The US government has promoted experiments like the Ford Nucleon to explore new energy sources in vehicles
Imagine going to the gas station and, instead of standing at the gas or diesel hose, asking to fill the uranium tank. The idea is not new, but it is now drawing attention again due to attempts by some countries to revitalize nuclear energy and to be considered green energy, as proposed by France.
The proposal to use a nuclear reactor to power vehicles emerged in the late 1950s to try to find alternative fuels to petroleum. Ford was one of the brands that explored the possibility of building a car based on this technology. He made several prototypes of a model he called the Nucleon, a car powered by a nuclear reactor.
Nucleon was an interesting idea at a time when the world was trying to shake off the hangover of WWII. A society devastated by the ravages of war had to be rebuilt. Those were years of economic recovery when everything was new. Also nuclear energy, although at the time it was called atomic because of its relationship to atoms.
The car could never be turned off because nuclear fission generates a continuous reaction that is almost impossible to stop.
Aside from the fact that it was a force with a destructive capacity brutal enough to annihilate two cities in Japan, little else was known. It was seen as a kind of panacea, seemed inexhaustible and apparently did not pollute. It was almost magical. After using it on ships and submarines, they thought of applying it to cars without imagining everything that would be discovered later.
The system was based on water vapor generated by nuclear fission produced by a reactor moving a turbine that delivered the generated energy to the wheels. And that’s what would have to happen on the Ford Nucleon if it had been built to full scale. The common sense of those responsible for Ford, in addition to important problems with the draft, meant that it was only in the prototype stage.
The first drawback to not being put into series production was the impossibility of creating a nuclear reactor small enough to be installed in a car; second, that the car could never be turned off because the fission generates a continuous reaction that is almost impossible to stop; the third, the enormous weight that should be added to the vehicle in insulating coatings. And all this without speculating what would happen if there were a collision between two cars with this technology. In its favor, a range of 8,000 kilometers, more than many current cars travel annually.
Nucleon’s design was very original. Its cabin was very advanced, almost in front of the front axle, very futuristic, aerodynamic and glazed. At the back, between the two axes, and away from the occupants, was the reactor, which, to be produced in whey, would have to have special coatings, with lead and heavy water, to protect the area where the uranium fission occurs.
Shadows, of course, had many of the project. It was speculated that behind him and the work of Ford engineers was the US government, which wanted to know what path nuclear power could take in the field of individual mobility.
Today it is still an unreal project, with little prospect of reaching the production chain; the problems that have slowed its development remain unresolved. It was, simply, an exercise in the imagination that who knows if one day he will break the barriers that held him back.