The Car That Can Run For 100 Years Without Refuelling - The Thorium Car

A company called Laser Power Systems as created a concept for a Thorium-powered car engine.The Thorium is radioactive, and the team uses bits of it to build a laser-beam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an energy-producing turbine.

Thus "if your car is powered by Thorium, you would never need to refuel it". As Thorium is one of the most dense materials on the planet and a small sample of it can give 20 million times more energy than a similarly-sized sample of coal.

The thing is, Dr. Charles Stevens, the CEO of Laser Power Systems, told Mashable that Thorium engines won’t be in cars anytime soon.

“Cars are not our primary interest,” Stevens said. ”The automakers don’t want to buy them.”

According to him, too much of auto mobile industry is focused of making money off of gas engines, and it will take at least a couple decades for Thorium technology to be used enough in other industries that vehicle manufacturers will begin to consider revamping the way they think about engines.

He believes a Thorium turbine about the size of an air conditioning unit could more provide cheap power for whole restaurants, hotels, office buildings, even small towns in areas of the world without electricity. At some point, Thorium could power individual homes.

He understands that people may be vary of Thorium because it is radioactive - but any such worry would be unfounded.

“The radiation that we develop off of one of these things can be shielded by a single sheet off of aluminium foil,” Stevens said. ”You will get more radiation from one of those dental X-rays than this.”