Fukushima: Nuclear power’s VHS relic?

A brief history of nuclear power and the politics that goes along with it, in an attempt to determine whether we opted for designs we use because they were the best, i.e. did the US opt for light water reactors just because we had developed enrichment technology.

There is at least one omission, though.

The top US priority was to develop a reactor capable of powering submarines. A naval officer with a reputation for getting things done, Hyman Rickover, was appointed to lead the task.

Submarine reactors need to be small and compact, and avoid the use of materials such as hot sodium that could prove an explosive hazard.

The light water reactor, with the water under pressure to prevent it from boiling and turning to steam, was Rickover’s choice. It quickly entered service powering the Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine.

The article fails to mention that the USS Sea Wolf (SSN-575), the second nuclear submarine in the US navy, had a sodium-cooled reactor. This kind of reactor has to have a secondary loop to make steam, and that means you run the risk of a primary-to-secondary leak. Sodium + water. As pointed out, and as any chemist or physicist who hangs out with those liberal alkali metals (way over on the left of the periodic table), or anyone who has seen a video knows, bad things™ can happen when you mix them. But the technology wasn’t simply ignored, which puts this account on a bit of shaky ground.