Delta Force
Banned
The pressurized water reactor is great for a naval vessel, especially a submarine, but the boiling water reactor has a number of advantages over it for civilian nuclear energy. BWR designs tend to be less stressed due to operating at lower pressure, radiation, and temperature levels. They also tend to have less components and a simplified design overall, including a merger of the primary and secondary coolant loops into a single system. With proper design, a BWR could even operate using natural convection for coolant, eliminating pumps and with it the entire class of station blackout scenarios.
While PWR received a head start due to its development by various world navies, the BWR is a similar design that uses similar technology. Could BWR have become the civilian nuclear standard instead of PWR? If so, might there have been less nuclear energy incidents due to the failure modes of Three Mile Island and Fukushima being less likely in a BWR, as well as nuclear incidents overall? Might nuclear energy be somewhat more economically competitive?
While PWR received a head start due to its development by various world navies, the BWR is a similar design that uses similar technology. Could BWR have become the civilian nuclear standard instead of PWR? If so, might there have been less nuclear energy incidents due to the failure modes of Three Mile Island and Fukushima being less likely in a BWR, as well as nuclear incidents overall? Might nuclear energy be somewhat more economically competitive?