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US Naval reactors are not a substitute for commercial power plants. They use highly enriched fuel, and are optimized for small volume and low maintenance costs,
by jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
US Naval reactors are not a substitute for commercial power plants. They use highly enriched fuel, and are optimized for small volume and low maintenance costs, not net generation efficiency. They're at least one if not two orders of magnitude smaller than what's economic in power plants, and they are not in any way built with an efficient "model T" style production line.
US Naval reactors are not some silver bullet no one has thought of. They're a different tool, and it's not clear the Navy would be particularly more effective in creating a future of factory built small modular reactors vs any other company that's attempted it so far.
- Klinky 6y agoExactly, people who bring this up don't understand the different one-off reactor designs used in maybe a handful of vessels, or that the Navy reactors are meant to go without refueling for up to 25 years. They are also made by third-party contractors, not hand-built by the Navy itself. The complexity, capital costs and liability risks make commercial "small nuclear" unfeasible. It's "go big or go home".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoYeah, I learned this harsh lesson doing deeper research in recent years. I was really hopeful for NuScale and similar SMR style approaches, but now I understand more clearly why that's so unlikely to work out. I'd love it if someone shows up tomorrow with some clever idea that changes the capital costs and long timelines, but I don't think we should be allocating significant capital towards that as hope alone.
- asdff 6y agoDo they ever use a parked carrier to power something? It seems like it would be useful to run at least a portion of a base using a carrier anchored in the harbor, or as response to downed power infrastructure after a natural disaster. Quick googling indicates an aircraft carrier allegedly could be able to power 12,000 homes.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoNo. The naval plants are optimized to generate steam for the propulsion turbines first, and electric generation capacity second. Plugging generation capacity into a grid is far more complex than plugging in a consumer appliance. It'd require a lot of dedicated infrastructure on the carrier, and suitable tie in points from the grid. The US did have a floating nuclear power plant for a while, intended for disaster response and such. It ultimately didn't prove to be useful enough vs the cost and complexity of keeping it running. Russia recently completed fabrication of a modern take on the same idea, but it's not clear how useful that will be to them other than being as part of a suite of nuclear technologies they're marketing militarily.