"Countries like the U.S., Canada or Russia have rail lines that can go on for hundred of miles through the middle of nowhere." Russia is the perfect example that it CAN be done, take a look at the Transsiberian Railway.
@@misterflibble6601 The quote is from a segment of the video talking about how electrification is a better idea than on-board nuclear reactors. And tot makes the classic mistake of excusing north America's lack of electrification, just because it's big.
@@vulduv While I think there's a lot of reasons why America hasn't electrified it's freight rails, I think the one to keep in mind, in the context of the video, is the age these ideas came from. During the start cold war, Nuclear Energy was considered the new hotness, and long distance electrification was probably difficult (or at least building it was). It took the Solviet Union and Russia 70 years to electrify the Trans-Siberian Railway after all. It probably seemed like a better long term idea to put a reactor in a train rather than electrify, with the bonus of the idea being hype (almost a literal hype train, if you will) at the time is probably why it got so much traction. In our present day, America could probably retrofit their railroads to be electrified easy. ...if they could agree to do so. I'd also like to note that some of these ideas seem to use a engine that uses a larger gauge than normal, which would be counterproductive if you don't want to rework your rails to be electric.1:24 is a good spot to see what I'm talking about, the train car has two full floors and is as wide as a average living room.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm I was just responding to someone who had completely missed the point of the original comment. (And ironically, that guy was accussing the original commenter of missing the point of the video.) Also it feels like your reply was intended for the original commenter, and not me...
The 50s were good at that sort of thing in general. The who decade had a distinctive style of what's now become retrofuturism, fueled in part by the ongoing Space Race and the resulting boom in science fiction's popularity.
Under this same logic I refer to my mom's electric car as a coal-powered vehicle. It's probably still better in terms of carbon emissions per mile than a gasoline car, but it's not totally harmless and "guilt free" as electric vehicle owners like to believe.
@@kozzy18 There's a lot of debate over that, but what's clear is that - especially if running on mostly coal-generated electricity - they aren't as clean as people like to think they are. I've thought it would be interesting to compare the CO2-per-mile of her electric car versus my motorcycle, I'm guessing they would be comparable. But that's not counting the energy and other environmental impact of manufacturing the electric car.
@@quillmaurer6563 I was talking about as a whole. The rare earth elements needed and their extraction is pretty detrimental. It's catabolic. If people were serious about reducing carbon emissions, they would want domestic manufacturing. Shipping and power generation is the largest CO2 emitters.
When playing Fallout 4, I often come across ruined train tracks with box cars. When I first found a ruined locomotive, I was a little surprised to see that it resembled a steam engine (albeit a very top-heavy and impractical one). But when I thought about it, it would make a certain amount of sense for a nuclear-powered engine to be designed like that. After all, nuclear power plants work by dipping nuclear material into water and funneling the resulting steam through turbines that generate power. In the broadest concept without regard for safety or practicality, you could take that resultant steam and use it to power a locomotive.
The images of the fire that occurred in the town of Lac Megantic came to mind immediately upon hearing this idea. It's fairly close to where I live, about a two hour drive away, and the train that went up in flames in that town had passed a few miles away from my house just a few hours before. I can't help but think that making a fission reactor mobile on rails is a really horrible idea
Yes, but a deep sea submersible have a few pro's going in it favor for this. 1) It doesn't require a lot of instantaneous power to move. Trains are really efficient but they still draw several kilowatts of power when accelerating. A fridge size nuclear reactor does NOT produce that power. 2) If something were to go wrong on a nuclear submersible, it will fall to the bottom of the ocean. Sure, it's a disaster but it's still at the bottom of the ocean where the effects are way more limited than they would be on land. There are also nuclear powered space craft. Again, they are quite small and lightweight so the argument "it can be done" is true but then you realize why it can be done. They are after all in space so should something go wrong they have all of space around them to disperse the radiation into background noise. And they are light and doesn't need to accelerate in minutes, they can spend days accelerating. Something a train can't afford. And they don't need shielding to protect what's outside of them. The only shielding they need are around their electrical components.
@@RealCadde Those spacecraft use radioactive decay, not fission, and are far less efficient. They also do not use it for propulsion, but instead for electricity. Nuclear propulsion is possible and should be used, but so far it has not been. Somebody designed a hot tub sized nuclear reactor that can produce 1.5 MEGAwatts. It has not been built, but it seems like your concerns about size may have been resolved. Obviously, safety and cooling are the remaining concerns.
Putting up overhead wires is not a problem with distance. Most of the trans-Siberian railway is over head electric. The real problem is that Railroads don't want to spend the money on infrastructure unless they're forced too.
Electrifying long stretches of rail to me seems like its only a matter of cost and/or politifcal will. The trans-siberian railway is electrified. Maybe there are other factors like the hauling strength of diesel electric vs pure electric locomotives, or the increased demand on the power grid, but with today's tech no stretch of rail should be too long or too remote to electrify. EDIT: And yes, let's not put nuclear reactors on rails.
Why would a Diesel-electric locomotive be stronger than a 100% electric one? The electric motor that actually spins the wheel is pretty much the same in both cases. The power of a locomotive is nowadays usually only limited by traction on the rails and avoiding overheating of the engine. So a Diesel could haul more if it's just heavier hence has more traction, but the electric locomotive could be made heavier artificially to get the same result.
@@jailbird1133 Considering the state of the Russian economy during the late Soviet era and the 90s, that's probably more a mark of how feasible it is than how unfeasible it is. The American economy could absolutely do it.
Waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical problem. We have safe, effective, and stable storage solutions but nuclear hysteria means we can't use them
That's precisely right, most of the nuclear hysteria comes from those on the left side of the aisle (no intention to get political just stating the facts) that believe that every and anything should run on solar and wind. They take for granted and dismiss the promise of the atom, why would have nuclear ships, trains, aircraft, maybe even cars, if it weren't for the unnecessary fear of nuclear power.
People really don't know that most nuclear waste is low level radiation waste and that it would be safe quite quickly, bit hey, let's gloss over the deaths attributed to general poisoning due to other non renewable sources like the mentioned coal and oil, it's not like they are any safer....
Your so called safety is in the mind. At the end of the day the outcome of the disaster is bigger than the risk. If a plane crashes and it is the lowest statistic in mass transit it doesn't have to cause a disaster outside the potential deaths of those on board thanks to the pilot. But Nuclear Reactors aren't meant to take a major battering and the prime example of recent times is the Tsunami in Japan that caused a meltdown. Now it was contained better than Chernobyl but this is concentrated energy in one place people can choose to live away from and evacuate. Trains would put the risk on the move and suddenly you can't be sure where is safe and when. It's unnecessary to create a situation where we'll be living in fear.
@@ChimpManZ1264 Have you seen nuclear transportation carriages? Indestructible. Just put a reactor in one instead of waste and no amount of crashing will cause any damage whatsoever. Fukushima was a rare natural disaster and even then the primary cause was...improper construction decisions by placing the back up generators under the water table. I'm not sure how many Tsunamis are going to happen in Siberia or the mid west US. I don't trust the Russians with lighting a candle though tbf.
@@cleanerben9636 Nothing is indestructible. There is a limit. Yes I have seen transportation that survives head on collisions but these aren't carrying they are the reactor and they are a walking disater. We don't live on Jupiter and I don't want to.
"Unfortunately we have to inform you that the train in front of us had an accident. For security reasons we have to wait a while before we can continue. The delay can go up to 2000 years. wait 2000 years!?"
More realistic than just an overhead power line? The difference in price between a nuclear sub and a non nuclear sub is well over double the price, meaning this one nuclear trai engine will cost 560+ million, which would be over 560km up to 2,000km of overhead power lines.
@@Alex-cw3rz This nuclear substation would feed an overhead power line or a third rail, and normal electric trains would ride on the line. It would just be a dedicated power station for the railway. For 90% of the world, using power from the grid is of course more interesting, but my idea was for something like the most remote sections of the transiberian... There is probably other, and even better, ways to improve theses remote lines, but if you want to get all the advantages of the electric traction, I think it's a possible solution.
Nuclear Power is the ultimate example of not every form of power can be properly applied to trains. Nuclear plants work fine enough in power plants because they're stable, and ships are - more or less - the same way, especially when they're used on vessels which are vitually impervious to waves. You can't really apply that to a locomotive. You meantioned the size factor, meaning nuclear reactors could realisitcally only be applied to locomotives while cylinder and turbine power plants can be applied to trainsets and/or multiple units. One problem you sorta skipped over was the conditions of a railroad. Many locomotives over the years were tested due to the success in marine and stationary applications, but translated poorly to railroad use. The Napier-Deltic engines proved fine for 100 mph passenger service, but still took a beating and needed to have spare engines on hand to be swapped out if needed. Similarly, Fairbanks Morse locomotives might've been powerful by comparison to other units, but couldn't handle the rough and dirty conditions that railroads often were. They also weren't the best when it came to constant changes in power applications. The longest lasting examples kept working because shop crews were familiar with their Marine power plants (they worked in shipyards in WWII for context). To say nothing of the hit or miss nature of steam and gas turbine prime movers. Powerful for size, but fuel hungry and maintenance heavy. They could also catch fire if not taken care of. So...trying to picture a poorly maintained nuclear locomotive is terrifying.
If i recall there was a hydrogen cell powered loco somewhere, it ran off reclaimed water, but the prospect sufferers for too many problems, like that the fuel tank is filled with one of the hardest to contain and most explosively active elements
Also keep in mind that hydrogen isn't an energy source, just a storage medium sort of like batteries. It requires energy to create hydrogen from water, and that energy (well some of it, with some energy lost as heat) is then returned as electricity in a fuel cell. I suspect batteries would be more suitable for trains, as they aren't really weight limited - if one locomotive loaded with batteries isn't enough, you can add as many battery-filled "tenders" as needed.
@@quillmaurer6563 You would need several rail cars worth of batteries for any meaningful range. That replaces weight/length that can be used for paying cargo. And unless you want to reconfigure the train to swap batteries, recharging time will be a nightmare. With hydrogen, it could still be stored onboard the locomotive just as diesel is today.
@@dgthe3 Depends on what "meaningful range" is. I could see a system with an electrified main line and unelectrified branch lines or industrial spurs, only needing say 10 or 20 miles range (or perhaps much less in some cases) could avoid the need for either using diesel locomotives or elecrifying those lightly-used branch lines. The battery tenders replacing paying cargo is a consideration, a trade-off, but if it saves cost on running it might be worthwhile. If say you're replacing one of your 20 freight cars with a battery car, but it saves 30% of operating costs (not just the fuel but also maintenance of the diesel engine), that's a huge plus. I don't know if it would be anything like that, if it would be that favorable, but I could imagine it being that good or better - someone more knowlegeable than me would have to figure that out. But just losing some cargo capacity (or the battery electric locomotives needing to be more powerful to haul their own batteries along with the train) might still be advantageous. As for battery swapping - that's the easiest part, and one of the reasons trains could do this easier than anything else. Simply put the battery tender on a charging siding, remotely raise the pantograph to an overhead wire (nobody having to leave the cab,) uncouple it, move over to another that's charged, couple it, lower pantograph, off you go. I can't imagine any other vehicle having it that easy, the great thing about trains is the train as a whole (not an individual locomotive) are entirely modular. The other option, depending on the network it's running on, is that part of the system could be electrified (such as the main line with unelectrified branch lines I mentioned), and the batteries could be charged with a pantograph while in motion just like any other electric train, so it would never be necessary to stop to charge. Again, another thing trains can do that isn't really feasible with any other vehicle (I've seen concepts of doing this exact thing with trucks, but that would be far less straightforward). Comparing hydrogen, I think that would be worse in the regards you're talking about. Hydrogen is more energy dense per weight, but far less per volume - the hydrogen and its tanks necessary for meaningful range for a train wouldn't be all that heavy, but would be very bulky. Would probably end up the same way with "tenders," this time tank cars. Refueling would be faster than recharging batteries (maybe), but more complicated, requiring hydrogen be provided at needed locations, either shipped there or generated on-site, and the train wouldn't be able to recharge while in motion like a battery train could. This would be similar to how it's done with diesel fuel, but having to deal with shorter range, much larger volumes, and either highly pressurized or cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which is both more complicated and more dangerous to work with than diesel. Electricity for batteries on the other hand can be wired to anywhere on the network much more easily, can be fed into a locomotive or battery tender via overhead wires without anyone having to get out of the cab, and recharging can be done while in motion using century-old highly refined technology. So in many cases I suspect battery electric locomotives would actually be logistically, operationally, safety, and effort-wise simpler, cheaper, more efficient not only than hydrogen but even than getting diesel fuel into locomotives (not even considering the cost of the fuel itself). Only needing what comes through wires is actually really helpful versus needing some sort of fluid fuel. A good point of comparison is my gasoline car versus my mom's electric car. The electric car can be a hassle for occasional road trips (though with fast charge stations and the car having almost as much range as gas cars that's not a huge problem), but for most uses she just charges it in the garage, no hassle whatsoever, while I have to go to a gas station once a week.
The fears around nuclear energy are highly exaggerated by propaganda produced by fossil fuel companies, and the media has over-sensationalized almost all nuclear energy accidents. Having a nuclear reactor on a train for power may be impractical due to the engineering challenges, but it isn't the worst idea I've seen for powering trains.
Technically, we already have nuclear-powered trains. It's just that the nuclear reactors are stationary (in the form of power plants), and the trains are powered via overhead power lines.
Nuclear reactors have another problem for use on a vehicle that has to put out variable amounts of power: They aren't good at starting up and shutting down on short notice. For shutting down, you have to keep supplying cooling for a LONG time, due to the heat generated by fission products, and for starting up, if certain fission products (especially Xenon-135, which has its own Wikipedia article) that poison nuclear reactions haven't decayed, the startup becomes difficult and dangerous. Ships and submarines go at constant speed for long periods, making this tolerable (if you didn't care about the radioactive waste disposal and the difficulty of shielding, or if you're really stuck with nuclear like on a submarine), but on a locomotive or even in a stationary reactor serving a rail line with low enough traffic to produce highly variable load this would be very problematic.
2:44 that is actually very wrong. nuclear reactor that powered aircraft only weight 70 tons. but after that project was abandoned there were several advancements in shielding that could make it way lighter still.
0:36 and yet, there where extremely long electrified routes in the US designed and built(The Milwaukee Road and Pennsylvania Railroad had hundreds of miles of electrified track, some of which is still in use with the same equipment 100 years later; ATSF planned to electrify from Missouri to California(2,500 track miles, 1700 route miles), and UP came within inches of electrifying from North Platte to Salt Lake City); and in particular the trans-siberian railroad is electrified, all 9,289 kilometers of it. Looking at folks other than those focused only on short-term profit or affected by political ideals, India has 52,247 route kilometers electrified and is working on electrifying everything... Sorry, I might transferring to this video, or that moment of it, my feelings towards people who confuse "takes effort" or "more expensive than doing nothing" with "impossible"
I'm not expert on the geography of Russia, but I don't think that they have a massive mountain range cutting the nation in half like the Rockies. So there's a possibility it's down to the fact that pure electric locomotives might not have the power to traverse such difficult terrain with the loads that freight trains in the U.S. do. So it's probably more complicated than "takes effort" or "more expensive than doing nothing", there might be some technical limitations that prevent it at the moment. Again I'm no expert on this, but that might be another possiblity.
The Milwaukee Roads electric divisions where built to deal with the Rockies in the 20s. The Virginian's where built to deal with the Appalachians with coal trains, again in the 20s, and Russia has several mountain ranges across the route of the Trans-Siberian
There is museum in Las Vegas about nuclear weapons and testing. However they have an exhibit on the exuberance of peaceful nuclear energy in the late 40s and 50s where it was portrayed as something that could solve many of the worlds problems. It was only a matter of time before people thought to use it to power trains and wanting to make it work. Really enjoyed the video.
Technically most of the high speed rail in France is nuclear powered. Their high speed rail is electric and the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear plants. Turns out that just not putting the reactor on the train solves most of the issues with the concept of a nuclear train.
What I think is funny is that because Nuclear Reactors often use water as coolant, locomotives would go back to needing to stop for water pretty regularly. It feels like we'd be going back to the age of steam, and I'm apparently not the only one to think that. I was also thinking that you could try using RTG's, but I quickly realized that getting enough of them or one that was big enough would likely be so heavy that you'd loose a lot of your pulling power to your own locomotive's weight. It would be harder for a wreck to cause a disaster, unless the RTG casings were cracked, but you'd still probably need to guard them 24/7 due to them being a relatively easy source of radioactive material.
You wouldn't need to stop for water on a closed loop system, the trains would need massive airflow through the heat output section instead. Heavier, but works as well. Could have been done to steam engines as well but I guess the need for coal stops anyway kind of negated the intent given the added weight.
We never entirely Left the age of steam. When it comes to generating electricity, coal, oil*, nuclear, and solar* all use the stated fuel as a heat source to power a Steam Turbine. *while these are also used in other ways at smaller scales (photovoltaic cells, internal combustion engines), as large, grid scale generators, my understanding is that the above is true. Which is to say, Electric trains are often basically steam trains, in a sense. heh.
@@Kalvinjj I was operating under the assumption that there are two halves to the cooling loop, one which is closed and the other open. The idea being that you needed to refill the open loop, which I guess could suplement the air cooling.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm This is correct for a power plant system, it is indeed how open loop cooling works, it's a valid proposition for the heaps of power a locomotive would generate. A closed loop would be quite akin to a car radiator in other hand, not requiring refills, but I wonder about the size, likely would need heaps of forced air flow too.
There's another useful thing that locomotives lack in comparison to submarines: direct contact to a large body of *liquid* coolant. Ultimately, the steady state power output of any such system is limited by its cooling capabilities, and a nuclear train would be hard-pressed for heat capacity, even if you carried around silly amounts of water.
I thought of that too, and started to realize how much alike the systems steam engines and nuclear engines would be. (For example, for those who don't know, the firebox of a locomotive has to be underwater at all times to prevent it from getting to hot and damaging itself. Sound familiar?)
@@strcmdrbookwyrm The Thing is that Steam Locomotives just exhaust the spent Steam. There have been Attempts at Condensing Locomotives (either to save Water or to make Trains harder to spot by Aurcraft), and all these Attempts were very unreliable because Condensers are to delicate for the Shocks and Vibrations encountered on Steam Trains. A PWR-Plant could theoretically be built to exhaust too, but you'd not only have to carry a ridiculous Amount of Water, but also couldn't use just pretty much any River Water as you do on Steam Locomotives. Just like Water Tube Boilers, the Steam Generators of PWR Plants are very sensitive to Water Quality.
@@Genius_at_Work The impurities of a river fill-up don't enter the core of a PWR (separate steam generator), but in a BWR it would; creates intensely radioactive steam with all the impurities.
At this point what I see as the solution would be to have battery-electric locomotives on partially electrified tracks. One advantage of trains over other types of vehicles is they aren't really weight-limited, can add as many battery-loaded "tenders" as you need. Could have some portions of the track electrified, where trains can re-charge while moving, allowing them to go some distance without overhead lines. Perhaps an electrified main line and un-electrified branch lines. Or a route that is only electrified in sections, with other sections (presumably more remote parts) not electrified that trains cross on battery power.
@@jailbird1133 True, but the tender would be the equivalent of one freight car, so not a huge loss of capacity. A trade-off, but it is an option no other mode of transport really has. Was seen as acceptable in the steam era, or even the Union Pacific "Big Blow" gas turbine electric locomotives. Gives me another funny thought - just for the hell of it, have a battery locomotive pull a train of nothing but battery tenders and set a record for the longest unrecharged journey by a battery electric vehicle, could probably make it all the way across the Continental US, maybe even multiple times.
That is basically what's already being planned for small branch lines in Europe, Schelswig-Holstein has been operating battery powered commuter trains for a few years now and DSB is testing them.
@@hedgehog3180 Makes sense - figures that Europe would be the place to try it. Sounds like for passenger trains rather than freight that I had in mind, but same idea. Are they locomotive-hauled or EMUs?
Hey TrainOfThought, I’m probably only one to mention this but I found it interesting that you used the Scrap Mechanic radio music at the end of the video, it was a nice addition. Do you have plans to play any other train related game in the further especially after playing Tracks the Train Set game? Such as Derail Valley, Rolling Line, Transport Fever 2 and Scrap Mechanic. Saying that, Scrap Mechanic isn’t really a “train game” in itself but it is a game with somewhat of a rail fan community behind it, so it would be if you could perhaps do a livestream on that game which seems to be more prevalent on your channel. 🚂😎⚙️
I think the hydrogen fuel cell looks the most promising as a future engine. However, I could have sworn there was a thing called Algae biofuel that was being developed some years back. Either I've gone mad or something happened to the project that stopped it in it's tracks, pun intended.
But who knows what energy we will use despite us being in this world only for 200,000 years and still not having advanced technology to reach the moon or even other planets
Biofuels all have the same problem of being questionably sustainable since often the biomass comes from farming and most farming is not organic and thus not sustainable.
Hydrogen fuel cells might be an option. The current designs are apparently not powerful enough for freight, but have been proving practical for commuter rail and buses. Research is being done to see if power enough systems can be developed for long-haul heavy freight. If it works, the advantages are obvious - you don't need the expense and time to modify your existing track infrastructure with catenary/third rail or substations.
@@Volodimar bonus for electrics: they have the same motors that your diesels have, but can keep them at the limit for longer, thus either pulling away better or pulling faster at little more cost… and you get back energy from dynamics…
With conventional Uranium reactors, this assessment is entirely correct. But with Thorium micro reactor technology advancing very quickly, it could give the concept of a nuclear train a second shot at success.
Thorium has all of the same issues since it produces just as much radiation. The main theoretical benefit to thorium is the lack of radioactive waste. And well “progressing quickly” means jack shit for a technology that has been “just around the corner” for 20 years yet still has seen no comericial use.
The Mars rover has a nuclear generator along with solar, which is why it'll only run in full power mode for 15-25 years then, it'll have to charge up every day by solar like WALL-E until dust covers the solar panel and renders the rover useless. Which is what happened with the first rover. A train could have a small generator but that'll mean more refueling which is costly and problematic, so the bigger it can be, the longer it'll go without refueling. The radiation is not a worry as submarines currently don't give off any harming radiation to the outside due to it's well engineered exterior, and also don't radiate to the lifetime of a reactor engineer. The main problem with nuclear trains and planes is definitely the crashing factor. Most current submarines are 30-70 years old and have only ever needed to be refueled 1-2 times. Little science lesson.
In stormworks I have designed 2 Nuclear Locomotives. One is a Nuclear-electric type, the other one is a steam piston type. It has a triplex design, and it's as huge as the game lets it get. I'm planning on making a more compact, and more useful design.
At present, nuclear power is steam turbine power which needs condensers to be effective. On a ship or submarine, this is no problem but on a ground vehicle the only condensing medium is air which makes a condenser impractically large. Nuclear power from fixed plants seems the way to go, though in the USA the structure of taxation discourages electrification far more than long distances. Installing the catenaries and substations, etc. increases the property valuation and the taxes, so the number of electrified route-miles in the USA has actually declined over time.
A little irony in the clip. Class 91 91 132 was renumbered from 91 023 as it was the loco at Hatfield and Selby. So emphasising the nuclear crash threat.
"Battery powered trains ... but the sheer amount of power needed" That kinda goes against what makes trains so great, that they DON'T need a lot of power per ton of cargo. What really makes trains require a lot of power is the starting phase. Accelerating that mass takes all the power, while keeping it rolling on level ground takes almost no power thanks to the low friction of rails. The solution therefore to battery powered trains is to have a grid where they need to accelerate but then they can go off grid when they only need to keep rolling forwards. A significant portion of the us is flat ground which would be excellent for battery powered trains and you only have overhead wires at places that the trains need to start rolling from. The problem then only becomes, "what happens when the train needs to stop where there's no overhead wires" and for that i have no good solutions really. But as long as it doesn't have to be started on battery power they are definitely doable.
I have a friend who was nuke tech on a carrier. His carrier had SIX reactors! Not, he says, unusual. Of course, a few tons of shielding on a carrier is negligible on a 80,000 ton ship!
While many of the reactor design and operating safety concerns you noted have actually been resolved in recent years (not to mention, there are a great many wildly different reactor designs), obviously crashes would remain an issue. I don't see locomotives like this ever entering normal service if developed. Specialized government and military service with a limited number of units, however...
@@FunAngelo2005 They're indirectly use their nuclear reactor to power which is alt idea that works at least. And plus the nation is less hysterical vs USA
Well,the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrified their Boston-Washington main line i in the 30"s It's still in use today as Amtrak's Eastern Corridor. Also both the Milwaukee Road and Great Northern Railroads had electrified lines in the Pacific Northwest from the 30's to the early 70"s.
Putting an entire reactor on board a locomotive is impractical, but there is another alternative, though I couldn't say offhand how viable it is and how much related technology would need to improve to make it possible. Spacecraft on long term missions far from the sun use what is essentially nuclear waste as a battery, using the radiation emitted to excite electrons very similar to the way solar panels work under electromagnetic radiation. (Indeed, gamma rays are simply higher frequency electromagnetic waves from a nuclear source). Obviously the power requirements of a locomotive are much, much greater than a small space craft, and shielding and disposal of the next product of the nuclear decay chain would still be a concern, but it seems like an avenue to be explored.
also a nuclear reactor doesn't magically produce elctricity. so you either have run it like a steam engine with the reactor in place of the fire box or you run the full kit of reactor, boiler, alternator, condenser, cooler.
Near-future microreactors using thorium or helium fuels (safe in ways uranium reactors can't be) could be as portable as overweight shipping containers. The world's first nuclear train could look as simple as a regular electric locomotive coupled to two bed cars - one for the reactor, one for a power transformer.
If I had to choose between a fast electric train or a slow, dirty, petrol guzzling bus, I would rather travel by rail. Do you think you can do a video on the Spanish Talgo? You know, that tilting train used in the Spain and the Midwest US. I've been a fan of yours for a couple of years now, and if you don't want to do talk about the Talgo, I completely understand. Keep up the good work, eh?
I just figured out Tons of Trackmasters and Train of Thought = ToT which made me confused when I read the Description and made me think there would be a Collab :(
France has a lot of nuclear trains. All the TGVs run on nuclear power. but for better efficiency, the reactors are stationary and connected to the trains by wires.
Shielding isn't really a problem since there are workable solutions to protecting the crew without resorting to hundreds of tons of concrete--for example the compact reactors on submarines--and the USAF even managed to make a workable nuclear reactor which could be installed on an aircraft...in theory anyways. Though the USAF came to the same conclusion you did regarding aircraft reactors, in that it would be a **very** bad idea to take a nuclear freaking reactor and huck it around at several hundred miles per hour.
Too bad the Arc Reactor from Marvel doesn't actually exist. Then there likely wouldn't be an issue with clean fuel. Plus, no waste, aside from the core element, which would likely be easy to dispose of
For all the money US railroads have spent on buying up their own stock, they could easily electrify some of the main lines. They'd just rather make their owners richer.
If you can build rails you can build overhead power lines. The power lines will take much less material than the rails. The problem isn't the technology, the problem is that the US is run by fossil fuel companies.
In theory if we were to build a nuclear-powered locomotive we could build it with enough fuel to last the life of the locomotive and then the maintenance of the reactor wouldn't be a huge issue.
I think if they did exist they would have a rapid ejection system for the reactor so it could be ejected in the air and or to the side were it could be strong enough to withstand the impact..... If it was ejected in the air it could have parachutes...
The radiation shielding would only be part of the massive amount of weight required to make a nuclear train work. In order to get electric power out of steam you need a turbine, which by itself is a large piece of equipment, but then you'd also need water pumps and a massive condenser to make a closed-loop steam system work. If you decided to run an open system that releases spent steam like the old steam locomotives in order to save weight then you'd be giving up the range advantage of nuclear power as you'd still have to stop and fill up your water tank all the time. And if you ever got stuck without access to water then you'd have a meltdown. Not ideal!
Nuclear waste would not really be a problem. All of the nuclear waste in the world right now could be stacked on a football field to about 30 feet high. The trains would not contribute all that much more. Assuming sufficient shielding is used, coal-fired steam engines actually give off more radiation than a nuclear counterpart would. The real problem in my mind is cooling. Where is all that water coming from? The mass of shielding might be one thing, but carrying enough water to cool would be the real problem. I guess we could run canals along the tracks for the trains to scoop water from, but that seems impractical.
I always thought that nuclear-electric was somewhat silly, as most nuclear power stations make steam to spin a turbine, so you could make a nuclear steam engine, and probably produce zero waster by reusing the steam.
Problem with that is the steam turbine… they tend to have horrible efficiency curves (peak power is efficient as hell but idle takes almost as much fuel and locos often can’t run at full throttle for long enough to make up for the rest) add to that the time it takes to throttle a reactor up and down and you suddenly have to waste a bunch of power all the time, which takes tons of cooling or some sort of consumer… Way easier to leave it stationary and spread the load over many trains
What about a train powered by a nuclear FUSION reactor? Fusion reactors aren't radioactive and there was one built back in December 2022 that had a net gain in energy, meaning that it produced more energy than was put into it.
we could "easily" start shipping nuclear waste to moon and never have a problem with it ever again. it's expensive but it would solve all our energy problems forever.
And probably turn out impractical as all hell for anything but hotshots that don’t have to change speed for hours or even days on end because throttling a nuclear reactor up or down takes long… and the steam turbine running the electricity has a very narrow margin from peak power (efficient as hell) to idle (needs almost as much power for no output)… Or we take the French approach: electrify and get the power from stationary reactors that can spread the output over as many trains as necessary so they don’t have to throttle up or down…
"Countries like the U.S., Canada or Russia have rail lines that can go on for hundred of miles through the middle of nowhere."
Russia is the perfect example that it CAN be done, take a look at the Transsiberian Railway.
You seem to have missed the point of the video. It's about the impracticality of _nuclear_ trains NOT electric trains.
@@misterflibble6601 The quote is from a segment of the video talking about how electrification is a better idea than on-board nuclear reactors.
And tot makes the classic mistake of excusing north America's lack of electrification, just because it's big.
And the Milwaukee Road
@@vulduv While I think there's a lot of reasons why America hasn't electrified it's freight rails, I think the one to keep in mind, in the context of the video, is the age these ideas came from. During the start cold war, Nuclear Energy was considered the new hotness, and long distance electrification was probably difficult (or at least building it was). It took the Solviet Union and Russia 70 years to electrify the Trans-Siberian Railway after all.
It probably seemed like a better long term idea to put a reactor in a train rather than electrify, with the bonus of the idea being hype (almost a literal hype train, if you will) at the time is probably why it got so much traction. In our present day, America could probably retrofit their railroads to be electrified easy. ...if they could agree to do so.
I'd also like to note that some of these ideas seem to use a engine that uses a larger gauge than normal, which would be counterproductive if you don't want to rework your rails to be electric.1:24 is a good spot to see what I'm talking about, the train car has two full floors and is as wide as a average living room.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm I was just responding to someone who had completely missed the point of the original comment.
(And ironically, that guy was accussing the original commenter of missing the point of the video.)
Also it feels like your reply was intended for the original commenter, and not me...
No matter how far in the future we get, nuclear powered trains still feels like something out of the Jetsons
Or anything Gerry Anderson related
One Can simply put a nuclear reactor in the fire box instead of coals. It Is how nuclear plants Are made, except they have turbines instead of pistons
That "The Atomic Locomotive" concept art looks so bizzare & interesting at the same time.
The 50s were good at that sort of thing in general. The who decade had a distinctive style of what's now become retrofuturism, fueled in part by the ongoing Space Race and the resulting boom in science fiction's popularity.
Well, if they electrified rail lines and those lines received power from nuclear power plants, they would technically be nuclear powered locomotives.
Welcome to French high speed rail
Under this same logic I refer to my mom's electric car as a coal-powered vehicle. It's probably still better in terms of carbon emissions per mile than a gasoline car, but it's not totally harmless and "guilt free" as electric vehicle owners like to believe.
@@quillmaurer6563 Not really. EVs aren't any better for the environment.
@@kozzy18 There's a lot of debate over that, but what's clear is that - especially if running on mostly coal-generated electricity - they aren't as clean as people like to think they are. I've thought it would be interesting to compare the CO2-per-mile of her electric car versus my motorcycle, I'm guessing they would be comparable. But that's not counting the energy and other environmental impact of manufacturing the electric car.
@@quillmaurer6563 I was talking about as a whole. The rare earth elements needed and their extraction is pretty detrimental. It's catabolic. If people were serious about reducing carbon emissions, they would want domestic manufacturing. Shipping and power generation is the largest CO2 emitters.
When playing Fallout 4, I often come across ruined train tracks with box cars. When I first found a ruined locomotive, I was a little surprised to see that it resembled a steam engine (albeit a very top-heavy and impractical one). But when I thought about it, it would make a certain amount of sense for a nuclear-powered engine to be designed like that. After all, nuclear power plants work by dipping nuclear material into water and funneling the resulting steam through turbines that generate power. In the broadest concept without regard for safety or practicality, you could take that resultant steam and use it to power a locomotive.
Oddly enough, the train I saw in Fallout New Vegas looked like an EMD F7.
@@jd_the_cat *Image searches:* Huh. Never came across that in my time playing New Vegas, but that's definitely an F7.
The images of the fire that occurred in the town of Lac Megantic came to mind immediately upon hearing this idea. It's fairly close to where I live, about a two hour drive away, and the train that went up in flames in that town had passed a few miles away from my house just a few hours before. I can't help but think that making a fission reactor mobile on rails is a really horrible idea
It's not horrible, unless the Engineer leeches out cash meant for armoring the reactor
Mini nuclear reactors have been a thing since the 60's. The deep sea submersible NR-1 had a reactor the size of a refrigerator.
Yes, but a deep sea submersible have a few pro's going in it favor for this.
1) It doesn't require a lot of instantaneous power to move. Trains are really efficient but they still draw several kilowatts of power when accelerating.
A fridge size nuclear reactor does NOT produce that power.
2) If something were to go wrong on a nuclear submersible, it will fall to the bottom of the ocean. Sure, it's a disaster but it's still at the bottom of the ocean where the effects are way more limited than they would be on land.
There are also nuclear powered space craft. Again, they are quite small and lightweight so the argument "it can be done" is true but then you realize why it can be done.
They are after all in space so should something go wrong they have all of space around them to disperse the radiation into background noise.
And they are light and doesn't need to accelerate in minutes, they can spend days accelerating. Something a train can't afford.
And they don't need shielding to protect what's outside of them. The only shielding they need are around their electrical components.
And they have just enough to power a microwave
@@RealCadde Those spacecraft use radioactive decay, not fission, and are far less efficient. They also do not use it for propulsion, but instead for electricity. Nuclear propulsion is possible and should be used, but so far it has not been.
Somebody designed a hot tub sized nuclear reactor that can produce 1.5 MEGAwatts. It has not been built, but it seems like your concerns about size may have been resolved.
Obviously, safety and cooling are the remaining concerns.
Putting up overhead wires is not a problem with distance. Most of the trans-Siberian railway is over head electric. The real problem is that Railroads don't want to spend the money on infrastructure unless they're forced too.
Electrifying long stretches of rail to me seems like its only a matter of cost and/or politifcal will. The trans-siberian railway is electrified. Maybe there are other factors like the hauling strength of diesel electric vs pure electric locomotives, or the increased demand on the power grid, but with today's tech no stretch of rail should be too long or too remote to electrify.
EDIT: And yes, let's not put nuclear reactors on rails.
Why would a Diesel-electric locomotive be stronger than a 100% electric one?
The electric motor that actually spins the wheel is pretty much the same in both cases. The power of a locomotive is nowadays usually only limited by traction on the rails and avoiding overheating of the engine. So a Diesel could haul more if it's just heavier hence has more traction, but the electric locomotive could be made heavier artificially to get the same result.
It took 70 years for the Russians, and they havent electrified the rest of their networks. So it may not be practicle.
@@jailbird1133 Considering the state of the Russian economy during the late Soviet era and the 90s, that's probably more a mark of how feasible it is than how unfeasible it is.
The American economy could absolutely do it.
train is already a moving power plant
connecting it to another power plant is not only redundant ,it is stupid
Waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical problem. We have safe, effective, and stable storage solutions but nuclear hysteria means we can't use them
That's precisely right, most of the nuclear hysteria comes from those on the left side of the aisle (no intention to get political just stating the facts) that believe that every and anything should run on solar and wind. They take for granted and dismiss the promise of the atom, why would have nuclear ships, trains, aircraft, maybe even cars, if it weren't for the unnecessary fear of nuclear power.
People really don't know that most nuclear waste is low level radiation waste and that it would be safe quite quickly, bit hey, let's gloss over the deaths attributed to general poisoning due to other non renewable sources like the mentioned coal and oil, it's not like they are any safer....
Your so called safety is in the mind. At the end of the day the outcome of the disaster is bigger than the risk.
If a plane crashes and it is the lowest statistic in mass transit it doesn't have to cause a disaster outside the potential deaths of those on board thanks to the pilot.
But Nuclear Reactors aren't meant to take a major battering and the prime example of recent times is the Tsunami in Japan that caused a meltdown. Now it was contained better than Chernobyl but this is concentrated energy in one place people can choose to live away from and evacuate.
Trains would put the risk on the move and suddenly you can't be sure where is safe and when. It's unnecessary to create a situation where we'll be living in fear.
@@ChimpManZ1264 Have you seen nuclear transportation carriages? Indestructible. Just put a reactor in one instead of waste and no amount of crashing will cause any damage whatsoever.
Fukushima was a rare natural disaster and even then the primary cause was...improper construction decisions by placing the back up generators under the water table. I'm not sure how many Tsunamis are going to happen in Siberia or the mid west US. I don't trust the Russians with lighting a candle though tbf.
@@cleanerben9636 Nothing is indestructible. There is a limit. Yes I have seen transportation that survives head on collisions but these aren't carrying they are the reactor and they are a walking disater. We don't live on Jupiter and I don't want to.
Funny enough I actually ran a pannel discussing this exact thing a little under a month ago at a convention.
Nuclear Powered Train: *Crashes*
Shows massive explosion and screams on TV
Narrator: *luckily no one was hurt*
Hahaha 😂😂😂 yeah
Yeah, no one was hurt. *But did get radiation posioning after wards.*
@@ThatScottishAtlantic57 💀
@@ThatScottishAtlantic57 they would not do that in TTTE lmao
Meanwhile, Plainly Difficult is working on a new research project.
Hydrogen power seems a good one. The SVR are working on a conversion on one of its 08 shunters currently. I'm interested to see how it turns out.
"Unfortunately we have to inform you that the train in front of us had an accident. For security reasons we have to wait a while before we can continue. The delay can go up to 2000 years. wait 2000 years!?"
Nuclear powered substations equiped with small submarine-style reactors along remote railways lines are indeed probably a far more realistic solution.
More realistic than just an overhead power line? The difference in price between a nuclear sub and a non nuclear sub is well over double the price, meaning this one nuclear trai engine will cost 560+ million, which would be over 560km up to 2,000km of overhead power lines.
@@Alex-cw3rz This nuclear substation would feed an overhead power line or a third rail, and normal electric trains would ride on the line. It would just be a dedicated power station for the railway. For 90% of the world, using power from the grid is of course more interesting, but my idea was for something like the most remote sections of the transiberian...
There is probably other, and even better, ways to improve theses remote lines, but if you want to get all the advantages of the electric traction, I think it's a possible solution.
@@NQR-9000 most remote sections of transsib were electrified just fine without mini-Chernobyls along the way.
@@Volodimar So, there was a better way! 😅 All that makes the whole nuclear train idea redundant, I guess.
Until you derail and hit one
Nuclear Power is the ultimate example of not every form of power can be properly applied to trains. Nuclear plants work fine enough in power plants because they're stable, and ships are - more or less - the same way, especially when they're used on vessels which are vitually impervious to waves. You can't really apply that to a locomotive. You meantioned the size factor, meaning nuclear reactors could realisitcally only be applied to locomotives while cylinder and turbine power plants can be applied to trainsets and/or multiple units.
One problem you sorta skipped over was the conditions of a railroad. Many locomotives over the years were tested due to the success in marine and stationary applications, but translated poorly to railroad use. The Napier-Deltic engines proved fine for 100 mph passenger service, but still took a beating and needed to have spare engines on hand to be swapped out if needed. Similarly, Fairbanks Morse locomotives might've been powerful by comparison to other units, but couldn't handle the rough and dirty conditions that railroads often were. They also weren't the best when it came to constant changes in power applications. The longest lasting examples kept working because shop crews were familiar with their Marine power plants (they worked in shipyards in WWII for context). To say nothing of the hit or miss nature of steam and gas turbine prime movers. Powerful for size, but fuel hungry and maintenance heavy. They could also catch fire if not taken care of. So...trying to picture a poorly maintained nuclear locomotive is terrifying.
If i recall there was a hydrogen cell powered loco somewhere, it ran off reclaimed water, but the prospect sufferers for too many problems, like that the fuel tank is filled with one of the hardest to contain and most explosively active elements
Also keep in mind that hydrogen isn't an energy source, just a storage medium sort of like batteries. It requires energy to create hydrogen from water, and that energy (well some of it, with some energy lost as heat) is then returned as electricity in a fuel cell. I suspect batteries would be more suitable for trains, as they aren't really weight limited - if one locomotive loaded with batteries isn't enough, you can add as many battery-filled "tenders" as needed.
I think they are actually in regular use on some smaller lines in Germany.
@@quillmaurer6563 You would need several rail cars worth of batteries for any meaningful range. That replaces weight/length that can be used for paying cargo. And unless you want to reconfigure the train to swap batteries, recharging time will be a nightmare.
With hydrogen, it could still be stored onboard the locomotive just as diesel is today.
@@dgthe3 Depends on what "meaningful range" is. I could see a system with an electrified main line and unelectrified branch lines or industrial spurs, only needing say 10 or 20 miles range (or perhaps much less in some cases) could avoid the need for either using diesel locomotives or elecrifying those lightly-used branch lines.
The battery tenders replacing paying cargo is a consideration, a trade-off, but if it saves cost on running it might be worthwhile. If say you're replacing one of your 20 freight cars with a battery car, but it saves 30% of operating costs (not just the fuel but also maintenance of the diesel engine), that's a huge plus. I don't know if it would be anything like that, if it would be that favorable, but I could imagine it being that good or better - someone more knowlegeable than me would have to figure that out. But just losing some cargo capacity (or the battery electric locomotives needing to be more powerful to haul their own batteries along with the train) might still be advantageous.
As for battery swapping - that's the easiest part, and one of the reasons trains could do this easier than anything else. Simply put the battery tender on a charging siding, remotely raise the pantograph to an overhead wire (nobody having to leave the cab,) uncouple it, move over to another that's charged, couple it, lower pantograph, off you go. I can't imagine any other vehicle having it that easy, the great thing about trains is the train as a whole (not an individual locomotive) are entirely modular. The other option, depending on the network it's running on, is that part of the system could be electrified (such as the main line with unelectrified branch lines I mentioned), and the batteries could be charged with a pantograph while in motion just like any other electric train, so it would never be necessary to stop to charge. Again, another thing trains can do that isn't really feasible with any other vehicle (I've seen concepts of doing this exact thing with trucks, but that would be far less straightforward).
Comparing hydrogen, I think that would be worse in the regards you're talking about. Hydrogen is more energy dense per weight, but far less per volume - the hydrogen and its tanks necessary for meaningful range for a train wouldn't be all that heavy, but would be very bulky. Would probably end up the same way with "tenders," this time tank cars. Refueling would be faster than recharging batteries (maybe), but more complicated, requiring hydrogen be provided at needed locations, either shipped there or generated on-site, and the train wouldn't be able to recharge while in motion like a battery train could. This would be similar to how it's done with diesel fuel, but having to deal with shorter range, much larger volumes, and either highly pressurized or cryogenic liquid hydrogen, which is both more complicated and more dangerous to work with than diesel. Electricity for batteries on the other hand can be wired to anywhere on the network much more easily, can be fed into a locomotive or battery tender via overhead wires without anyone having to get out of the cab, and recharging can be done while in motion using century-old highly refined technology. So in many cases I suspect battery electric locomotives would actually be logistically, operationally, safety, and effort-wise simpler, cheaper, more efficient not only than hydrogen but even than getting diesel fuel into locomotives (not even considering the cost of the fuel itself). Only needing what comes through wires is actually really helpful versus needing some sort of fluid fuel. A good point of comparison is my gasoline car versus my mom's electric car. The electric car can be a hassle for occasional road trips (though with fast charge stations and the car having almost as much range as gas cars that's not a huge problem), but for most uses she just charges it in the garage, no hassle whatsoever, while I have to go to a gas station once a week.
The fears around nuclear energy are highly exaggerated by propaganda produced by fossil fuel companies, and the media has over-sensationalized almost all nuclear energy accidents.
Having a nuclear reactor on a train for power may be impractical due to the engineering challenges, but it isn't the worst idea I've seen for powering trains.
Technically, we already have nuclear-powered trains. It's just that the nuclear reactors are stationary (in the form of power plants), and the trains are powered via overhead power lines.
I wonder if ToT will talk about the Javanic Locomotives of Indonesia
Eyyy I'm with you brother!!
that scrap mechanic retro song in backgroud lol
Nuclear reactors have another problem for use on a vehicle that has to put out variable amounts of power: They aren't good at starting up and shutting down on short notice. For shutting down, you have to keep supplying cooling for a LONG time, due to the heat generated by fission products, and for starting up, if certain fission products (especially Xenon-135, which has its own Wikipedia article) that poison nuclear reactions haven't decayed, the startup becomes difficult and dangerous. Ships and submarines go at constant speed for long periods, making this tolerable (if you didn't care about the radioactive waste disposal and the difficulty of shielding, or if you're really stuck with nuclear like on a submarine), but on a locomotive or even in a stationary reactor serving a rail line with low enough traffic to produce highly variable load this would be very problematic.
2:44 that is actually very wrong. nuclear reactor that powered aircraft only weight 70 tons. but after that project was abandoned there were several advancements in shielding that could make it way lighter still.
0:36 and yet, there where extremely long electrified routes in the US designed and built(The Milwaukee Road and Pennsylvania Railroad had hundreds of miles of electrified track, some of which is still in use with the same equipment 100 years later; ATSF planned to electrify from Missouri to California(2,500 track miles, 1700 route miles), and UP came within inches of electrifying from North Platte to Salt Lake City); and in particular the trans-siberian railroad is electrified, all 9,289 kilometers of it. Looking at folks other than those focused only on short-term profit or affected by political ideals, India has 52,247 route kilometers electrified and is working on electrifying everything...
Sorry, I might transferring to this video, or that moment of it, my feelings towards people who confuse "takes effort" or "more expensive than doing nothing" with "impossible"
I'm not expert on the geography of Russia, but I don't think that they have a massive mountain range cutting the nation in half like the Rockies. So there's a possibility it's down to the fact that pure electric locomotives might not have the power to traverse such difficult terrain with the loads that freight trains in the U.S. do.
So it's probably more complicated than "takes effort" or "more expensive than doing nothing", there might be some technical limitations that prevent it at the moment. Again I'm no expert on this, but that might be another possiblity.
The Milwaukee Roads electric divisions where built to deal with the Rockies in the 20s. The Virginian's where built to deal with the Appalachians with coal trains, again in the 20s, and Russia has several mountain ranges across the route of the Trans-Siberian
There is museum in Las Vegas about nuclear weapons and testing. However they have an exhibit on the exuberance of peaceful nuclear energy in the late 40s and 50s where it was portrayed as something that could solve many of the worlds problems. It was only a matter of time before people thought to use it to power trains and wanting to make it work.
Really enjoyed the video.
Thanks mate! I never looked at nuclear locomotives this way before, i only looked at the limited greenhouse gases and benefits, but not the cons
The trans Australia railway was not mentioned in the video. It also runs for "hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere".
Technically most of the high speed rail in France is nuclear powered. Their high speed rail is electric and the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear plants. Turns out that just not putting the reactor on the train solves most of the issues with the concept of a nuclear train.
What I think is funny is that because Nuclear Reactors often use water as coolant, locomotives would go back to needing to stop for water pretty regularly. It feels like we'd be going back to the age of steam, and I'm apparently not the only one to think that.
I was also thinking that you could try using RTG's, but I quickly realized that getting enough of them or one that was big enough would likely be so heavy that you'd loose a lot of your pulling power to your own locomotive's weight. It would be harder for a wreck to cause a disaster, unless the RTG casings were cracked, but you'd still probably need to guard them 24/7 due to them being a relatively easy source of radioactive material.
You wouldn't need to stop for water on a closed loop system, the trains would need massive airflow through the heat output section instead. Heavier, but works as well. Could have been done to steam engines as well but I guess the need for coal stops anyway kind of negated the intent given the added weight.
We never entirely Left the age of steam. When it comes to generating electricity, coal, oil*, nuclear, and solar* all use the stated fuel as a heat source to power a Steam Turbine.
*while these are also used in other ways at smaller scales (photovoltaic cells, internal combustion engines), as large, grid scale generators, my understanding is that the above is true.
Which is to say, Electric trains are often basically steam trains, in a sense. heh.
@@laurencefraser It's like carcinization, but with power generation!
@@Kalvinjj I was operating under the assumption that there are two halves to the cooling loop, one which is closed and the other open. The idea being that you needed to refill the open loop, which I guess could suplement the air cooling.
@@strcmdrbookwyrm This is correct for a power plant system, it is indeed how open loop cooling works, it's a valid proposition for the heaps of power a locomotive would generate.
A closed loop would be quite akin to a car radiator in other hand, not requiring refills, but I wonder about the size, likely would need heaps of forced air flow too.
It will be interesting to see if the issues are still the same once we figure out a stable nuclear fusion reactor
Thank you for pronouncing nuclear correctly
There's another useful thing that locomotives lack in comparison to submarines: direct contact to a large body of *liquid* coolant. Ultimately, the steady state power output of any such system is limited by its cooling capabilities, and a nuclear train would be hard-pressed for heat capacity, even if you carried around silly amounts of water.
I thought of that too, and started to realize how much alike the systems steam engines and nuclear engines would be. (For example, for those who don't know, the firebox of a locomotive has to be underwater at all times to prevent it from getting to hot and damaging itself. Sound familiar?)
@@strcmdrbookwyrm The Thing is that Steam Locomotives just exhaust the spent Steam. There have been Attempts at Condensing Locomotives (either to save Water or to make Trains harder to spot by Aurcraft), and all these Attempts were very unreliable because Condensers are to delicate for the Shocks and Vibrations encountered on Steam Trains. A PWR-Plant could theoretically be built to exhaust too, but you'd not only have to carry a ridiculous Amount of Water, but also couldn't use just pretty much any River Water as you do on Steam Locomotives. Just like Water Tube Boilers, the Steam Generators of PWR Plants are very sensitive to Water Quality.
@@Genius_at_Work The impurities of a river fill-up don't enter the core of a PWR (separate steam generator), but in a BWR it would; creates intensely radioactive steam with all the impurities.
Oh hey! The "America" picture is the Feather River Canyon near Oroville California. I've been over that bridge many times!
At this point what I see as the solution would be to have battery-electric locomotives on partially electrified tracks. One advantage of trains over other types of vehicles is they aren't really weight-limited, can add as many battery-loaded "tenders" as you need. Could have some portions of the track electrified, where trains can re-charge while moving, allowing them to go some distance without overhead lines. Perhaps an electrified main line and un-electrified branch lines. Or a route that is only electrified in sections, with other sections (presumably more remote parts) not electrified that trains cross on battery power.
The more tenders you have, the less freight you can haul.
@@jailbird1133 True, but the tender would be the equivalent of one freight car, so not a huge loss of capacity. A trade-off, but it is an option no other mode of transport really has. Was seen as acceptable in the steam era, or even the Union Pacific "Big Blow" gas turbine electric locomotives. Gives me another funny thought - just for the hell of it, have a battery locomotive pull a train of nothing but battery tenders and set a record for the longest unrecharged journey by a battery electric vehicle, could probably make it all the way across the Continental US, maybe even multiple times.
@@quillmaurer6563 Well technically that record is infinite if you include solar powered drones.
That is basically what's already being planned for small branch lines in Europe, Schelswig-Holstein has been operating battery powered commuter trains for a few years now and DSB is testing them.
@@hedgehog3180 Makes sense - figures that Europe would be the place to try it. Sounds like for passenger trains rather than freight that I had in mind, but same idea. Are they locomotive-hauled or EMUs?
Hey TrainOfThought, I’m probably only one to mention this but I found it interesting that you used the Scrap Mechanic radio music at the end of the video, it was a nice addition.
Do you have plans to play any other train related game in the further especially after playing Tracks the Train Set game? Such as Derail Valley, Rolling Line, Transport Fever 2 and Scrap Mechanic.
Saying that, Scrap Mechanic isn’t really a “train game” in itself but it is a game with somewhat of a rail fan community behind it, so it would be if you could perhaps do a livestream on that game which seems to be more prevalent on your channel. 🚂😎⚙️
Looks like I'm not the only one to recognize the music :)
@@widmo206 same
Makes more sense to have an electric railway powered by a thorium reactor.
Fallout universe: Hold my Pip-Boy, I need to get this done!
@trainofthought on matters Locomotives....can you make a video on how the locomotive and the train in the movie and series Snowpiercer worked
I think the hydrogen fuel cell looks the most promising as a future engine. However, I could have sworn there was a thing called Algae biofuel that was being developed some years back. Either I've gone mad or something happened to the project that stopped it in it's tracks, pun intended.
But who knows what energy we will use despite us being in this world only for 200,000 years and still not having advanced technology to reach the moon or even other planets
Biofuels all have the same problem of being questionably sustainable since often the biomass comes from farming and most farming is not organic and thus not sustainable.
I think the last couple weeks have shown us why nuclear trains wouldn't work with our current regulations
They tend to derail...
Considerably safer to just build a big stationary power station and use the trains to fuel it.
1:41 "Tell me one time turning a submarine into a locomotive was economical."
*Sad Fairbank Morse noises.*
I enjoyed this but i hear the scrap mechanic radio song in the bg lol
Hydrogen fuel cells might be an option. The current designs are apparently not powerful enough for freight, but have been proving practical for commuter rail and buses. Research is being done to see if power enough systems can be developed for long-haul heavy freight. If it works, the advantages are obvious - you don't need the expense and time to modify your existing track infrastructure with catenary/third rail or substations.
Meanwhile Germany figured out that wires are cheaper and better than H2, but you ought to go all in with wires…
Instead you'll need to modify your rolling stock and fueling system.
Just electrify frickin lines!
@@Volodimar bonus for electrics: they have the same motors that your diesels have, but can keep them at the limit for longer, thus either pulling away better or pulling faster at little more cost… and you get back energy from dynamics…
If only NBC considered this widsom before pumping all their money into 'Supertrain'
Disposing of nuclear waste isn't a hard issue, we have space for 100,000 years of current annual output at existing facilities
Great vid, I like your narrative style.
With conventional Uranium reactors, this assessment is entirely correct. But with Thorium micro reactor technology advancing very quickly, it could give the concept of a nuclear train a second shot at success.
Thorium has all of the same issues since it produces just as much radiation. The main theoretical benefit to thorium is the lack of radioactive waste. And well “progressing quickly” means jack shit for a technology that has been “just around the corner” for 20 years yet still has seen no comericial use.
The Mars rover has a nuclear generator along with solar, which is why it'll only run in full power mode for 15-25 years then, it'll have to charge up every day by solar like WALL-E until dust covers the solar panel and renders the rover useless. Which is what happened with the first rover. A train could have a small generator but that'll mean more refueling which is costly and problematic, so the bigger it can be, the longer it'll go without refueling. The radiation is not a worry as submarines currently don't give off any harming radiation to the outside due to it's well engineered exterior, and also don't radiate to the lifetime of a reactor engineer. The main problem with nuclear trains and planes is definitely the crashing factor. Most current submarines are 30-70 years old and have only ever needed to be refueled 1-2 times. Little science lesson.
"something that is slowly killing them" so no different then the exhaust fumes really
I hear that scrap mechanic music in the background :D
_I see you're a man of culture as well_
In stormworks I have designed 2 Nuclear Locomotives.
One is a Nuclear-electric type, the other one is a steam piston type. It has a triplex design, and it's as huge as the game lets it get. I'm planning on making a more compact, and more useful design.
At present, nuclear power is steam turbine power which needs condensers to be effective. On a ship or submarine, this is no problem but on a ground vehicle the only condensing medium is air which makes a condenser impractically large. Nuclear power from fixed plants seems the way to go, though in the USA the structure of taxation discourages electrification far more than long distances. Installing the catenaries and substations, etc. increases the property valuation and the taxes, so the number of electrified route-miles in the USA has actually declined over time.
A little irony in the clip. Class 91 91 132 was renumbered from 91 023 as it was the loco at Hatfield and Selby. So emphasising the nuclear crash threat.
"Battery powered trains ... but the sheer amount of power needed"
That kinda goes against what makes trains so great, that they DON'T need a lot of power per ton of cargo.
What really makes trains require a lot of power is the starting phase. Accelerating that mass takes all the power, while keeping it rolling on level ground takes almost no power thanks to the low friction of rails.
The solution therefore to battery powered trains is to have a grid where they need to accelerate but then they can go off grid when they only need to keep rolling forwards.
A significant portion of the us is flat ground which would be excellent for battery powered trains and you only have overhead wires at places that the trains need to start rolling from.
The problem then only becomes, "what happens when the train needs to stop where there's no overhead wires" and for that i have no good solutions really.
But as long as it doesn't have to be started on battery power they are definitely doable.
I have a friend who was nuke tech on a carrier. His carrier had SIX reactors! Not, he says, unusual. Of course, a few tons of shielding on a carrier is negligible on a 80,000 ton ship!
Why does it remind me of gru’s car?
While many of the reactor design and operating safety concerns you noted have actually been resolved in recent years (not to mention, there are a great many wildly different reactor designs), obviously crashes would remain an issue. I don't see locomotives like this ever entering normal service if developed. Specialized government and military service with a limited number of units, however...
I'm not tripping right? That _is_ the music from the Scrap Mechanic in-game radio playing as background music, right?
aren't french trains basically nuclear powered? after all France gets a lot of its energy from nuclear power plants.
I was about to say the same.
Nuclear trains work...provided the reactor doesn't move!
But they use overhead wires
@@FunAngelo2005 but the power comes from nuclear reactors
@@ww32 but they are indirectly powered
@@FunAngelo2005 They're indirectly use their nuclear reactor to power which is alt idea that works at least. And plus the nation is less hysterical vs USA
You can make a fission reactor small enough for a train locomotive. The problem, however, is cost.
bro really used the scrap mechanic radio of all things as the bg
What about the locomotive that ran on Kerosene?
That's technically a dangerous nuclear chemical.
Well,the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrified their Boston-Washington main line i in the 30"s
It's still in use today as Amtrak's Eastern Corridor.
Also both the Milwaukee Road and Great Northern Railroads had electrified lines in the Pacific Northwest from the 30's to the early 70"s.
Putting an entire reactor on board a locomotive is impractical, but there is another alternative, though I couldn't say offhand how viable it is and how much related technology would need to improve to make it possible. Spacecraft on long term missions far from the sun use what is essentially nuclear waste as a battery, using the radiation emitted to excite electrons very similar to the way solar panels work under electromagnetic radiation. (Indeed, gamma rays are simply higher frequency electromagnetic waves from a nuclear source). Obviously the power requirements of a locomotive are much, much greater than a small space craft, and shielding and disposal of the next product of the nuclear decay chain would still be a concern, but it seems like an avenue to be explored.
RTG will give you about 10w.
No mention of the cooling problem of needing to cool that reactor without constantly venting steam?
why is scrap mechanic radio music playing in the background for some time
Sydney O Class tram gets some love!
also a nuclear reactor doesn't magically produce elctricity. so you either have run it like a steam engine with the reactor in place of the fire box or you run the full kit of reactor, boiler, alternator, condenser, cooler.
>Why no nuclear trains
Um, *points towards the East Palestine derailment.*
great video man , I actually didint think of all these things thatd make it a bad idea
Near-future microreactors using thorium or helium fuels (safe in ways uranium reactors can't be) could be as portable as overweight shipping containers.
The world's first nuclear train could look as simple as a regular electric locomotive coupled to two bed cars - one for the reactor, one for a power transformer.
If I had to choose between a fast electric train or a slow, dirty, petrol guzzling bus, I would rather travel by rail. Do you think you can do a video on the Spanish Talgo? You know, that tilting train used in the Spain and the Midwest US. I've been a fan of yours for a couple of years now, and if you don't want to do talk about the Talgo, I completely understand. Keep up the good work, eh?
Nuclear powered trains exist, it’s called electrified railways and nuclear power stations
"Tomas the Nuclear Engine"
Sounds like some kind of Soviet-era ripoff.
Nice Scrap Mechanic music!
I just figured out Tons of Trackmasters and Train of Thought = ToT which made me confused when I read the Description and made me think there would be a Collab :(
That's the ScrapMechanic Radio Music!
Problem is null because if you really need it for long haul you could just use something like tender with diesel fuel for locomotives
Well that with fission reactors. What about when we finally figure out fusion?
The size of the US is not a valid excuse to not put up catenary. The railroads are just greedy/lazy
France has a lot of nuclear trains.
All the TGVs run on nuclear power. but for better efficiency, the reactors are stationary and connected to the trains by wires.
Shielding isn't really a problem since there are workable solutions to protecting the crew without resorting to hundreds of tons of concrete--for example the compact reactors on submarines--and the USAF even managed to make a workable nuclear reactor which could be installed on an aircraft...in theory anyways. Though the USAF came to the same conclusion you did regarding aircraft reactors, in that it would be a **very** bad idea to take a nuclear freaking reactor and huck it around at several hundred miles per hour.
Too bad the Arc Reactor from Marvel doesn't actually exist. Then there likely wouldn't be an issue with clean fuel. Plus, no waste, aside from the core element, which would likely be easy to dispose of
For all the money US railroads have spent on buying up their own stock, they could easily electrify some of the main lines. They'd just rather make their owners richer.
If you can build rails you can build overhead power lines. The power lines will take much less material than the rails. The problem isn't the technology, the problem is that the US is run by fossil fuel companies.
Isn’t China rail vast but also electric powered ?
I think using renewable diesel is a better alternative for America’s railroads.
just have the engine crew wear hazmat suites
In theory if we were to build a nuclear-powered locomotive we could build it with enough fuel to last the life of the locomotive and then the maintenance of the reactor wouldn't be a huge issue.
I think if they did exist they would have a rapid ejection system for the reactor so it could be ejected in the air and or to the side were it could be strong enough to withstand the impact..... If it was ejected in the air it could have parachutes...
The radiation shielding would only be part of the massive amount of weight required to make a nuclear train work. In order to get electric power out of steam you need a turbine, which by itself is a large piece of equipment, but then you'd also need water pumps and a massive condenser to make a closed-loop steam system work. If you decided to run an open system that releases spent steam like the old steam locomotives in order to save weight then you'd be giving up the range advantage of nuclear power as you'd still have to stop and fill up your water tank all the time. And if you ever got stuck without access to water then you'd have a meltdown. Not ideal!
Nuclear Power is a great thing, but very unforgiving
Nuclear waste would not really be a problem. All of the nuclear waste in the world right now could be stacked on a football field to about 30 feet high. The trains would not contribute all that much more.
Assuming sufficient shielding is used, coal-fired steam engines actually give off more radiation than a nuclear counterpart would.
The real problem in my mind is cooling. Where is all that water coming from? The mass of shielding might be one thing, but carrying enough water to cool would be the real problem. I guess we could run canals along the tracks for the trains to scoop water from, but that seems impractical.
I always thought that nuclear-electric was somewhat silly, as most nuclear power stations make steam to spin a turbine, so you could make a nuclear steam engine, and probably produce zero waster by reusing the steam.
Problem with that is the steam turbine… they tend to have horrible efficiency curves (peak power is efficient as hell but idle takes almost as much fuel and locos often can’t run at full throttle for long enough to make up for the rest) add to that the time it takes to throttle a reactor up and down and you suddenly have to waste a bunch of power all the time, which takes tons of cooling or some sort of consumer…
Way easier to leave it stationary and spread the load over many trains
A Nuclear powered locomotive is all fun and games until we have a teeny tiny error and decimate anything in a 5 mile radius.
If Russia ends up making one they should call it Chernobil, just to make it harder for people in the future to distinguish between the two.
What about a train powered by a nuclear FUSION reactor? Fusion reactors aren't radioactive and there was one built back in December 2022 that had a net gain in energy, meaning that it produced more energy than was put into it.
WHY the music from Scrap Mechanic? xD
we could "easily" start shipping nuclear waste to moon and never have a problem with it ever again. it's expensive but it would solve all our energy problems forever.
You can re-Inrich your used nuclear fuel and re-use used fuel up to 99%
I think that Nuclear powered trains were going to be very expensive, useful but also very dangerous.
And probably turn out impractical as all hell for anything but hotshots that don’t have to change speed for hours or even days on end because throttling a nuclear reactor up or down takes long… and the steam turbine running the electricity has a very narrow margin from peak power (efficient as hell) to idle (needs almost as much power for no output)…
Or we take the French approach: electrify and get the power from stationary reactors that can spread the output over as many trains as necessary so they don’t have to throttle up or down…
It's too bad really. I honestly would like to see Nuclear Trains become a thing. Once we can carefully contain the radiation that is.