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The US Navy utilizes highly enriched uranium reactors that don't have to be refueled every few years, I think it's more like a 20 year lifetime between refuelin

The US Navy utilizes highly enriched uranium reactors that don't have to be refueled every few years, I think it's more like a 20 year lifetime between refueling. Unfortunately this is not an acceptable civilian model as HEU is bomb-grade, i.e. it's very easy to take the fuel rods and turn them into simple Hiroshima-style nuclear weapons. Also, the US Navy lost two submarines, and the Scorpion case in particular might have been related to a nuclear power plant failure, although there's been no comprehensive report as of yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)

pdonis 4y ago
> the US Navy lost two submarines The Thresher was a subsafe accident (a problem with one of the weld joints that keep the hull from being breached at depth); it had nothing to do with the reactor. The Scorpion's root cause wasn't a reactor problem; note that "reactor problem" is not one of the hypotheses listed in "theories about the loss" in the Wikipedia article you reference.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Ok. No major incidents except those that we don't want to talk about, like: "dude, where is my nuclear reactor?".
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > "dude, where is my nuclear reactor?" What are you talking about?
    - pvaldes 4y ago
      If you lose a nuclear submarine it does not matter how it sank, Some nuclear stuff is lost and lying somewhere in a place when can't be safely maintained. It was not designed to end its life like that so, of course that this was a major incident, a significant deviation from the master plan!. Only a fool would think that just because you don't see it, the problem is gone. But the nuclear evangelists did never learn that lesson. They keep denying, closing their eyes, talking like is still 1950; saying that we can hide under a picnic tablecloth in case of nuclear accident.
      - pdonis 4y ago
        > Some nuclear stuff is lost and lying somewhere And as the Wikipedia article referenced in the post I originally responded to makes clear, the Navy doesn't just leave the stuff there; it keeps track of it and monitors the state of the nuclear materials in it. So there are contingency plans in place for incidents like this, even though they are extremely rare (2 of them in all of the decades that the US Navy has been operating nuclear submarines). And no harm has come to any member of the public as a result of either of these incidents. So talking as though this represents a serious danger to the public is not warranted. Also, these are military reactors, not commercial reactors. Commercial reactors can't get lost this way. So using the Navy examples as though they reflected the risks of commercial reactors is ridiculous.

pdonis 4y ago

> the US Navy lost two submarines The Thresher was a subsafe accident (a problem with one of the weld joints that keep the hull from being breached at depth); it had nothing to do with the reactor. The Scorpion's root cause wasn't a reactor problem; note that "reactor problem" is not one of the hypotheses listed in "theories about the loss" in the Wikipedia article you reference.

pvaldes 4y ago
Ok. No major incidents except those that we don't want to talk about, like: "dude, where is my nuclear reactor?".
- pdonis 4y ago
  > "dude, where is my nuclear reactor?" What are you talking about?
  - pvaldes 4y ago
    If you lose a nuclear submarine it does not matter how it sank, Some nuclear stuff is lost and lying somewhere in a place when can't be safely maintained. It was not designed to end its life like that so, of course that this was a major incident, a significant deviation from the master plan!. Only a fool would think that just because you don't see it, the problem is gone. But the nuclear evangelists did never learn that lesson. They keep denying, closing their eyes, talking like is still 1950; saying that we can hide under a picnic tablecloth in case of nuclear accident.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > Some nuclear stuff is lost and lying somewhere And as the Wikipedia article referenced in the post I originally responded to makes clear, the Navy doesn't just leave the stuff there; it keeps track of it and monitors the state of the nuclear materials in it. So there are contingency plans in place for incidents like this, even though they are extremely rare (2 of them in all of the decades that the US Navy has been operating nuclear submarines). And no harm has come to any member of the public as a result of either of these incidents. So talking as though this represents a serious danger to the public is not warranted. Also, these are military reactors, not commercial reactors. Commercial reactors can't get lost this way. So using the Navy examples as though they reflected the risks of commercial reactors is ridiculous.