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Visions of Nuclear-Powered Cars Captivated Cold War America, but the Technology Never Really Worked
(www.smithsonianmag.com)
For stuff that's neat. Neat article? Neat video? Neat pic of a bug you saw? All good. Neat meme? Ehhh... take it to the meme subs.
If you want a small nuclear energy source, you probably don't want a nuclear reactor. You probably want a less-efficient but smaller and simpler RTG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
https://www.gencellenergy.com/resources/blog/ev-charging-power-car-electricity-usage/
So about 467 watts on a continuous basis for an EV, with lithium batteries for buffer.
https://www.satcatalog.com/component/gphs-rtg/
So for 57 kg, you can get 300W in space, and I bet that if anything it's easier to dump heat into the air. Two should be more than enough.
You may need more shielding on that, and you probably want to have a continuously running fan to blow air past a radiator to dump heat from that, since I bet that it has to get pretty toasty to use just passive cooling -- that's gonna be blowing a hell of a lot of hot air. Probably not gonna want that in your garage in summer, as that's basically a full-house heater constantly running. I doubt that the whole system is actually remotely cost-effective compared to generating energy on land and then dumping it into a vehicle in the form of charging, battery-swapping, hydrogen, or the like. But I bet you could probably build a nuclear car that ran off one if you specifically wanted to do so.
Might also be able to do something like drive a steam turbine instead of using the Seebeck effect. I assume that there's better efficiency there, as terrestrial power plants use steam turbines to convert heat difference into electricity, not the Seebeck effect.
EDIT: And no shortage of waste heat to run the car heater. Don't even need the car to be "on"...or, perhaps more accurately, the car's power system would never be "off".
EDIT2: I'm not sure if it technically counts as an RTG any more if it has a steam turbine instead.