Having successfully completed training on pressurized water reactors with the U.S. Navy, I was surprised the June 21 editorial, “Nuclear will power future: New initiative to research energy source smart step away from fossil fuels,” made no mention of the Navy’s excellent safety record with nuclear power and the correlation to SMRs (small modular reactors) as being developed by NuScale Power of Tigard, Ore.
With 60 years’ experience with reactors aboard surface ships and submersibles, the Navy hasn’t had a nuclear accident. Two submarines, USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, with loss of all aboard, rest on the Atlantic sea floor, but their loss was not due to nuclear reactor failure.
Where civil land-based plants fail is they are basically one-off constructs, each subsequent plant supposedly better than the last. They also fail because they are too big, locking populations into dependence on a single source of energy. In today’s world, large stand-alone power plants’ vulnerability makes our communities vulnerable as well.
Radioactive waste repositories, such as already approved at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, should be completed and placed in operation.
