Theoretical Question- using nuclear fuel for cars?

The average density of gasoline is .75 KG/ L. Its lower heating value it about 44,000 KJ/KG. So for every Liter of gas burned you release 33000KJ of energy. The average car consumes about 5L of gasoline a day, therefore the averagy energy usage per day is 165,000KJ of energy. (165,000KJ/day)

Now lets pretend that we figure out how to properly dispose of nuclear fuels, and handle the radioactivity.

The fission of 1kg of uranium-245 releases 67300000000 KJ of energy.

What if we wanted to run our car for 20 years? How much uranium would that require?

well the energy required to operate a car is 165,000KJ per day. there are 365 days in a year and 20 years in a 20 year time period therefore in 20 years 1204500000KJ of energy would be used.

Since there are 67300000000 KJ of energy in one kg of Uranium-235, you would need .01789 kg of uranium-235.

There are aproximately 143,781,202 cars in the United States so if every car were nuclear powered for 20 years it would require 2,572,245 kg of Uranium-235. This is a tiny number compared to the 5,248,013,873,000 Liters or 3,936,010,405,000kg of gasoline burned.

How Nuclear Power works and what politicians think about it

A video of politicians talking about nuclear power.