In the 1950s, during a huge period of technological development, a spirit of optimistic futurism and a belief that a world-changing breakthrough was around every corner, every potential idea seemed to have merit, even ones that in hindsight seem utterly ludicrous.
For example, in the 1950s and early 1960s, serious investment and research were placed into a car powered by nuclear fission, something that even with 2024 technology and more advanced pressure relief valves to deal with the intense gases remains wildly optimistic.
Much like the gas turbine cars of the era, the Ford Nucleon seemed at the time to have so many benefits that it would inevitably end up becoming more than a scale-model concept car and turn into a reality.
The idea behind it is similar to the gas turbine car; uranium fission would generate huge amounts of steam which would force a turbine to spin, generating huge amounts of power with very little fuel.
The concept is similar to that of a nuclear submarine, which in the United States began with the USS Nautilus in 1954, with both massive benefits and no incidents.
The biggest benefit is that there would be far less need for refuelling, and whilst the reactor itself would need to be replaced every 5,000 miles, this still would mean a far lower cost over the lifetime of the car compared to constant refuelling.
The problems, as one might expect, were gargantuan and essentially unsolvable. A reactor small enough to fit inside a car could not actually generate a nuclear reaction unless weapon-grade uranium or plutonium was used of the type more commonly seen in atomic bombs.
Nuclear submarines are gigantic and heavily shielded by design, but a car could not be shielded enough without making it too heavy to drive, and not enough radioactive shielding could not only cause radiation poisoning in the driver but also make any rear-end collision an extinction-level event.
In practice, the pressure valves would likely be the only part of the technology that could function.
