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But you must remember....to the enviros(and many "everyday" types) --the very mention of word "nuclear", is the equivalent to the word "holocaust".

Instead--they imagine that solar power, wind power and geothermal power ill answer everything. Even though the BEST , most optimistic estimates for "renewable" energy sources being able to supply the earth's power needs is::: FIVE percent!!

5% is still power for 500M people. But I agree with you that right now alternative sources are, at best, a supplemental source of power. Nukes are expensive to set-up but cheap to run, and we aren't going to run out of Uranium anytime soon.

But you must remember....to the enviros(and many "everyday" types) --the very mention of word "nuclear", is the equivalent to the word "holocaust".

Instead--they imagine that solar power, wind power and geothermal power ill answer everything. Even though the BEST , most optimistic estimates for "renewable" energy sources being able to supply the earth's power needs is::: FIVE percent!!

I remember reading a book from the library about cars, it was printed in 1953, where someone designed an atomic powered car in 1946 and the idea was to modify a typical car from 1946 to use it. I'll have to check the book out again and look it over again but it was a very detailed drawing.

Like your analysis on the wattage of the Tesla car and how much it wil lactually use. Sounds about right from what I know of these things. In Europe, they measure engine power output in kilowatts as opposed to horsepower so 135kw being around 175 HP is fairly close.

I think a neat idea is to make it a series hybird, much like the University of Utah did with an EV-1, where they took a small gas turbine made by Williams and used that to run the generator needed to recharge the batteries. The Williams turbine they used was like two feet long, maybe a foot and a half in diameter and they got like 60kw out of it, IIRC. I tried to find the specs for it, but so far, no luck, but I did look up the 1970's version of it in my Janes "Worlds Aircraft 1974/75" and it sounds about right. The turbine itself weighs like 110-130 lbs and if I read the consumption right, it burns only a quart of fuel per hour, I'll have to check on that one.

A little off side, one of my characters I NPC (referee run character, I'm a role playing game (RPG) junky) in my Morrow Project RPG game, in the early 1980's, designed a hybrid 4x4 based on the VW Iltis chassis that used a gas turbine generated system to charge the batteries and provide extra power as needed and the computer monitoring system uses a computer with an electroluminescent screen. Of course, this is fantasy, but not too far fetched for the game where it is set.

As to licking the energy problem, there is real no such thing as a free lunch. Maybe when we are able to get fusion, hot or cold (I'm skeptical on cold), going or achieve singularity by using minature black holes in a containment field, we might get close a free lunch but then again, to "fire up" something like that, it would take energy to put in until ot gets running. Getting back to my Morrow Project game, most Project vehicles use fusion.

I think you idea of using am enthanol and/or gasoline fuel cell or my idea of hybrid, would make this car more of a seller. One good thing about the gas turbine, you can run it on most any hydrocarbon based fuel, you can run it on the best aviation fuel or the worse "rot gut" diesel or gasoline and it still works.