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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Technology
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Interesting topic but what a terribly written article. Did they just ask ChatGPT a few questions and paste together random chunks of the answers? It keeps suggesting there are downsides, but never even names one.
Presumably the main concern would be fallout from the reactor if the ship sinks. Kind of hard to think of any other real problems.
AFAIK a sunken reactor is not as big of a threat to life as a one (marine or land-based) that releases nuclear material in the atmosphere, so the biggest issue should be what may happen before the reactor sinks.
Anyway IMHO the biggest issue with nuclear is not its safety, but rather that, even when it operates without the slightest of incidents, it produces waste that needs to be kept "safe" for periods of time that exceed the age of most nation states (let alone private companies).
It's true waste can be a problem. Incidentally, that's one reason why thorium is a far better fuel since the waste is only dangerous for around 500 years compared to thousands of years for uranium.
That "only" is just ridiculous :)
Just try to imagine the history of a nuclear waste storage site from the 1500s... how many budget cuts would have it seen? how much buck-passing when it changed hands as a result of war of revolution? how many times would it have been bombed? (and it's not like we've had bombing for a very long time).
We are just not responsible enough to play around with nuclear. Hell, we are showing we are even not responsible enough for hydrocarbons.
(yes, I do know some amount of nuclear waste, from medical applications etc., is definitely worth it and unavoidable - let's just keep it to a minimum)
I mean we already have plenty of spent nuclear fuel from regular powrplants, so that boat has already sailed.
The older generations kept leaking contaminated water (reactor coolant), many harbors simply refused entry because they didn't know the risks involved, and I'm pretty sure the decommissioning isn't clear either. The way current laws are set up, it's quite possible that these things go through a few hands and end up on a beach in some underdeveloped country and get dismantled like any other ship under horrible working conditions - but now with the added benefit of nuclear contamination.
There definitely would have to be solid decommissioning and waste disposal procedures.
Pretty sure this article has been at least partially written by an AI