pedaltometal wrote:I want my nuclear car damnit! We've been waiting since the fifties for them...
But could they be looking at something like the radioisotope thermoelectric generators used in deep space satellites?
Does anyone have data on what kind of power those generators generate as compared to the power requirements of a 500hp electric motor?
Well according to Wikipedia those used in spacecraft have generated up to 390W of electrical power, with 7.2KW of heat. So the electrical conversion is very inefficient - you'd want, if possible, to do something with the heat as well.
That's about 0.5 horsepower, if you ignore the heat element, so not very good. However if it were used to charge an electrical system that provided a couple of hundred miles of capacity, then it may be able to keep it well charged enough when not in use to keep you going for a couple of years.