New life for old naval reactors

The news item “Small Nuclear Reactors Raise Big Hopes” (PHYSICS TODAY, August 2010, page 25 ) brings to mind the dozens of small nuclear reactors that the US Navy is taking out of service as it decommissions older submarines and surface warships. They are compact, safe, proven power plants that could just as easily turn a generator as a propeller. Currently, the navy cuts the reactors out of the ships and stores them in an open pit at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State after removing the fuel for reprocessing in Idaho.

Instead, the naval reactors could be converted to serve as electrical power plants. Generators in hull-like assemblies could be attached to the power plant sections and the “vessels” towed to their new homes and dry docked. Refueling of a vessel could be accomplished by towing it back to one of the secure navy yards where refueling is already performed.

The best customers for such converted reactors would be large federal installations where controlled access would protect their cold-war construction secrets. For example, Redstone Arsenal, on the Tennessee River in Alabama, is home to a large NASA center and a major US Army command. Cape Canaveral, on the Florida coast, is home to NASA and US Air Force launch centers. The large number of former navy reactor operators could be recruited to run their old charges but with the advantage that they could go home at the end of each shift.

Such small plants would reduce the demands on local utilities that must also serve growing populations outside the installations. They could be made operational on much shorter schedules than new reactors could be constructed. At Cape Canaveral, they could also power an electrolysis facility to produce liquid hydrogen fuel that must now be trucked in from distant facilities that process petroleum to get hydrogen.

Old naval reactors are a national resource that should be studied as a potential power source and as the wise reuse of existing equipment, rather than being discarded.