8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars

An anonymous reader writes "Thorium, an abundant and radioactive rare earth mineral, could be used in conjunction with a laser and mini turbines to easily produce enough electricity to power a vehicle. When thorium is heated, it generates further heat surges, allowing it to be coupled with mini turbines to produce steam that can then be used to generate electricity. Combining a laser, radioactive material, and mini-turbines might sound like a complicated alternative solution to filling your gas tank, but there's one feature that sells it as a great alternative solution: 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent energy of 7,500 gallons of gasoline."

Comments

Re:Hmmm

[maxume]

That was the joke the first poster was making. All your parent comment did was scream "I GOT IT!".

Re:Hmmm

[alta]

awe stop whining, with 7500/gram under perfect conditions, there's plenty of room to cut corners on efficiency... Sure, we let a little steam into the atmosphere, warming the earth. And yeah, they don't talk about the 3 tons of radioactive water byproduct. Oh, and cars will all be 3x the size because of the boiler/turbine. And it's deadly to actually handle the stuff. And that china is the only producer of thorium. And you have to spend 85% of the energy generated running the laser. Oh, and you have to plug it into a wall to get enough amps to actually start a cold system, so people actually leave it running 24 hours/day. And that a gram of thorium costs $1000/gram or $5000/gram after taxes. And Al Gore says it kills polar bears, pandas and unicorns.

But after you take all that into account, you still get, oh, something like 25MPg. The Government will think it's a a perfect solution.