What if your vehicle had Thorium as it’s primary source of power? Then guess what! The car will burn out way before the power source will! It predicted to last so long, that, it most probably outlives you.
Laser Power Systems – primarily an energy company, took a Cadillac and made a concept for a thorium-powered car engine. Due to the radioactivity of the element however, only tiny fractions of it are used to build a laser beam which heats water, produces steam and with that, an energy producing turbine is powered up.
Having the advantage of being one of the most dense material on the planet, get’s quite a big advantage over coal as just a relatively small sample, contains 20 million times more energy than it’s coal counterpart with the same size.
The CEO of Laser Power Systems, Dr. Charles Stevens, gave a statement for Mashable, how he doesn’t believe thorium engines will take over in the auto industry anytime soon.
“Cars are not our primary interest. The automakers don’t want to buy them.” – Stevens said.
As most of the auto-makers are primarily gas engine focused, according to Dr. Stevens, there is no chance, at least not for a couple of decades, to use Thorium instead of gas as none of the big automakers take the idea to the next level.
“We’re building this to power the rest of the world,” – Stevens said.
He is envisioning his thorium turbine which won’t be bigger than an AC unit, to power hotels, restaurants and goes up the scale to even small towns somewhere on earth where electricity is scarce.
Of course, we mentioned earlier that Thorium is radioactive, but Stevens claims that any worry would be unfounded.
“The radiation that we develop off of one of these things can be shielded by a single sheet off of aluminum foil,” Stevens said. ”You will get more radiation from one of those dental X-rays than this.”