The Military Pressures Behind the New Push for Small Nuclear Reactors

But that's like trying to prevent cow rearing by outlawing mince. You don't rear a cow for mince, you rear it for steak. The customer will pay for steak pretty much whatever.

My country just had ~180 GWh of lost load from wind, in winter. That's not even a 1-in-5 event, that's a multiple-times-per-year event, and it's billions in cost to the economy. Industry is dead, I've personally seen steel orders go to China because even if renewables were free we could't handle delivery estimates of "lol idk", and nor can anyone else. I just can't comprehend the levels of denial around this, as if my and literally everyone with industrial experience is irrelevant. Data centres want SMRs and that's the easiest, most trivial task to time-shift around I can imagine. Electricity that is not reliable is not the same product, it is not even a comparable product, in no other field would it be treated as such, and if you can't provide an actual monetary estimate for turning it into a reliable product, not just "iT's gEtTiNg cHeApEr BRO", you should not be in this conversation.

On average, only 1 Suffren-class submarine has been laid every 3 years since 2007, and no new orders have been placed since 2020. That is not enough dealflow to support an SoE like TechnicAtome, let alone a private sector nuclear energy player like a Westinghouse. On top of that, the reactor used (the K15) has only been used in just 12 naval applications since 1980.

Entire decades can pass without new military deals for a K15-type reactor, which can lead to skill and experience attrition for what is a fairly complex piece of technology. Meanwhile, the know-how to build a diesel-electric transmission for naval applications is constantly in demand as the same technology is used in commercial naval vessels as well as locomotives.

By trying to justify a dual-use case for SMRs for energy as well as commercial propulsion (which is what both China and India are investing in), it makes it easier to help maintain the knowledge needed to develop nuclear propulsion systems as well as ensure deal flow exists so a Westinghouse-style bankruptcy does not occur.