this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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But now it allows the same top-secret ultra-classified reactors that were once limited to military craft to be used on container ships and oil tankers. Pollution-free ocean shipping.
To be clear, the exact designs on military craft are secret for security reasons, but not the theory and general technology. Commercial nuclear boats have long existed, they're just niche for all the cost, safety and complexity reasons you'd expect.
This technology was so highly classified that any mention of it by those developing it would lead to their lifetime incarceration, stated clearly in the non-disclosure agreements they had to sign They could not even mention the theory and general technology behind it. The background tech only came to the public attention when Russia and China started commercializing it, and this forced the Americans to acknowledge it. It was a Russian ice breaker that was the first commercial vessel to use nuclear power, and even at that it was wrapped in military secrecy. But America refused to allow any development on a Western equivalent for 'military security' reasons.
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/commercial-nuclear-adoption-ship
But the most effective way for America to completely prevent any development of this nuclear technology was to make it essentially impossible for any commercial outfit to get insurance on these propulsion systems, making it impossible for them to enter any port.
Everything on the military is classified. Basic ass radios from the 80s are top secret, classified just means they don't want enemies to know the exact specifications of their equipment.
There's plenty of insurers not in America...
A nuclear reactor isn't actually a very complicated machine, in a sense. Put enough nuclear fuel in one place and it gets hot. Then, drive a heat engine with it. Usually one based on steam, although closed-cycle gas turbines, sterling engines and airbreathing jet engines have all been experimented with.
It's just that you have to keep track of neutron moderation and cross sections, half lives of thousands of isotopes, thermal changes, non-constant demand and the possibility of point failures, all under the condition that you can't let anything escape. That makes it complicated, but then again each individual part on that list can be learned from open-source materials.
It's even known what general kinds of reactors are on various military nuclear submarines. For example, the earlier Soviet designs used a liquid lead-bismuth cooled fast neutron design, which is why the Russians have so much polonium, while the modern designs use a pressurised water coolant.
It is not insuring the reactor for replacement, it is insuring the entire nuclear powered ship so it can enter a port. Ships collide. Ships crash. Ships hit bridges. An oil spill is one thing, nuclear contamination of the entire port is another.
Yes, I'm aware. It's a sector pretty famously pioneered by the British, and Lloyd's of London still operates.
What the Americans did, among others, was to convince the port authorities that they needed to demand such exorbitant levels of insurance on any ship carrying a nuclear cargo that it made the cost to shipping lines just too expensive.
You can't use ship style because those use weapons-grade material. It's more compact but not something you can use for civilian designs. The design isn't complex, it just uses higher energy density material.