Why is nuclear-powered the standard for submarines, when not for ferry, small ships and vessels ?
In: Engineering
>why is nuclear power the standard for submarines
It’s not. The top 10 largest sub fleets consist of 354 subs total. Of the 354 120 are nuclear powered. So only about 1/3 of subs are nuclear powered.
Very few ships are nuclear powered for a number of reasons
1. Cost going from conventional to nuclear power will add 1-2 billion USD to the cost of the ship. If were talking about a 10 million USD ferry adding a billion to the price tag is kind of a lot. This doesn’t even count the fact that that ferries maintenance department will now have a pay roll of like 5 million a year. It turns out nuclear technicians and operations officers and safety officers are all kind of expensive. Even the most junior technicians are going to be making six figures.
TL;DR it might be cheaper to run a ferry that literary burned US currency for fuel.
2. Your government will not let you because they don’t want you having nuclear weapons. Unlike a land based reactor it’s almost impossible to refuel a ships nuclear reactor. To do so they have to dry dock the ship and literally cut it in half to access the reactor this takes years and costs hundreds of millions. Therefor they want to minimize how often you do this. As a result the fuel used in a naval reactor is often enriched to 80-90%. This is weapons grade enrichment. A high school physics student together with a shop teacher could make a Hiroshima type bomb with a US navy sub reactors fuel. As you might imagine most governments have issues with normal people having nuclear bombs.
3. You don’t have the tech and the government is never going to give it to you. The rector tech on a US sub is the single most classified technology the US has. In comparison the composition of and how to make the F35’s stealth tech is basically public knowledge. If you want to even see, let alone know how to operate, a naval reactor you need Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance. We share nuclear tech with the UK and Australia. We share sheath tech with 18 countries. You are not going to get the government to sign off on your ferry crew all having higher security clearance than F-22 pilots.
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