A submarine nuclear reactor in your backyard?

Today Online ^ | 3/20/2010 | Today Online

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

(picture) - at the time, the world's fastest - the subs were the bane of American sailors. Now, the reactors that powered those submarines are being marketed as the next innovation in green power.

Environmentalists say the technology is outdated and potentially dangerous, and marketing it as green energy is an abuse of nuclear power's good green name.

The Russians are not alone in pushing the idea that the next generation of nuclear reactors should have more in common with the small power plants on submarines than the sprawling installations of today.

But the kinds of marine reactors the Russians are promoting also create a by-product - used fuel - that no one knows how to handle. Right now, that spent fuel is being stored at naval yards in the Russian Arctic. No engineering solution has yet been devised to decontaminate the fuel.

In fact, the technology caused a number of mechanical accidents when it was used in Soviet submarines from the 1970s until the early 1990s.

Mr Kirill Danilenko, the director of Russian company Akme Engineering, said the technology could be made safe, with no greater risk of meltdown than that at a larger nuclear plant. His vision is that small reactors will become so common that utilities firms can connect them and "build power plants like Lego sets".

This is still years from being realised. The first Russian design, a pontoon-mounted reactor intended to be floated into harbours in energy-hungry developing countries, is already being built.

The plans are going ahead in Russia and elsewhere in the face of criticism that a diffuse nuclear infrastructure - the idea that many mid-sized cities, for example, could have their own small reactor - is inherently risky.

[Castlebar]

Carter was a Navy reactor officer and so familiar with the technology & physics behind fission reactors — intimate with it. Why do you suppose he chose to scr3w the entire industry like that?

Carter was one of Hyman Rickover's little sycophant butt-boys who cried for an early-out to avoid completing his obligated service.

He left the Navy before the first nuclear submarine (USS Nautilus) was ever commissioned.

[Tallguy]

Carter was one of Hyman Rickover's little sycophant butt-boys who cried for an early-out to avoid completing his obligated service.

I bet Adm. Rickover tightened up his selection process a tad after the Carter-early-out scenario.