the right way to solve this problem is to start building nuclear. And to throw to jail previous crop of German politicians who sold out its energy independence to russia and fossil fuel lobby
> The X-12's unique reactor would be a six-sided, double-walled vessel of stainless steel, only three feet high and wide and one foot thick. Inside it would be 64 gallons of "soup" — uranyl sulfate (a yellowish compound of uranium) dissolved in water. The 20 pounds of uranium in the uranyl sulfate would mostly be of the fissionable U-235 variety.
> How would passengers, crew, even people standing on station platforms be protected from the deadly rays generated in the core? Most reactors have tremendous concrete walls surrounding them, but such a shield could not possibly be squeezed onto a locomotive frame. The X-12 shielding would weigh 200 tons, measure 10 by 15 by 15 feet, and be four feet thick. It would consist of several steel tanks nestling one inside another. The steel would stop the X-ray-like gamma radiation. To confine neutrons, the spaces between steel tanks would be filled with hydrogen-rich material like water, paraffin, or plastic.
> The big gain from atomic fuel, as Dr. Borst sees it, is likely to be an economic one. Despite the high cost of an engine like the X-12 — around $1,200,000, twice the price of a comparable diesel — its almost negligible fuel requirement (eleven pounds of uranium per year) could make it cheap to operate. This would be particularly true if it could be kept in operation nearly continuously, pulling high-speed expresses over long hauls and wasting little time turning around for the return trip. And in due course, the comparatively high cost of making these engines would likely be reduced as the actual problems of design, manufacture, and operation were further researched.
