4 ms·

The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record. It’s also worth noting

The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record. It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record. My point being: by god, let the Navy nukes train everyone else!

avianlyric 5mo ago
They have done. The Three Mile Island accident happened when it was being operated by Navy vets [1]. Simple training isn’t enough. During the investigation of the accident the Admiral that built and ran the Navy nuclear program was asked how the Navy had managed to operate accident free, and what others could learn. This was his response: > Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others. So recreating that accident free operating environment requires a lot more than just training. It would require wholesale adoption of the Navy’s approach across the entire industry. Which probably doesn’t scale very well. Not to mention the Navy operates much smaller nuclear reactors compared to utility scale reactors, and has extremely easy access to lots of cooling water, which probably gives them a little more wiggle room when dealing unexpected reactor behaviour. [1] https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/tmi-lessons-what-was-learned-and https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/tmi-lessons-what-was-lea...
- echelon 5mo ago
  How many people have died on account of nuclear accidents? Vs. coal? Vs. not having enough energy? (eg. blackouts killing hospital ventilators, etc.) ----- Edit: because of HN rate limits, I can't respond to a sibling comment. I'll do that here: > Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work. Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Wouldn't it be better to have a rich heterogeneous mix of various power inputs that can be scaled and maintained independently?
  - laurencerowe 5mo ago
    Purity isn’t really important. We need to decarbonise as much of our energy grid as we can as quickly as possible since cumulative carbon emissions matter. Does it make sense for France to replace their existing nuclear power plants with new ones? Possibly, since the existing power generation is clean so there is less rush. Does spending the effort on building new nuclear outweigh the opportunity costs for others? Given new nuclear plants in Europe are taking 20 years to build I have strong doubts. It seems absolutely clear that wind/solar + batteries can get most countries to 80-90% clean energy faster and at lower cost. And after that happens nuclear seems a very awkward addition to the mix since it is not cost effective to run when it’s power is only needed 10-20% of the time.
    - Moldoteck 5mo ago
      it depends if you like gas firming or not. France doesnt. Germany loves it
  - ak217 5mo ago
    > Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Yes. (I don't disagree that a diverse mix is good, and I'm all for nuclear, I'm just saying the old "it's intermittent and can't grid form" boogeyman is no longer true. It would also really behoove Western countries to start manufacturing batteries at scale if we don't want to get a bloody nose in the future, because they're good for more than just the grid)
    - idiotsecant 5mo ago
      If it was viable it would have happened already. We have a massive oversupply of solar and wind, particularly on the west coast. Generation is the easy part. We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive.
      - ben_w 5mo ago
        > If it was viable it would have happened already. It is happening, all over the world, with a persistent and rapid growth curve. > We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive. Better cut those tariffs on cheap Chinese batteries (and aluminium for the transmission). Not that anyone would build one in the current political reality, but China produces enough aluminium that it would be viable to make a genuinely planet-spanning 1Ω power grid connecting your midwinter nights to someone else's midsummer days.
- deanCommie 5mo ago
  The Three Mile Island accident is also dramatically exaggerated in the public conscience with its severity and risk factor - solely because of the default fear of Nuclear. Oil, Gas, Coal, and random chemical plants have had much more significant accidents even in the US, but never made a blip in the public's minds. Aren't France and Canada the ones to learn from at this point with regards to safe nuclear operation?
grahar64 5mo ago
Would it be fair to say that because the US Navy is not running it as a for-profit power generation that would help. Like every accident seems to be a list of cost saving shortcuts being responsible
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  Chernobyl was a state owned and operated facility.
  - fsh 5mo ago
    Chernobyl was supposed to be an economically viable means of generating electricity. Comparing a tiny billion-dollar submarine reactor to a power plant simply doesn't make any sense.
    - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
      The reactors on aircraft carriers have a similar thermal output to many commercial power reactors. The ones on submarines are around a third of that size, about the size of SMRs like NuScale VOYGR or the Xe-100 reactors proposed to be built at Long Mott in Texas. Chernobyl was supposed to turn low enrichment uranium into plutonium for Soviet bombs. They made design choices that compromised safety to make plutonium production more efficient.
skybrian 5mo ago
Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- protocolture 5mo ago
  Thats the issue with those AGR reactors the brits have IIRC, perfect (or close enough) safety record, super complex and not economical to run.
- socalgal2 5mo ago
  They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...
  - frollogaston 5mo ago
    Right. There are countries that aren't particularly wealthy and rely on nuclear power just because they don't have reliable fossil fuel sources.
  - skybrian 5mo ago
    I meant, the particular way the Navy does it might be too expensive for some reason. Do you know anything about that?
  - petre 5mo ago
    The over regulation is there becaused the Soviets have shown us what under regulation, disregard for safety and zealotry can lead to. Even Japan managed to screw up. Yes, it took a 9 Richter scale earthquake and a tsunami, plus some mistakes that were made during development. Passive safety works just fine, but it's expensive to build huge water tanks and containers that could withstand 9/11 type of events.
petre 5mo ago
There's a video of Alvin Weinberg explainng why. It's the smaller scale that allows those safety guarantees. https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw?si=MEJpGpX8LQuGn7iv https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw?si=MEJpGpX8LQuGn7iv
lostlogin 5mo ago
> perfect nuclear safety record. It’s a very semantic claim. They have lost nuclear submarines (USS Thresher), lost nuclear missiles, depth charges, torpedos and bombs. They have crashed nuclear ships and submarines. Yeah, they haven’t had a nuclear reactor leak (that we know of).
- cushychicken 5mo ago
  Zero of these instances were due to shipboard reactor failure.
helsinkiandrew 5mo ago
> It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record. But submarine/ship reactors are tiny compared with commercial reactors and 5+ times more expensive (although its hard to break out the true lifetime cost of the reactor from the submarine/ship). Even modern commercial SMR designs (a few by companies that make Submarine reactors) are likely to cost a couple of times more per MW than large existing reactors BTW - The US Navy has lost 2 nuclear submarines, which are still being periodically monitored - page 7 https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/NT-25-1%20Final.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/NT-25-1%2...
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

avianlyric 5mo ago

They have done. The Three Mile Island accident happened when it was being operated by Navy vets [1]. Simple training isn’t enough. During the investigation of the accident the Admiral that built and ran the Navy nuclear program was asked how the Navy had managed to operate accident free, and what others could learn. This was his response: > Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others. So recreating that accident free operating environment requires a lot more than just training. It would require wholesale adoption of the Navy’s approach across the entire industry. Which probably doesn’t scale very well. Not to mention the Navy operates much smaller nuclear reactors compared to utility scale reactors, and has extremely easy access to lots of cooling water, which probably gives them a little more wiggle room when dealing unexpected reactor behaviour. [1] https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/tmi-lessons-what-was-learned-and https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/tmi-lessons-what-was-lea...

echelon 5mo ago
How many people have died on account of nuclear accidents? Vs. coal? Vs. not having enough energy? (eg. blackouts killing hospital ventilators, etc.) ----- Edit: because of HN rate limits, I can't respond to a sibling comment. I'll do that here: > Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work. Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Wouldn't it be better to have a rich heterogeneous mix of various power inputs that can be scaled and maintained independently?
- laurencerowe 5mo ago
  Purity isn’t really important. We need to decarbonise as much of our energy grid as we can as quickly as possible since cumulative carbon emissions matter. Does it make sense for France to replace their existing nuclear power plants with new ones? Possibly, since the existing power generation is clean so there is less rush. Does spending the effort on building new nuclear outweigh the opportunity costs for others? Given new nuclear plants in Europe are taking 20 years to build I have strong doubts. It seems absolutely clear that wind/solar + batteries can get most countries to 80-90% clean energy faster and at lower cost. And after that happens nuclear seems a very awkward addition to the mix since it is not cost effective to run when it’s power is only needed 10-20% of the time.
  - Moldoteck 5mo ago
    it depends if you like gas firming or not. France doesnt. Germany loves it
- ak217 5mo ago
  > Is a purely wind/solar + battery grid viable? Yes. (I don't disagree that a diverse mix is good, and I'm all for nuclear, I'm just saying the old "it's intermittent and can't grid form" boogeyman is no longer true. It would also really behoove Western countries to start manufacturing batteries at scale if we don't want to get a bloody nose in the future, because they're good for more than just the grid)
  - idiotsecant 5mo ago
    If it was viable it would have happened already. We have a massive oversupply of solar and wind, particularly on the west coast. Generation is the easy part. We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive.
    - ben_w 5mo ago
      > If it was viable it would have happened already. It is happening, all over the world, with a persistent and rapid growth curve. > We have terrible storage and transmission, the parts that are actually expensive. Better cut those tariffs on cheap Chinese batteries (and aluminium for the transmission). Not that anyone would build one in the current political reality, but China produces enough aluminium that it would be viable to make a genuinely planet-spanning 1Ω power grid connecting your midwinter nights to someone else's midsummer days.
deanCommie 5mo ago
The Three Mile Island accident is also dramatically exaggerated in the public conscience with its severity and risk factor - solely because of the default fear of Nuclear. Oil, Gas, Coal, and random chemical plants have had much more significant accidents even in the US, but never made a blip in the public's minds. Aren't France and Canada the ones to learn from at this point with regards to safe nuclear operation?

grahar64 5mo ago

Would it be fair to say that because the US Navy is not running it as a for-profit power generation that would help. Like every accident seems to be a list of cost saving shortcuts being responsible

AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
Chernobyl was a state owned and operated facility.
- fsh 5mo ago
  Chernobyl was supposed to be an economically viable means of generating electricity. Comparing a tiny billion-dollar submarine reactor to a power plant simply doesn't make any sense.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    The reactors on aircraft carriers have a similar thermal output to many commercial power reactors. The ones on submarines are around a third of that size, about the size of SMRs like NuScale VOYGR or the Xe-100 reactors proposed to be built at Long Mott in Texas. Chernobyl was supposed to turn low enrichment uranium into plutonium for Soviet bombs. They made design choices that compromised safety to make plutonium production more efficient.

skybrian 5mo ago

Their safety record is good, but can they generate power at a cost that's commercially competitive? If it's too expensive then the plan doesn't work.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
protocolture 5mo ago
Thats the issue with those AGR reactors the brits have IIRC, perfect (or close enough) safety record, super complex and not economical to run.
socalgal2 5mo ago
They're expensive because of, arguably, over regulation. The are not inherently expensive, we've just declared them so. The next response will be "all that regulation is needed" but it's arguably that the over regulation is killing people by the unintended consequences of keeping things like coal viable, etc...
- frollogaston 5mo ago
  Right. There are countries that aren't particularly wealthy and rely on nuclear power just because they don't have reliable fossil fuel sources.
- skybrian 5mo ago
  I meant, the particular way the Navy does it might be too expensive for some reason. Do you know anything about that?
- petre 5mo ago
  The over regulation is there becaused the Soviets have shown us what under regulation, disregard for safety and zealotry can lead to. Even Japan managed to screw up. Yes, it took a 9 Richter scale earthquake and a tsunami, plus some mistakes that were made during development. Passive safety works just fine, but it's expensive to build huge water tanks and containers that could withstand 9/11 type of events.

petre 5mo ago

There's a video of Alvin Weinberg explainng why. It's the smaller scale that allows those safety guarantees. https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw?si=MEJpGpX8LQuGn7iv https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw?si=MEJpGpX8LQuGn7iv

lostlogin 5mo ago

> perfect nuclear safety record. It’s a very semantic claim. They have lost nuclear submarines (USS Thresher), lost nuclear missiles, depth charges, torpedos and bombs. They have crashed nuclear ships and submarines. Yeah, they haven’t had a nuclear reactor leak (that we know of).

cushychicken 5mo ago
Zero of these instances were due to shipboard reactor failure.

helsinkiandrew 5mo ago

> It’s also worth noting that the US Navy is the only organization with a perfect nuclear safety record. But submarine/ship reactors are tiny compared with commercial reactors and 5+ times more expensive (although its hard to break out the true lifetime cost of the reactor from the submarine/ship). Even modern commercial SMR designs (a few by companies that make Submarine reactors) are likely to cost a couple of times more per MW than large existing reactors BTW - The US Navy has lost 2 nuclear submarines, which are still being periodically monitored - page 7 https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/NT-25-1%20Final.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/NT-25-1%2...

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]