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One of the first commercial US PWR nuclear reactors was a burred in the ground nuclear powered air craft carrier plant. It was built by the AEC under the direct
by dmajor2 4y ago
One of the first commercial US PWR nuclear reactors was a burred in the ground nuclear powered air craft carrier plant. It was built by the AEC under the direct supervision of the Navy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Stat...
- acidburnNSA 4y agoIndeed. It was originally a prototype for an aircraft carrier engine, but the Navy was waffling on whether or not it needed such things. So Rickover led its development as a commercial demo instead, and it worked better than most of the other more exotic reactor types being tried at the time, and so now we have mostly this kind of reactor in the world (the PWR), and its close relative (the BWR). Later the Navy decided that they did indeed want nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and so now they have them.