Nuclear powered cars. Are you ready?

Scientists have discovered a new form of uranium that could lead to a nuclear power plant small enough to fit in your car and eventually even power it.

Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have created a long-sought molecule known as uranium nitride. Besides offering cheaper and safer nuclear fuel, the new molecule could extract more energy from fossil fuels, making cars more fuel-efficient, and could also lead to cheaper drugs.

"Actinide nitrides are candidate nuclear fuels of the future," Discovery News quoted Jaqueline Kiplinger, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who led the team of researchers on the recent Nature Chemistry paper, as saying.

Uranium nitride rips the hydrogen atoms off a carbon atom which is a similar process that happens every day in car engines. Unfortunately a lot of energy in those bonds is lost as heat. But for uranium nitride to become commercially viable, it would have to knock one hydrogen atom after another and not destroy itself in the process.

The scientists would, in other words, have to turn uranium nitride into a catalyst. That should be possible, said Kiplinger, but right now it is not. We hope for the best!