Some of the smartest people in the world have been working for over half a century to get better. And yet it’s still getting more expensive to build them.
Maybe it’s just hard and a dead end. Like the paddlewheel or dirigibles. At the time they felt like the future but there were unforeseen problems in scaling them up to meet expectations, and we found better, safer ways of doing the same thing.
Small nuclear reactors seem to work pretty well. Using them for deep space or disaster response would make sense. Just park a Seawolf off the coast and hook it up to support the grid.
We have documentation, but you.need to have construction crews working to keep the specific routines and needs sharp.
Sure they have people “ready” to work on such projects but it takes significant time to tool and train up, even for the “ready” folks because they don’t do these jobs often.
Are they significantly different from normal specialized plumbing/electrical/heavy construction work? Weird, complex things get built all the time these days and I’m curious how much different pouring concrete for a reactor is compared to, say, a bridge.
How many dozens of years will the area around the bridge be inhospitable if the concrete is not poured, and mixed correctly? Who would take the risk doing the work except for people that are highly trained or extremely ignorant?
There’s a lot of specialized work involved with the whole process including creating the reactors, which until recently, have mostly been specialized designs for each plant.
Lots of articles about nuclear energy and it’s problems can be found online if you’re interested in reading more.
Some of the smartest people in the world have been working for over half a century to get better. And yet it’s still getting more expensive to build them.
Maybe it’s just hard and a dead end. Like the paddlewheel or dirigibles. At the time they felt like the future but there were unforeseen problems in scaling them up to meet expectations, and we found better, safer ways of doing the same thing.
Small nuclear reactors seem to work pretty well. Using them for deep space or disaster response would make sense. Just park a Seawolf off the coast and hook it up to support the grid.
It is not hard due to lack of knowledge, it is hard due to politics, and the fact that they require trained / skilled builders and operators.
So it’s a cold start problem. As we aren’t making many, we don’t have much trained staff.
Haven’t we been building reactors for decades though? Are all those guys dead along with the COBOL programmers?
We have documentation, but you.need to have construction crews working to keep the specific routines and needs sharp.
Sure they have people “ready” to work on such projects but it takes significant time to tool and train up, even for the “ready” folks because they don’t do these jobs often.
Are they significantly different from normal specialized plumbing/electrical/heavy construction work? Weird, complex things get built all the time these days and I’m curious how much different pouring concrete for a reactor is compared to, say, a bridge.
How many dozens of years will the area around the bridge be inhospitable if the concrete is not poured, and mixed correctly? Who would take the risk doing the work except for people that are highly trained or extremely ignorant? There’s a lot of specialized work involved with the whole process including creating the reactors, which until recently, have mostly been specialized designs for each plant. Lots of articles about nuclear energy and it’s problems can be found online if you’re interested in reading more.