The US Navy has had functional Small modular reactor designs mostly PWR designs since the 1960s in the 5mw to 500mw range with no major failures yet.
The problem is that none of these designs have ever been used to power the grid. Every nuclear project in the recent past has blown by cost and time estimates. Wind and solar are not only cheaper than nukes, they can also be installed much quicker and predictably. Nukes have a place, but we need clean energy now.
Wind and solar are great, but they cannot provide consistent 24 hours base load production. Even with massive battery farms, they cannot replace bas load consistently.
That’s where nuclear needs to be, replacing the base load production currently being handled via coal and natural gas.
The US at least already has enough nuclear to handle base loads when solar and wind are unavailable. Nukes in some contexts are needed, but I believe we have 30% or so nukes in the US. Diverting resources to new nukes is a waste when we could be making carbon fuels unprofitable soon by investing in solar and wind.
Yes. Operated on a military budget. There’s a reason they’re not used for civilian use.
You’re not going to find one because the military has an incredibly opaque budget
Er… how would the military nuclear reactors not be operated on a military budget?
That’s thanks to the training (started with Rickover) and discipline and no shareholders. Commercial nukes don’t measure up, e.g. when it comes to leakages and knowing what to do in case.
Now you’re just being disingenuous. I am certain that qualified individuals from the private sector and qualified individuals from the military both receive adequate training to operate their facilities
What’s funny about this is that most of the qualified private sector individuals are former Navy personnel. The civilian nuclear industry loves to hire people with nuclear training from the Navy because they’re already trained and experienced.
The Navy does operate a lot of nuclear reactors, and quite safely overall, but they also spend DoD money on building and maintaining them and training personnel for them.
Way to start out with an ad hominem. Cheap too. Since you’re ‘certain’ (and I know very well that’s hard to come by for this sacred cow), your #1 reference?