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I guess I don't understand how nuclear power can run a submarine but can't be harnessed to provide power on land. Nuclear power seems to work pretty well in shi
by hodgesrm 6y ago
I guess I don't understand how nuclear power can run a submarine but can't be harnessed to provide power on land. Nuclear power seems to work pretty well in ships. It seems as if we're not framing the problem correctly.
- fuoqi 6y agoSubmarine, aircraft, and icebreaker reactors usually operate on military-grade fission materials. You don't want those to be exported all over the world. And a bigger reason is that they simply can not compete with bigger plants. 1 GW class nuclear reactors generate much cheaper electricity even after factoring in their huge CAPEX. There is one example of using a small nuclear ship-scale reactor for civilian power generation in Russia [0], but I would say it's a very edge scenario, not applicable to the most of the world. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...
- aksss 6y agoMoney is no object when making a military submarine that doesn’t have to surface to resupply batteries with diesel generators. Makes for a hard comparison to at-scale public utility construction.