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How can you leverage nuclear energy to propel vehicles? In 1963, the US Army knew direct nuclear plants would be too heavy for normal vehicles, and very large vehicles would have "serious tactical disadvantages"...
And so the Army focused on 'the energy depot' concept, where a nuclear reactor and associated equipment would be used to manufacture chemical fuels from elements universally available in air and water. (kinda like what @isaiah_p_taylorv just announced with Valar Atomics).
Or, the reactor could charge batteries
One mobile reactor could produce the same mileage in the vehicles as 2 million lbs of gasoline
All this was supposed to come from the Military Compact Reactor, which was supposed to be the successor of the famous truck-mounted ML-1 reactor. But the MCR never came to fruition. Though it worked fine, the ML-1 was considered simply too expensive to continue 😢.
(This whole sequence starts around 18:50 in the 1963 Army Nuclear Power Program film: )
Meant to tag @isaiah_p_taylor above sorry.
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