US Navy has been building, commissioning, operating nuclear submarines successfully, literally every years for at least past two decades. The sub reactors are PWRs, only built with unadulterated high purity Uranium.
The "problems, delays, overruns" is basically euphemism for political sabotaging. I can't feel so sympathetic to those in denial of that.
It's just hot rocks boiling in a pressure cooker. 1940s technology. Not 1940s as in Portal timeline. Making assumptions that there must be complicated technical challenges that cannot be overcome or could delay construction as long as 17 years to mitigate is just stupid.
Maybe, but it's definitely not delayed 9 or 17 or how many years. I don't know where your $2b number comes from but it's also not trillions. Nukes just work, for USN, which is about the most secure, rational, effectively bureaucratic organization in the history of humanity.
The US has long sabotaged, sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally, nuclear development efforts of everyone but itself. Especially fuel recycling which scalably yield nuclear warhead materials. One could say call it a noble act, but the resultant "problems, delays, overruns" aren't indicative of true potential of the technology.
See where kragen had to find negative examples from, those are "enemy" states of the US. How convenient is that.
You'll note that the US Navy, despite this extensive experience and relative immunity to political sabotage, has not replaced its diesel fleet [correction: fossil-fuel-powered turbine fleet] with a nuclear fleet. Neither have the French, British, Chinese, Indian, Russian, or PRC navies, all of which have nuclear submarines. The Russian navy, which has built more nuclear submarines than any other, is actually transitioning to fewer kinds of nuclear-powered ships. That's because nuclear power is more expensive than diesel power, which in turn is more expensive than solar and wind power.
> The launch of the first submarine of the class, Yury Dolgorukiy (Юрий Долгорукий), was scheduled for 2002 but was delayed because of budget constraints. The vessel was eventually rolled out of its construction hall on 15 April 2007 in a ceremony attended by many senior military and industrial personnel.[11] Yuriy Dolgorukiy was the first Russian strategic missile submarine to be launched in seventeen years since the end of the Cold War. The planned contingent of eight strategic submarines was expected to be commissioned within the next decade, with five Project 955 planned for purchase through 2015.[12]
> Yuriy Dolgorukiy was not put into the water until February 2008. On 21 November 2008 the reactor on Yuriy Dolgorukiy was activated[13] and on 19 June 2009, the submarine began its sea trials in the White Sea.[14] By July 2009, it had yet to be armed with Bulava missiles and was therefore not fully operational, although it had been ready for sea trials on 24 October 2008.[15]
> On 28 September 2010 Yuriy Dolgorukiy completed company sea trials.
> A Type 094 was photographed by commercial satellites in late 2006 at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base.[9] The first commissioned in 2007[1] and six were in commission in 2020.[5] They began nuclear deterrence patrols in December 2015.[10]
Admittedly, that's only 9 years rather than 17 years.
So, in fact, there are complicated technical challenges that create many-year-long delays. And they are not due to "political sabotaging". In cases like nuclear warfare where there is no alternative to nuclear power, it can clearly be made to work, but so far nobody has figured out how to make it economically competitive with other energy sources in situations where they are viable. That's a technical challenge nobody has been able to overcome yet.
When you talk about US "diesel fleet" are you talking about the surface fleet or submarines? Cause surface ships use gas turbines and jet fuel, not diesel. The Navy got rid of nuclear surface ships, except for aircraft carriers, in late 90s cause they were expensive.
If you are talking about submarines, the US Navy hasn't had diesel submarines since 1990.
The last US Navy diesel submarine, USS Dolphin (AGSS-555), was decommissioned in 2007.
And not all Navy surface ships are nuclear or turbine powered. Many classes of US Navy surface ships are diesel-powered, including some of the newest ones. Ships with gas turbine engines typically feature diesel powerplants also.
I'm sorry, I assumed the US Navy ship engines burned bunker fuel like container ships, in diesel engines like those Wärtsilä makes, rather than using turbines. Thank you for the correction. I was talking about primarily the surface fleet, but also didn't know the US had eliminated their non-nuclear submarines, which I have to admit undermines my point somewhat!
The "problems, delays, overruns" is basically euphemism for political sabotaging. I can't feel so sympathetic to those in denial of that.
It's just hot rocks boiling in a pressure cooker. 1940s technology. Not 1940s as in Portal timeline. Making assumptions that there must be complicated technical challenges that cannot be overcome or could delay construction as long as 17 years to mitigate is just stupid.