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Forget security (which worries me less), the legalities of this are notoriously tricky (especially if the ship might ever leave the waters of one nation), and the economics are even worse.

I wouldn’t touch civil maritime nuclear with a barge pole, and if I did, the clear win is decarbonizing big cargo ships.

A week late but... in my experience (potentially sector/location specific but I don't think so), most high-risk licensing and permitting activities come before construction starts, and certainly almost always before above-ground construction starts. So regulatory issues may challenge overall project viability, but you tend to know before cash is sunk if you're going to be, for instance, refused planning permission.

I've worked on a few big EPC projects in a specialised industrial sector, including some in the UK. Three things drive the first digit of cost, assuming you've hired relatively competent engineers and constructors:

1. (Design) Building floorplate and architectural complexity (i.e., divergence from 'big box')

2. (Construction) Schedule adherence. Almost any one-off expense to stick to the schedule is worth it, but to your point, these are often challenged or delayed. Building and testing equipment on skids off-site is almost always worth it.

3. (Design/Commissioning) Schedule adherence. For commissioning this is typically driven by design choices (did you pick a high-TRL process, or if not, do all the work required to mature it in parallel to construction?) and by building the right commissioning team (knows their job, knows the plant).

If more expensive plant & equipment gets you ahead on any of these 3, 99% of the time that is an overall optimisation.

> Lime takes a while to set (a few days?)

Up to 30 days to set, and depending on the type of lime (hydraulic or non-hydraulic) and form/process (putty, hot mix, etc.) up to a year to reach full hardness.

One thing I do miss from the early internet was less anonymity being the norm on Usenet/forums/etc. Discussions tend to stay more civil when both parties know there's a "real" person on the other end.

Otherwise, my memory of early 90s internet supports exactly your conclusion. There may have been better opportunities for small discussions, but big ones devolved the same way they do today.

No, it isn't. It is called 'City of London Corporation' in the sense of being a municipal corporation, but effectively it's just a local authority... except that businesses still get a vote along with citizens.

There's a (fairly basic but extant) English language requirement for naturalization, so it doesn't seem inconceivable that could be applied to a visa.

Don’t forget extremely expensive vitamins!

Respectfully, have you ever actually read an NTSB report? They're incredibly thorough and consider both causes and contributing factors through a number of lenses with an exclusive focus on preventing accidents from occurring.

Also, they're basically inadmissible in court [49 U.S.C.§1154(b)] so are useless for determining financial liability.

> I suspect that the push for civilian SMRs is a disguised subsidy for the naval reactor programme

It absolutely isn’t. There is very little crossover between the RR SMR (which is 470 MWe, not really an ‘SMR’ by IAEA definition) and a submarine reactor core. Sub cores are smaller and optimised for different conditions. They’re vastly different tech. The teams at RR working on these are totally distinct with no crossover.

RR just got £9B for sub NSSS work. They don’t need a back door subsidy when they have a big cheque coming right through the front door!

If anything, UK govt is prioritising domestic technology, whether or not that’s the best from a purely economic point of view.

The parent's point is that these kind of systems can be implemented by postal services seamlessly, but not on a month's notice. I don't see how the form of the tax is material to the point being made.

Los Alamos is an NNSA lab; NNSA is a semi-autonomous component of DOE and its weapons activities budget is distinct from the general DOE budget. NNSA’s nonproliferation budget has been cut but they’re still very well funded on the weapons side even if they’ve lost quite a lot of people in the last few months.

The national labs are organized under the Office of Science (17 labs), NNSA (LANL, LLNL, Sandia), the Office of Nuclear Energy (INL), the Office of Environmental Management (Savannah River), Office of Fossil Energy (NETL), and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (NREL). Some offices are doing better than others re: funding in the current environment!

As a nuclear engineer, it's hard to use these kinds of intro tools without shouting things at your monitor. For this, it was the omission of xenon when discussing simulating reactor transients.

I get that it's meant to be overly simplified, and it's a neat idea that is probably helpful for communicating some key concepts.