> Compare the cost of just one of those reactors... It's very likely the cost and various other pieces of information about US Navy nuclear reactors is classif

> Compare the cost of just one of those reactors... It's very likely the cost and various other pieces of information about US Navy nuclear reactors is classified, but estimations exist. I found in [1] that a submarine reactor costs about $100MM and a carrier one about $200MM. The S6G reactor that equips the Los Angeles class submarines (very popular, 62 built, 32 still active [2]) appears to have a power output of 165 MW thermal, and about 30 MW electric. This makes it roughly $3MM per MW, not counting the fact that much more of the thermal power could be converted to electricity if that was desired. > to the cost of a fully installed windmill in Iowa. What I could find online [3] is that the cost of utility scale wind turbines ranges between $1.3MM and $2.2MM per MW. This is the same order of magnitude as the $3MM/MW for submarine nuclear reactors. >Nuclear is MUCH more expensive in terms of capital outlay Sure, but the question was if this capital outlay is because of some inherent technological difficulties, or because of regulations. Since naval nuclear reactors don't appear to be expensive, the natural hypothesis is that the capital outlays are driven primarily by regulations. > prohibitively expensive in terms of operating costs A naval reactor is either refueled only once during its lifetime or not at all. The main operating cost is the final dismantling. The running cost is virtually zero. >The government would have to pay for it. Bill Gates decided to just spend his money on this, and he found China as a willing partner. He figured he didn't need government assistance. Money wise he was probably right. But the DOE killed his project in October for national security reasons [4]: "TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste. We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely. We may be able to build it in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I mentioned earlier happen. The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change. Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade U.S. leaders to get into the game." The government doesn't have to pay for it, but it would be nice for it not to stand in the way of people who are willing to pay for it themselves. [1]http://mragheb.com/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%20Engineering/Nuclear%20Marine%20Propulsion.pdf http://mragheb.com/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%2... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles-class_submarine [3] http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost [4] https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018?WT.mc_id=12_29_2018_21_YIR2018_BG-media_&WT.tsrc=BGmedia https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2...