Because it involved a nuclear reactor, it was strenuously opposed by Massachusetts' senior US Senator, Ted Kennedy.

Do you remember what disease ended up killing Senator Ted Kennedy? It was a glioma brain tumor; the very disease the BNCT treatment was designed to treat. One wonders if Ted Kennedy, in essence, signed his own death warrant.

PamW

[txlibdem]

7. That is a sad tale of anti-nuke fear mongering directly causing death

Thanks to Pam for bringing this info to us.