[rescue] RE: Energy

[Kyle Webb]

At 10:03 AM 5/8/2002 -0400, you wrote:

> > The single biggest problem with nuclear power is that the
> > navy was pressured to commercialize it ASAP. Reactor designs
> > that worked well for small sub/ship-based reactors really
> > were bad designs for the land where you can "waste" a lot
> > of space in the name of increased safety / lower maintenance.
>
>Um, no.  Do you have any reputable source that confirms
>any of this?  I was previously certified by the Navy and the
>DOE for the operation/supervision/maintenance of Naval
>nuclear power plants, and passed my engineer's exam at NR--
>and there are essentially *no* land-based power-generation
>plants that use the type of highly-enriched light-water cooled
>zirconium moderated plants that the Navy uses on ships and
>boats.  There are some similarities, but the percent of
>uranium enrichment and the size/power generation capacity
>is significantly different.  The only land-based reactors that
>use Navy designs are the prototype/training reactors, from
>everything I know--and there's no power generation from those
>since they are rarely in steady state long enough to make
>sense hooking them up to a distribution grid.  (My uncle,
>who's deceased, worked for Combustion Engineering on design
>of reactors for both the Navy and commercial interests--and
>from everything I remember, those were two separate but related
>sets of design principles/methods and engineering tradeoffs.)

IIRC there are elements of truth in both sides. My understanding was that 
some sort of  gas cooled reactor with a lower power density was one of the 
candidates for commercial power work. Early on, there was a bit of a 
funding competition and light water reactor research got out ahead. Part of 
this was that the Navy was already doing light water reactor research, 
albeit they were using much higher enrighment levels to achieve a greater 
power density. To the extent that the Navy dominated the early research 
work, it might have held back the gas cooled reactors. Getting the straight 
of the story would likely be difficult now. There is at least the 
perception in some quarters that Rickover was much more interested in the 
light water work, and that sort of stifled some other avenues. Whether 
that's really true, our sour grapes from those who didn't get funded is 
unclear.
My guess is that the light water systems were more mature at the time when 
commercialization was being pushed, and the feeling was that waiting for a 
design that wasn't quite there, and had less operating experience wasn't 
the way to go. No conspiracy, just the way the technologies matured.


>If you know differently, please tell me the reference so I can
>educate myself.


Don't have any references handy, so you can firmly put this in the hearsay 
column. I'll look around and see if I can come up with something.

Kyle Webb