The British experience with nuclear submarines reveals a litany of public health risks as well as delays and cost blowouts, and it can confidently be predicted that problems will beset the AUKUS submarine programme ‒ the joint development of nuclear-powered submarines by the UK, the US and Australia.
My new report prepared for Friends of the Earth Australia demonstrates that the development of a nuclear-powered, conventionally-armed nuclear submarine (SSN) fleet entails multiple public health risks and would inevitably suffer from delays and cost-blowouts.
Operational risks of SSN deployment include radiological pollution of marine and coastal environments and wildlife; risks of radioactivity doses to coastal populations; and the serious risk of dangerous collisions between civilian vessels and SSNs, especially in the approaches to busy naval and civilian sea ways and fishing grounds.
What’s funny to me is that if you ask most people about doing asteroid mining they’ll tell you that it’s science fiction. But if you ask them about a machine that can stay underwater for five years they know exactly what you’re talking about.
Huh?
There are many things that are technologically possible but we don’t have them because they are seen as being impractical.
Nuclear subs use all the tech that would be needed for a space colony.
Got it. Something about the way you phrased it the first time was confusing and I didn’t know what you were getting at.
Subs have a big advantage in that they make their own oxygen from all the water around them.
All subs or just nuclear subs?
Any sub could but only nuclear bother. They have the power generation to run the process and stay down long enough to need it.
Other subs run on batteries and need to surface to recharge. So making oxygen would reduce how long you can stay down not extend it.
I’m probably wrong, but AFAIK subs (navy war vessels) don’t actually need much “new” or “introduced” oxygen when submerged.
Us humans breathe out just as much oxygen as we breathe in - it’s just that it’s contaminated with carbon - CO2.
I don’t think that nuclear powered subs “generate” or “create” much oxygen for the purposes of life support.
Instead, subs use CO2 “scrubbers” that are replaced at regular intervals. (See space flight, especially Apollo 13…)
As stated, “diesel electric” subs ALSO need to either surface or “snorkel” when running on diesel to recharge their batteries.
The scrubber absorbs the CO2 it doesn’t break the O2 from the C. So H2O to H and O2 to CO2 to storage in the scrubber.
Here is a link to the various methods used for the steps. https://www.marineinsight.com/know-more/submarines-get-oxygen/
Building this big complicated thing is complicated!
If only there was some way we could share the risks with a few other countries. Maybe even someone who’s tried it and fucked it up.
UK & US : “We need a new
gunea pigpartner to test this shit before we do it. We haven’t got a clue!”I know you’re trying to be funny but that’s exactly what we, and they, are doing. Developing something this complex requires a lot of resources and has a lot of inherent risk. It makes sense to share that risk - everyone involved carries some.
We can’t go it alone but we definitely want the subs, we don’t want to just pay for them because then these partners have us over a barrel indefinitely.
