Re:How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine?
by ggreer on Thursday July 23, 2015 @05:26PM
(#9938635)
Military submarines are fascinating examples of what can be built when most financial, environmental, and ethical constraints are removed. The article mentioned liquid metal cooled reactors. These designs allowed for very small, very fast nuclear submarines. Soviet Alfas[1] could go over 50mph, faster than many torpedoes.
The craziest sub I've stumbled upon is probably the 1950's-era Seawolf[2]. Instead of lead-bismuth, its original coolant was liquid sodium. Sodium, a metal that burns on contact with water, was used as the coolant for a submerged nuclear reactor! Of course, that wasn't the only "interesting" aspect of the Seawolf's design:
> The phrase "Blue Haze" was often associated with the boat, which was Cherenkov radiation, visible on a dark night, in the sea water surrounding the hull...
Shake-out problems and a desire to standardize reactors caused the navy to switch away from the design, but it's still amazing that it was built and tested.
Re:How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine?
by chiph on Thursday July 23, 2015 @01:18PM
(#9937148)
For instance both INL and Hanford have suffered unusual radiation leaks from tumbleweeds blowing into waste cooling ponds, picking up contaminated water, and then being blown over the facility's perimeter by the wind.
Radioactive tumbleweeds. There's two words used together that I never anticipated.
Re:How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine?
by mikeyouse on Thursday July 23, 2015 @07:49PM
(#9939217)
Hanford is a disaster of never-before-seen proportions in the US.. It's going to take decades as well as hundreds of billions of dollars to clean the site. From reading about how the waste was handled there (dumped down deep unlined holes in the flood plane), radioactive tumbleweeds are not the least bit surprising.
Re:How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine?
by bmir-alum-007 on Friday July 24, 2015 @02:12AM
(#9940344)
If this happens to include nuclear warheads, esp. in the U.S., all warheads are currently sent to Pantex in Amarillo, Texas for decomm or refurb. Most of the staff are ex-US MIL, especially USN and USAF, capable of maintaining Q(S) clearance.
The craziest sub I've stumbled upon is probably the 1950's-era Seawolf[2]. Instead of lead-bismuth, its original coolant was liquid sodium. Sodium, a metal that burns on contact with water, was used as the coolant for a submerged nuclear reactor! Of course, that wasn't the only "interesting" aspect of the Seawolf's design:
> The phrase "Blue Haze" was often associated with the boat, which was Cherenkov radiation, visible on a dark night, in the sea water surrounding the hull...
Shake-out problems and a desire to standardize reactors caused the navy to switch away from the design, but it's still amazing that it was built and tested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_(SSN-575)
Radioactive tumbleweeds. There's two words used together that I never anticipated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#Cleanup_era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantex_Plant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGhxGgQ-Cd4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon-class_submarine
The Sinking of the USS Gitarro
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/16.52.html#subj2.1
I Swear I'm Not Making This Up.