The Nuclear Submarine NR-1; Life is Actually Like This.

Nuclear energy, and, particularly for me, nuclear ship propulsion, continues to be a tantalizing solution to CO2 reduction.

We know nuclear energy works, but from that point on there appear to be more questions than answers. The questions range from economic viability to waste disposal concerns. I am not a nuclear engineer, but in general engineering systems terms, I have followed nuclear power for decades. That is not hard to do, since the pace of nuclear innovation has been slow to say the least. In essence, I only have to wake up every decade or so, take a quick look, and go back to sleep.

That is broadly true, but in the details it is not. For example, I will admit that nuclear waste hype hoodwinked me, and I worried about that until we became involved in a nuclear plant decommissioning a few years ago. There I discovered that the plant’s nuclear waste was peacefully sitting in what was essentially a swimming pool, just waiting for it to be sufficiently decayed for storage in low level waste disposal like Yucca mountain (or reprocessed, but that is yet another confusing story).

Yucca mountain got covered in misinformation and did not happen.