At the end of World War II, some US automakers began designing nuclear-powered carspromising not only extraordinary autonomy but also high performance. Prototypes like the Studebaker Astral and the Ford Nucleon attracted great interest, but technical challenges – such as reactor miniaturization, lead shielding and waste management – made these projects unfeasible. During the Cold War era, similar projects were also active in the Soviet Union, for example with the Volga Atom.
The idea of atomic-powered cars
At the end of the Second World War the United States decided to exploit their expertise in the atomic field for peaceful purposes and, among the various initiatives, it was also decided to implement nuclear powered car. The first car manufacturer to develop a prototype of this type was Studebaker with his Astralpresented to South Bend Arts CenterIndiana, in January of 1958.

This full-scale prototype, which among other things promised to be able to fly And navigate, in fact it had not installed a atomic propulsion engine. However, the manufacturer assured that it would be added in its final version, even if details on the matter were never made public. But this was not the atomic car par excellence: the real media case was the one relating to Ford Nucleon, whose 3:8 scale prototype made the rounds of all the main newspapers.

As we can see from the image, at the rear of the car there was the so-called “energy capsule” with radioactive nucleus to be loaded at special stations every Approximately 8000 km. Again, the exact operation of the engine it was never explained in detail. In addition to these made-in-USA projects, other countries such as France and Russia also tried their hand at strange prototypes, although in no case was an actual working car ever produced.
The critical issues of nuclear cars
Obviously if all these prototypes never came to life it is because from a technical point of view there were challenges too complex to overcome. First, they weren’t available such small nuclear reactors to be able to enter the hood of any car. Furthermore, it was calculated that the quantity of lead needed to shield drivers would have been so high that the car weighed approx 50 tonsa higher value 25 times greater compared to the average.
Added to this is a third problem relating to nuclear waste managementwhich was never really taken into consideration at the time.
But what is the future of this technology? In reality at the moment it seems that no technologies of this type are being developed, both due to the technical difficulty in obtaining means of this type and due to a question of costs which, according to some MIT researchers, could be up to 100 times more expensive compared to a conventional one.