4 ms·

I found Adam Curtis' A is for Atom quite interesting regarding this. Apparently at least the US reactors were essentially scaled up military submarine reactors

• paulmd 10y ago
  Yep, and of course you have very different design goals for a submarine than you would have in a fixed installation (long time between refuelings, compactness, etc). They're also based on designs which were intended to breed plutonium. There's a lot which we could improve on if we were doing a clean-slate redesign of our nuclear power infrastructure with an eye towards power generation rather than military purposes. Unfortunately it's very difficult to realize those reforms with the rampant NIMBYism surrounding nuclear power. We can't even build plants that use upgraded versions of existing technology let alone plants that are running on novel technologies. They sometimes get pilot plants but they never make it out of the prototype stage.