> (maybe with the exception of US Naval Reactors org - but who knows given the secracy)
Then perhaps the US Navy and their US Navy Corps of Engineers need to be tasked with building & maintaining a system of land-based reactors
back
3 comments
Or maybe not. It was Navy training that destroyed TMI-2.
Instead of worrying about the loss off coolant, the operators worried about the reactor "going solid", which is slang for "no steam bubble is left in the primary coolant circuit". This made sense on the small Navy reactors they were trained on, but on the large land based ones. Arguably, it never made sense to take a submarine engine and turn it into a power plant.
I said the same a few months ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28219660 ). Maybe if we keep repeating this the idea can gain some traction.
Yes in retrospect this was definitely a missed opportunity to not put Rickover's org in charge of civillian reactors. But then the problwm outside US would persist. However trust is now lost, will be very difficult ro regain
Rickover was in charge of developing Shippingport, the USA's first terrestrial nuclear power plant. After that, it was largely necessary to pass things over to the private sector because of capitalism.