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To address a few points made here... this isn't about frontline mobile bases or airplanes or ships. This is about "what if... we have a main base located somewh

To address a few points made here... this isn't about frontline mobile bases or airplanes or ships. This is about "what if... we have a main base located somewhere with poor supply lines?" In other words, something like Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, shipping fuel in was extremely expensive resulting in costs of $400/gallon (~$100/liter) at the destination[1]. At that level of shipping costs, electrical generation is so expensive that it makes sense to investigate small-scale reactors to see if they could make economic sense. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan- https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MengerSponge 5y ago
For several years the US Government spent more on fuel to air condition tents in the desert than it did on NASA. I'm not talking about the tents themselves, or the soldiers living in them, their supplies or assistance after the war. All of that cost more. I'm just talking about fuel for air conditioners.
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  That's incredible, cost of war aside, you'd think solar and batteries would be used if only for the: 1) ability to redeploy 2) one-time shipping event for setup 3) ability to self sustain on supply issues.
  - chefkoch 5y ago
    That would be a massive amount of solar, if a tent AC has 7kw and a standard panel has 180w theoretical output.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      A standard 2x1m panel now has an output of more like 450-500 watts. Technology has moved on since the days of 9% efficient panels!
      - bborud 5y ago
        So if we assume the sun was shining whenever the AC needs to draw 7kW, that would mean roughly 30m^2 of solar panels per 7kW AC. So roughly one (american) football field of solar panels for every 180 or so 7kW AC units. (Rounding generously since this is just a thought experiment to look at some lower bounds.You'd probably need a lot more solar panels than that (3x?), plus battery infrastructure, plus some way of cleaning the panels etc. for this to be practical)
        londons_explore 5y ago
        If you actually wanted to solar power the military, you'd design stuff the be energy efficient from the start. That would probably consist of all buildings having 3 inches of insulation on all sides so that you need far less cooling. Then you have the solar cells built into the roof, and the batteries built in too, so the whole unit is "dump this anywhere in the world and it makes habitable space". Grid connection optional - and if provided can be used to automatically balance electrical load between buildings. This probably weighs less than a tent plus generator plus fuel.
        nradov 5y ago
        It's not practical to build insulated buildings at forward operating bases. They don't have the time, materials, or equipment. Everything has to be flown in by helicopter, or transported in truck convoys over terrible roads under constant threat of roadside bombs. Tents are light and can be erected in minutes.
        matthewdgreen 5y ago
        "The Army has a $95 million contract to foam up to nine million square feet of building space in Iraq, of which about 60 percent has been completed. The Army also let a $29 million contract to foam structures in Afghanistan. So far, 150,000 square feet have been foamed. It takes a mere 26 days to recoup the costs of the foaming through the fuel savings." https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives_by_bringing_new_life_to_an_old_technology https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives...
  - kongin 5y ago
    Solar pannels don't work at night and you can't ask the enemy to attack on sunny days.
    - throaway46546 5y ago
      I think there might be a correlation between sunny days and AC usage.
      - kongin 5y ago
        You also use AC to heat the tens at night in the desert.
    - nix23 5y ago
      There's that crazy idea called batteries. For "bigger" stuff one could produce hydrogen during the day (for fuel-cells or straight up burning in combustion engines). But yeah i would too, not use solar-panels in a warzone.
      - bborud 5y ago
        Why would you want to introduce complex, hard to move storage technology that produces and consumes enormous amounts of explosive gas, and has much, much higher energy loss than both thermal and electrical storage? Whenever hydrogen turns up in discussions about energy storage people tend to forget physics and the infrastructure reality of dealing with electrolysis, compression and liquefaction and powercells ... which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption.
        nix23 5y ago
        >which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption. It's just one thing, storage huge amounts of energy in liq. hydrogen is easier then in batteries (who are explosive as well) and heavy. But again...i would not use one of those technologies at all in a War-zone..all of them are way too complex for the field.
  - Someone 5y ago
    You can’t cover solar arrays and they have large area, so hitting them from distance is fairly easy. How easy is it to design a solar array that stays operating (with reduced capacity) after a few mortar hits? I would guess solar arrays in space that beam energy down are a better solution for military bases in times of war. The USA is actively working on that (https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-plane.html https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-pl...)
    - parineum 5y ago
      FYI, this is the "space laser" part of the "jewish space lasers" of Marjorie Taylor Greene that left everyone laughing about how (wrongly) absurd space lasers are and forgot about the anti-semitism. She basically said that a system like you've mentioned was tested, misfired and started wildfires. It was then covered up by some Jewish guy on the board.
  - garmaine 5y ago
    Not in 2003.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    If an advanced invading army requires solar power, as an freedom fighter u I’m going to lob mortars and snipe those panels.
    - Gustomaximus 5y ago
      Also exactly what was happening to the fuel convoys heading across Afghanistan. I think better having people target your equipment in a base where its easier to have defence and a perimeter, than over a regular and long supply line.
      - newsclues 5y ago
        Better to have attacks on a base where you can mount an effective defence rather than letting your supply line get ambushed? I don’t know if it’s better or worse but different with different risks.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  Per retired brigadier general Steven Anderson, who did logistics for Petraeus in Iraq: * https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-... The DoD position: > Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures. On Anderson (at the time): > Anderson advocates for increased energy efficiency for military structures in order to cut down on the need for long, dangerous fuel-transport missions. […] Anderson says experiments with polyurethane foam insulation for tents in Iraq cut energy use by 92 percent and took 11,000 fuel trucks off the road. […] > In February 2011 Gen. Anderson has joined the Relyant corporation as Senior Vice President, in charge for the company’s presence in Washington, D.C., managing the organization’s strategic planning and military business development. Relyant is a global provider of construction and insulation projects, life support, demining, logistics/procurement, security, and IT communications. It should be noted though that these additional costs are spent regardless of the volume of supplies sent over supply lines, as the convoys do not carry only fuel, but also food, ammunition, batteries, spare parts, building supplies etc. nevertheless, a green approach could significantly reduce volume, and costs and risk of such operations. * https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html
m0zg 5y ago
> $400/gallon (~$100/liter) That wasn't because fuel (or shipping) is inherently expensive. Some contractors just made a ton of money. Fuel in Iraq close by is like 50 cents a five gallon bucket. Wait till you see how much it costs to deliver a reactor there, and especially remove it from there (not something you can leave to the Taliban, like helicopters and Humvees).
- rewq4321 5y ago
  Yeah, overly expensive contractors must have been part of the story for a price like that. That said, I'd much rather military money be spent on new/interesting technologies like mobile nuclear reactors than on old stuff that isn't going anywhere.
- anovikov 5y ago
  These costs were due to air refueling. And then delivering fuel by helicopter. Applied to really far away mountain areas with no road access at all.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Why, though? Concerns about the quality of the locally available fuel? Concerns about the supply of the locally available fuel? Or just some monetarily aligned motivations?
    - elmomle 5y ago
      I have to assume security issues with shipping large quantities of fuel to bases by ground had something to do with it, though presumably the adopted solution was an extravagantly wasteful one driven by a culture of budgetary excess.
    - masklinn 5y ago
      I imagine both quantity and quality (including the risk of wilful adulteration) were issues. The first one would be compounded by fuel economy rarely being high on the list of concerns for military procurement.
golergka 5y ago
So if they have worked it out earlier, Taliban would've ended up with a reactor, too?
- azernik 5y ago
  The US did quite well at keeping the sensitive stuff out of Taliban hands. What the Taliban got was: 1. Enormous quantities of gear that belonged to the Afghan government 2. US military equipment that the US consciously decided not to pack out or destroy.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Quite a bit of that had to be destroyed on site - glass powder in helicopter fuel tanks etc. Harder to do safely with a reactor.
    - mattr47 5y ago
      The US military did not leave any helicopters when it pulled out. The Afghan Army and US State department left helicopters.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        That's semantic quibbling that's entirely missing the point.
        azernik 5y ago
        No, it isn't. Equipment that the US military was managing was evacuated securely and on schedule. Equipment that it had handed off to other parties (mostly the ANA) was not. Nuclear reactors are not likely to fall into the second category.
- 542354234235 5y ago
  The Taliban got equipment that the US gave to the Afghan government military. The US didn’t leave them with sensitive or specialized equipment. Anything left behind that was sensitive was permanently disabled.
nradov 5y ago
Would the reactor core be light enough to fly out in a C-17 when the main base is abandoned?
- WJW 5y ago
  Who can say about aircraft-transportable, but it says "mobile" right there in the title of the article.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    There’s a broad range of mobility though, Akademik Lomonosov is mobile but it’s a 21500 tonnes non-self-propelled barge.
croutonwagon 5y ago
Didnt they try this early on and it went poorly... IIRC the only event that had immediate casualties in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  It seems likely this was a suicide by someone with a good idea of what happens when you very rapidly yank the single control rod from a reactor. That said, no more single control rods...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MengerSponge 5y ago

For several years the US Government spent more on fuel to air condition tents in the desert than it did on NASA. I'm not talking about the tents themselves, or the soldiers living in them, their supplies or assistance after the war. All of that cost more. I'm just talking about fuel for air conditioners.

Gustomaximus 5y ago
That's incredible, cost of war aside, you'd think solar and batteries would be used if only for the: 1) ability to redeploy 2) one-time shipping event for setup 3) ability to self sustain on supply issues.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  That would be a massive amount of solar, if a tent AC has 7kw and a standard panel has 180w theoretical output.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    A standard 2x1m panel now has an output of more like 450-500 watts. Technology has moved on since the days of 9% efficient panels!
    - bborud 5y ago
      So if we assume the sun was shining whenever the AC needs to draw 7kW, that would mean roughly 30m^2 of solar panels per 7kW AC. So roughly one (american) football field of solar panels for every 180 or so 7kW AC units. (Rounding generously since this is just a thought experiment to look at some lower bounds.You'd probably need a lot more solar panels than that (3x?), plus battery infrastructure, plus some way of cleaning the panels etc. for this to be practical)
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        If you actually wanted to solar power the military, you'd design stuff the be energy efficient from the start. That would probably consist of all buildings having 3 inches of insulation on all sides so that you need far less cooling. Then you have the solar cells built into the roof, and the batteries built in too, so the whole unit is "dump this anywhere in the world and it makes habitable space". Grid connection optional - and if provided can be used to automatically balance electrical load between buildings. This probably weighs less than a tent plus generator plus fuel.
        nradov 5y ago
        It's not practical to build insulated buildings at forward operating bases. They don't have the time, materials, or equipment. Everything has to be flown in by helicopter, or transported in truck convoys over terrible roads under constant threat of roadside bombs. Tents are light and can be erected in minutes.
        matthewdgreen 5y ago
        "The Army has a $95 million contract to foam up to nine million square feet of building space in Iraq, of which about 60 percent has been completed. The Army also let a $29 million contract to foam structures in Afghanistan. So far, 150,000 square feet have been foamed. It takes a mere 26 days to recoup the costs of the foaming through the fuel savings." https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives_by_bringing_new_life_to_an_old_technology https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives...
- kongin 5y ago
  Solar pannels don't work at night and you can't ask the enemy to attack on sunny days.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    I think there might be a correlation between sunny days and AC usage.
    - kongin 5y ago
      You also use AC to heat the tens at night in the desert.
  - nix23 5y ago
    There's that crazy idea called batteries. For "bigger" stuff one could produce hydrogen during the day (for fuel-cells or straight up burning in combustion engines). But yeah i would too, not use solar-panels in a warzone.
    - bborud 5y ago
      Why would you want to introduce complex, hard to move storage technology that produces and consumes enormous amounts of explosive gas, and has much, much higher energy loss than both thermal and electrical storage? Whenever hydrogen turns up in discussions about energy storage people tend to forget physics and the infrastructure reality of dealing with electrolysis, compression and liquefaction and powercells ... which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption.
      - nix23 5y ago
        >which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption. It's just one thing, storage huge amounts of energy in liq. hydrogen is easier then in batteries (who are explosive as well) and heavy. But again...i would not use one of those technologies at all in a War-zone..all of them are way too complex for the field.
- Someone 5y ago
  You can’t cover solar arrays and they have large area, so hitting them from distance is fairly easy. How easy is it to design a solar array that stays operating (with reduced capacity) after a few mortar hits? I would guess solar arrays in space that beam energy down are a better solution for military bases in times of war. The USA is actively working on that (https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-plane.html https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-pl...)
  - parineum 5y ago
    FYI, this is the "space laser" part of the "jewish space lasers" of Marjorie Taylor Greene that left everyone laughing about how (wrongly) absurd space lasers are and forgot about the anti-semitism. She basically said that a system like you've mentioned was tested, misfired and started wildfires. It was then covered up by some Jewish guy on the board.
- garmaine 5y ago
  Not in 2003.
- newsclues 5y ago
  If an advanced invading army requires solar power, as an freedom fighter u I’m going to lob mortars and snipe those panels.
  - Gustomaximus 5y ago
    Also exactly what was happening to the fuel convoys heading across Afghanistan. I think better having people target your equipment in a base where its easier to have defence and a perimeter, than over a regular and long supply line.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      Better to have attacks on a base where you can mount an effective defence rather than letting your supply line get ambushed? I don’t know if it’s better or worse but different with different risks.
throw0101a 5y ago
Per retired brigadier general Steven Anderson, who did logistics for Petraeus in Iraq: * https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-... The DoD position: > Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures. On Anderson (at the time): > Anderson advocates for increased energy efficiency for military structures in order to cut down on the need for long, dangerous fuel-transport missions. […] Anderson says experiments with polyurethane foam insulation for tents in Iraq cut energy use by 92 percent and took 11,000 fuel trucks off the road. […] > In February 2011 Gen. Anderson has joined the Relyant corporation as Senior Vice President, in charge for the company’s presence in Washington, D.C., managing the organization’s strategic planning and military business development. Relyant is a global provider of construction and insulation projects, life support, demining, logistics/procurement, security, and IT communications. It should be noted though that these additional costs are spent regardless of the volume of supplies sent over supply lines, as the convoys do not carry only fuel, but also food, ammunition, batteries, spare parts, building supplies etc. nevertheless, a green approach could significantly reduce volume, and costs and risk of such operations. * https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html

m0zg 5y ago

> $400/gallon (~$100/liter) That wasn't because fuel (or shipping) is inherently expensive. Some contractors just made a ton of money. Fuel in Iraq close by is like 50 cents a five gallon bucket. Wait till you see how much it costs to deliver a reactor there, and especially remove it from there (not something you can leave to the Taliban, like helicopters and Humvees).

rewq4321 5y ago
Yeah, overly expensive contractors must have been part of the story for a price like that. That said, I'd much rather military money be spent on new/interesting technologies like mobile nuclear reactors than on old stuff that isn't going anywhere.
anovikov 5y ago
These costs were due to air refueling. And then delivering fuel by helicopter. Applied to really far away mountain areas with no road access at all.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Why, though? Concerns about the quality of the locally available fuel? Concerns about the supply of the locally available fuel? Or just some monetarily aligned motivations?
  - elmomle 5y ago
    I have to assume security issues with shipping large quantities of fuel to bases by ground had something to do with it, though presumably the adopted solution was an extravagantly wasteful one driven by a culture of budgetary excess.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    I imagine both quantity and quality (including the risk of wilful adulteration) were issues. The first one would be compounded by fuel economy rarely being high on the list of concerns for military procurement.

golergka 5y ago

So if they have worked it out earlier, Taliban would've ended up with a reactor, too?

azernik 5y ago
The US did quite well at keeping the sensitive stuff out of Taliban hands. What the Taliban got was: 1. Enormous quantities of gear that belonged to the Afghan government 2. US military equipment that the US consciously decided not to pack out or destroy.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Quite a bit of that had to be destroyed on site - glass powder in helicopter fuel tanks etc. Harder to do safely with a reactor.
  - mattr47 5y ago
    The US military did not leave any helicopters when it pulled out. The Afghan Army and US State department left helicopters.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      That's semantic quibbling that's entirely missing the point.
      - azernik 5y ago
        No, it isn't. Equipment that the US military was managing was evacuated securely and on schedule. Equipment that it had handed off to other parties (mostly the ANA) was not. Nuclear reactors are not likely to fall into the second category.
542354234235 5y ago
The Taliban got equipment that the US gave to the Afghan government military. The US didn’t leave them with sensitive or specialized equipment. Anything left behind that was sensitive was permanently disabled.

nradov 5y ago

Would the reactor core be light enough to fly out in a C-17 when the main base is abandoned?

WJW 5y ago
Who can say about aircraft-transportable, but it says "mobile" right there in the title of the article.
- masklinn 5y ago
  There’s a broad range of mobility though, Akademik Lomonosov is mobile but it’s a 21500 tonnes non-self-propelled barge.

croutonwagon 5y ago

Didnt they try this early on and it went poorly... IIRC the only event that had immediate casualties in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

aerostable_slug 5y ago
It seems likely this was a suicide by someone with a good idea of what happens when you very rapidly yank the single control rod from a reactor. That said, no more single control rods...