10 ms·

I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors". But, I come back to my basic thesis on nuclear power. It's the A+ game or bust Yes the US fri

I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors". But, I come back to my basic thesis on nuclear power. It's the A+ game or bust Yes the US fricking Navy can do it well, but the minute the Soviet's ran out of cash they just let it all rust. If we lean on nuclear in the carbon energy transition then when we run out of money, can we afford to let them rust.

Spivak 4y ago
So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Is our ultimate goal to get nuclear at any cost? Then sure. But nuclear at any cost is not a reasonable goal. The only reason we want nuclear is for its carbon-free energy. At which point it must be evaluated on its merits, not as an end goal of its own
  - donmaq 4y ago
    And how can we just ignore the waste problem? [1] In many cases, containment pools are full to the brim with spent rods [2], which is both environmentally hazardous, & a target for terrorists (dirty bombs) 1: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste 2: https://ips-dc.org/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage/ https://ips-dc.org/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reduci...
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      We can ignore the waste problem because nuclear fails even if we do so.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      The waste problem is real, and if the nuclear shills can demonstrate that there can exist a nuclear reactor that can compete with solar+storage in winter at 45 degrees north economically then we can bother talking about it. Until then we dismiss them along with every other technology that does not meaningfully exist.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable. Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered in hot sauce if someday nuclear fission is financially viable enough to produce power for civilians at a decent scale.
  - kinghajj 4y ago
    Even assuming that's the case, isn't the counterargument "Fine, then governments need to subsidize investment into nuclear power plants, just as we do with other green technologies."
    - orangecat 4y ago
      Right. It's fascinating how this is the one area where so-called environmentalists suddenly become very concerned about fiscal responsibility.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Environmentalists have pretty much zero impact on the ability of nuclear plants to be started and demonstrate feasibility. In the US, Georgia and South Carolina started building with nary a peep. France started building again without any environmental objections. Yet these builds are all catastrophic failures, to the point that any other financial backer is scared away from even touching nuclear. The decision makers are those with the dollars to invest, not the environmentalists.
        andbberger 4y ago
        "environmentalists" in california have succesfully prevented at least 6GW from coming online, and were directly responsible for plans that shutter california's last operating reactor. They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper. Meanwhile CAISO issued increasingly urgent press releases warning of the catastrophic consequences to grid stability were diablo canyon to close. A disaster which was narrowly avoided a few weeks ago by newsom. don't underestimate the negative influence of "environmentalists"
- dickholesalad 4y ago
  I’m an ex navy nuke (I did the whole thing, school through startups, sea trials, refuel, operations, maintenance, was nuke mechanic). I think some of the main impediments to adoption of navy-style training, operations, and maintenance in the civilian world are that the work is challenging and high stress. The school is very mentally and spiritually challenging to most people. When you get to the fleet the work is very challenging both mentally and physically. You are taking weekly technical short answer tests, operating the thing in 100F degrees doing legit physical work, responding to emergency stuff at 2 am before a 6 am shift. It’s nuts. The navy selects smart people through asvab test requirements. Most students are still challenged by the coursework. When you stay in by reenlisting it gets a little easier because you have less physical work to do but you still have to maintain excellence and train the junior people to the required competency level. Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? They don’t exist in sufficient quantity to do this. The navy doesn’t have superior technology; most of the ships are old and maintained. The secret sauce is the personnel and their desperation. You aren’t going to contract people in the civillian world to do this stuff. I really don’t think it’s feasible.
  - dqpb 4y ago
    > Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. > Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? We increase the pay. It's that simple.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Thus killing the economics of nuclear power relative to competing sources. The Navy uses nuclear power on a few dozen carriers and submarines because that's the only practical way to accomplish the mission. But after building a handful of nuclear powered surface combatants they abandoned that approach, and returned to conventional engines largely for cost reasons. Civilian power plants have to find a way to operate at a profit.
  - 4y ago
jjoonathan 4y ago
Human nature is inherently a bit of a crapshoot and progress on that front is slippery, but "make a reactor robust to neglect and abuse" is an engineering problem and progress on that front is sticky. We've gotten much better at this particular engineering problem. For instance, Fukushima was designed in 1967, but if it had been designed in 1972 it would not have had its fatal flaw.
- andbberger 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
- hunterb123 4y ago
  Fukushima was neglect. As you said we had known those types of tsunamis were possible since 1972, but no additional safety measures were put into place over the decades. There were multiple studies and suggestions ignored a decade before the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#2000_and_2008:_Tsunami_studies_ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#200... It wasn't that there was a fundamental flaw with the design, just the sea walls needed to be higher.
SECProto 4y ago
> I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors". When they've been building them for 70 years and have over 200 nuclear powered vessels, it shouldn't be that surprising. For comparison, Ontario Power Generation has operated 787 years of nuclear reactors (343 combined at Pickering, 120 at Darlington, 324 at Bruce), each of which is at least 3.5 times larger than the biggest navy nuclear reactor. France has dramatically more than that.

Spivak 4y ago

So why don’t we have the US fricking navy actually run and manage the reactors? It’s not as if they only exist at sea. And if the reactors are actually wholly military operated we might get the added benefit of being able to use the Navy’s 20ish year lead on civilian nuclear. Amazing what you can learn when you have a navy nuclear engineer a few beers in and trying to impress you.

epistasis 4y ago
Is our ultimate goal to get nuclear at any cost? Then sure. But nuclear at any cost is not a reasonable goal. The only reason we want nuclear is for its carbon-free energy. At which point it must be evaluated on its merits, not as an end goal of its own
- donmaq 4y ago
  And how can we just ignore the waste problem? [1] In many cases, containment pools are full to the brim with spent rods [2], which is both environmentally hazardous, & a target for terrorists (dirty bombs) 1: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-waste 2: https://ips-dc.org/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage/ https://ips-dc.org/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reduci...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    We can ignore the waste problem because nuclear fails even if we do so.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    The waste problem is real, and if the nuclear shills can demonstrate that there can exist a nuclear reactor that can compete with solar+storage in winter at 45 degrees north economically then we can bother talking about it. Until then we dismiss them along with every other technology that does not meaningfully exist.
ok_dad 4y ago
That only solves part of the problem, the civilian reactors are still too expensive to build. Nuclear is great, I went through the Naval Nuclear Power Program several decades ago myself, but it's not financially viable. Let me say that again to those engineers who weren't listening: Nuclear (fission) power is not, and will never be, financially viable for civilian powerplants. I'll eat a roll of toilet paper covered in hot sauce if someday nuclear fission is financially viable enough to produce power for civilians at a decent scale.
- kinghajj 4y ago
  Even assuming that's the case, isn't the counterargument "Fine, then governments need to subsidize investment into nuclear power plants, just as we do with other green technologies."
  - orangecat 4y ago
    Right. It's fascinating how this is the one area where so-called environmentalists suddenly become very concerned about fiscal responsibility.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Environmentalists have pretty much zero impact on the ability of nuclear plants to be started and demonstrate feasibility. In the US, Georgia and South Carolina started building with nary a peep. France started building again without any environmental objections. Yet these builds are all catastrophic failures, to the point that any other financial backer is scared away from even touching nuclear. The decision makers are those with the dollars to invest, not the environmentalists.
      - andbberger 4y ago
        "environmentalists" in california have succesfully prevented at least 6GW from coming online, and were directly responsible for plans that shutter california's last operating reactor. They lobbied PG&E with a study they paid for that, under the insane assumption that california's energy use would _decrease_ in the future, concluded renewables would be cheaper. Meanwhile CAISO issued increasingly urgent press releases warning of the catastrophic consequences to grid stability were diablo canyon to close. A disaster which was narrowly avoided a few weeks ago by newsom. don't underestimate the negative influence of "environmentalists"
dickholesalad 4y ago
I’m an ex navy nuke (I did the whole thing, school through startups, sea trials, refuel, operations, maintenance, was nuke mechanic). I think some of the main impediments to adoption of navy-style training, operations, and maintenance in the civilian world are that the work is challenging and high stress. The school is very mentally and spiritually challenging to most people. When you get to the fleet the work is very challenging both mentally and physically. You are taking weekly technical short answer tests, operating the thing in 100F degrees doing legit physical work, responding to emergency stuff at 2 am before a 6 am shift. It’s nuts. The navy selects smart people through asvab test requirements. Most students are still challenged by the coursework. When you stay in by reenlisting it gets a little easier because you have less physical work to do but you still have to maintain excellence and train the junior people to the required competency level. Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? They don’t exist in sufficient quantity to do this. The navy doesn’t have superior technology; most of the ships are old and maintained. The secret sauce is the personnel and their desperation. You aren’t going to contract people in the civillian world to do this stuff. I really don’t think it’s feasible.
- dqpb 4y ago
  > Combine this with the fact that the pay is shitty compared to other jobs in industry available and the incentives just aren’t there. > Where do we find these highly motivated, fit, young, intelligent people to work like dogs? We increase the pay. It's that simple.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Thus killing the economics of nuclear power relative to competing sources. The Navy uses nuclear power on a few dozen carriers and submarines because that's the only practical way to accomplish the mission. But after building a handful of nuclear powered surface combatants they abandoned that approach, and returned to conventional engines largely for cost reasons. Civilian power plants have to find a way to operate at a profit.
- 4y ago

jjoonathan 4y ago

Human nature is inherently a bit of a crapshoot and progress on that front is slippery, but "make a reactor robust to neglect and abuse" is an engineering problem and progress on that front is sticky. We've gotten much better at this particular engineering problem. For instance, Fukushima was designed in 1967, but if it had been designed in 1972 it would not have had its fatal flaw.

andbberger 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA
hunterb123 4y ago
Fukushima was neglect. As you said we had known those types of tsunamis were possible since 1972, but no additional safety measures were put into place over the decades. There were multiple studies and suggestions ignored a decade before the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#2000_and_2008:_Tsunami_studies_ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#200... It wasn't that there was a fundamental flaw with the design, just the sea walls needed to be higher.

SECProto 4y ago

> I am stunned by the "Navy has operated 5,000 years of reactors". When they've been building them for 70 years and have over 200 nuclear powered vessels, it shouldn't be that surprising. For comparison, Ontario Power Generation has operated 787 years of nuclear reactors (343 combined at Pickering, 120 at Darlington, 324 at Bruce), each of which is at least 3.5 times larger than the biggest navy nuclear reactor. France has dramatically more than that.