as per to my reading i understood major countries trying to use uranium to make electricity and then full fill our day to day needs…soo is there any possibilities to make portable reactors to use with very little amount uranium to power up our motor vehicle…if so why not any engineers didnt come with an idea to build portable type reactors for vehicles..?
Asked by:Mohamed D
Yes, it would be possible, but would you really feel safe allowing such a material into the public domain in a world where extreme groups could gain access to it and use it for ‘military’ purposes.
Also what would you do with the old car? it is polluted with spent fuel and contaminated parts.
The idea is good but implementation would be difficult.
Nuclear batteries were used in implantable medical devices many years back before the development of lithium batteries. So making electricity direct from the nuclear material has president.
Uranium is radioactive, it isused in Nuclear reactors and is used to power aircraft carriers, and submarines.
It is extremely radioactive and is why it is not used to power vehicles, however it is possible.
IT would not be cost effective.
Uranium ( /jʊˈreɪniəm/ yew-RAY-nee-əm) is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. The uranium nucleus binds between 141 and 146 neutrons, establishing six isotopes, the most common of which are U-238 (146 neutrons) and U-235 (143 neutrons). All isotopes are unstable and uranium is weakly radioactive. Uranium has the second highest atomic weight of the naturally occurring elements, lighter only than plutonium-244.[3] Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, but not as dense as gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.
In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2742%), uranium-235 (0.7204%), and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0054%). Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years,[4] making them useful in dating the age of the Earth.
Mohamed, I have answered this question in my response to your later question on how much uranium would it take to power a vehicle. I am afraid this is an impractical idea due to the weight that a safe reactor would be. And you need a critical mass of uranium to get fission to be sustainable. I know it sounds interesting that you can get a lot of energy from a small mass of uranium on a per gram basis, but it will not work unless you have a critical mass of 10-50 kg, depending on what type of uranium you have,