Another ex-Navy nuke here. More than 45 years later, I can still practically recite both sides of my interview with the KOG,* which was necessary to get into The Program.
Here's an excerpt. Important to the story is that I was escorted into Rickover's office by a senior officer who was in training to be a submarine skipper. Also relevant is that I was younger than the usual candidate.
KOG: Why do you want in my program?
Me: From what I've seen of the submarine fleet, there's a lot of professionalism there; I'd like to be part of that. [Later, in nuclear power school, I switched to surface, and spent my sea time aboard the carrier USS Enterprise.]
KOG: So you don't think there's any professionalism in the surface fleet?
Me: I didn't say that, Admiral.
KOG [to the escort officer]: Read back what the kid said.
Escort officer: Mr. Toedt thinks there's a lot of professionalism in the submarine fleet and not in the surface fleet.
KOG: [Angrily points out my personal failings, ending with:] You're shooting your g--damn mouth off about something you don't know a g--damn thing about. What do you think of that?
Me: That's not what I said, Admiral. [At this point I started getting pissed off.]
KOG: [More vigorous imparting of wisdom, ending with:] Have you learned anything?
Me [angrier than I've ever been, before or since]: Yes, SIR.
KOG: What's that?
Me: Not to shoot my [pause] MOUTH off about something I don't know a [pause] thing ABOUT — SIR.
The interview went downhill from there, including inquiries about my sex life. I figured I'd bilged the interview and would be heading for destroyer school, which had been my preference anyway (the officers at my NROTC unit had strongly "encouraged" me to apply for The Program instead). I was shocked afterwards when the nice older lady congratulated me on having been accepted to The Program and asked which of the two nuclear power schools did I want to attend.
After the interview I realized that Rickover and the escort officer had intentionally been f--king with me as one of his little stress tests, the stories about which are legion [0].
* KOG = Kindly Old Gentleman. The nuke joke was that he checked the box for at most two out of those four things.
You are likely familiar with the quip that "While in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is." Here's a delightful letter by "The Father of the Nuclear Navy" Admiral Hyman Rickover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover) on how that saying applies to nuclear reactor design. Excerpts:
An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following
basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is
cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is
very flexible in purpose ("omnibus reactor"). (7) Very little develop-
ment is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components.
(8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be distinguished by the
following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind
schedule. (3) It is requiring an immense amount of development on
apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a problem.
(4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of
the engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is
heavy. (8) It is complicated.
It's a short two-page letter, so I won't excerpt more. It merits reading in full.
That really does sum up all the gaps between the promises of "too cheap to meter" and the practical expensive reality. Doubly so for things that haven't made it out of the lab at all, such as thorium reactors. There's always people willing to give the "academic reactor" sales pitch for nuclear on here, especially as a reason not to proceed with some scheme using a renewable, proven but intermittent technology like wind or solar.
He has a quote from somewhere that I can't locate at the moment which is (paraphrased) "any new reactor design is always safer and more efficient than existing designs, until they get built, which is when they become expensive and less safe".
I always have to refrain from trotting that out whenever the pro-nuclear fans trot out how wonderful Gen-IV, or MSR, or whatever lights up their fantasies will be.
It's Rickover's concluding paragraph I find most compelling:
Yet it is incumbent on those in high places to make wise decisions and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is consequently incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible.
That resounds today, especially with a novel current rapidly-spreading challenge, and responses around the planet which fail all three of Rickover's admonishments.
FWIW, I am scanning your prior posts (HN, reddit, mastodon).
I try to pay attention to "explainers" like you, Slate Star Codex, Gwern, Ezra Klein, David Roberts (also Vox), Bill Gates, others. People who voraciously consume info, synthesize it, and try to explain it to the rest of us.
Prior navy Nuke- it’s hard to explain how much Rickover continues to permeate the Navy Nuclear program. When you start your naval nuclear career, you still literally have to go through Rickover. That is, the building where all naval nuclear training begins is “The Rickover” in Goose Greek, SC.
>Beneath the surface, however, was always the cold, unrelenting, ruthless workaholic, undermining the bureaucracy while creating his own. His was a management textbook for the inside operator, organized to the smallest detail, intolerant of error, devoting everything including his personal life to a cause, an obsession. Rickover established a constituency in Congress by superior salesmanship of his own product and skillful sowing of dissension and division in competing programs. Carefully slanting facts and covering up what he did not want disclosed, he skillfully manipulated his two bosses to become what the authors call "The Unaccountable Man." He destroyed any competing nuclear program within his own organization and any person likely to emerge as a competitor or successor. In time, he became increasingly conservative if not reactionary, putting space between himself and any responsibility for failure or accident. When the USS Thresher was lost in April 1963, he immediately phoned the Bureau of Ships to dissociate himself from any likelihood of failure of the nuclear plant in the incident. The bureau chief thought this action "thoroughly dishonest."
>The cult of personality produced other adverse side effects. Having achieved brilliant success with the pressurized water coolant system in the Nautilus installation, innovation in other types of plants was stifled. The USS Seawolf plant, developed in tandem with Nautilus, utilized liquid sodium as coolant, promising much smaller and more compact reactors. Because of limitations in metallurgy, the system was unsuccessful. The program was scrapped, and its obvious superiorities were never again reexamined, even after twenty years of further progress in nuclear technology. Rickover put the kiss of death on programs generated within the Office of Naval Research and elsewhere for smaller, lightweight reactors that could reduce the enormous size and cost of nuclear-powered ships. None saw the light of day; all were thwarted as interference in his work. When nuclear power was adapted to surface use for large combatants such as aircraft carriers and missile cruisers, new systems apparently were not examined. For instance, a smaller and more efficient combination of nuclear power for normal cruising plus an overdrive of conventional gas turbine plants for high speed use had been proposed but was not investigated further.
Why? The loss of the Thresher had nothing to do with any problem with its nuclear plant. It was a "subsafe" problem--inadequate QA on a pressure weld. The Navy responded with much stricter QA standards on pressure welds.
Yes. Most of the problems with reactors have come from parts that are glossed over at the PowerPoint level. Many exotic reactor designs have been built, and most have had problems. Everything with complexity inside the radioactive area has been troublesome.
The AVR pebble-bed reactor in Germany had a pebble jam, and still can't be decommissioned.
Often the problems involve plumbing. Sodium reactors have leaks and sodium fires. Helium gas-cooled reactors have helium leak problems. Ft. St. Vrain was a really good idea which had both helium leak and corrosion problems. Three Mile Island was a valve problem. Fukishima was a failure of the cooling system after a tsunami.
This is why some of the new designs are viewed skeptically. Molten salt reactors involve a chemical processing plant that works on radioactive materials. Radioactive chemical plants have always been troublesome. They tend to become toxic waste sites. (See Pantex, PUREX, etc.)
Modular reactors with multiple reactors sharing the same cooling pool are at risk if anything leaks and contaminates the pool.
Commercial reactors have to be built for a 40-50 year lifetime to pay off. Anything inside the radioactive zone is essentially unmaintainable for that period. Complexity inside thus just doesn't work.
Which is why we're stuck with water and pressurized water. Simple mechanically and chemically.
Small molten salt reactors were actually built. They weren't just paper reactors, even in Rickover's day. Now there are companies working on MSRs for commercial use. There's more computer simulation than running reactors so far, partly because governments are much more cautious now. But I'll also point out that Rickover in 1957 had no idea what computers in 2020 would be capable of.
I think it's reasonable to suspect that we didn't find the best possible reactor design six decades ago.
That culture of pressure never changed, and they are better for it.
The best analogy I can give you is this: Imagine your CTO just decides to walk up to your datacenter to throw open a breaker or few to verify that your failover and redundancy tech works correctly.
The CTO doesn't do this often - just once every few months. Each time the failure mode is different. Remove a live hard drive, disconnect some network switches, etc. The only reason she does it to is to emphasize the importance of these drills upon her VPs and directors.
They run drills of this nature on their teams every few days.
[+] [-] dctoedt|6 years ago|reply
Here's an excerpt. Important to the story is that I was escorted into Rickover's office by a senior officer who was in training to be a submarine skipper. Also relevant is that I was younger than the usual candidate.
KOG: Why do you want in my program?
Me: From what I've seen of the submarine fleet, there's a lot of professionalism there; I'd like to be part of that. [Later, in nuclear power school, I switched to surface, and spent my sea time aboard the carrier USS Enterprise.]
KOG: So you don't think there's any professionalism in the surface fleet?
Me: I didn't say that, Admiral.
KOG [to the escort officer]: Read back what the kid said.
Escort officer: Mr. Toedt thinks there's a lot of professionalism in the submarine fleet and not in the surface fleet.
KOG: [Angrily points out my personal failings, ending with:] You're shooting your g--damn mouth off about something you don't know a g--damn thing about. What do you think of that?
Me: That's not what I said, Admiral. [At this point I started getting pissed off.]
KOG: [More vigorous imparting of wisdom, ending with:] Have you learned anything?
Me [angrier than I've ever been, before or since]: Yes, SIR.
KOG: What's that?
Me: Not to shoot my [pause] MOUTH off about something I don't know a [pause] thing ABOUT — SIR.
The interview went downhill from there, including inquiries about my sex life. I figured I'd bilged the interview and would be heading for destroyer school, which had been my preference anyway (the officers at my NROTC unit had strongly "encouraged" me to apply for The Program instead). I was shocked afterwards when the nice older lady congratulated me on having been accepted to The Program and asked which of the two nuclear power schools did I want to attend.
After the interview I realized that Rickover and the escort officer had intentionally been f--king with me as one of his little stress tests, the stories about which are legion [0].
* KOG = Kindly Old Gentleman. The nuke joke was that he checked the box for at most two out of those four things.
[0] https://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2009/02/rickover-stories-ne...
[+] [-] Tade0|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nkurz|6 years ago|reply
An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose ("omnibus reactor"). (7) Very little develop- ment is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It is requiring an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a problem. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of the engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated.
It's a short two-page letter, so I won't excerpt more. It merits reading in full.
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhayward|6 years ago|reply
I always have to refrain from trotting that out whenever the pro-nuclear fans trot out how wonderful Gen-IV, or MSR, or whatever lights up their fantasies will be.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] freepor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|6 years ago|reply
Yet it is incumbent on those in high places to make wise decisions and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is consequently incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible.
That resounds today, especially with a novel current rapidly-spreading challenge, and responses around the planet which fail all three of Rickover's admonishments.
The essay itself has long resonated with me:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28q61o/hyman_g...
[+] [-] specialist|6 years ago|reply
What are your thoughts about hoaxes, cults, groupthink?
I'm hoping to find explainers in the same way Sara Robinson and David Neiwert have tried to study and understand authoritarianism. https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/08/cracks-in-wall-part-i-...
FWIW, I am scanning your prior posts (HN, reddit, mastodon).
I try to pay attention to "explainers" like you, Slate Star Codex, Gwern, Ezra Klein, David Roberts (also Vox), Bill Gates, others. People who voraciously consume info, synthesize it, and try to explain it to the rest of us.
[+] [-] nemosaltat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
http://web.archive.org/web/20170514181829/http://www.au.af.m...
>Beneath the surface, however, was always the cold, unrelenting, ruthless workaholic, undermining the bureaucracy while creating his own. His was a management textbook for the inside operator, organized to the smallest detail, intolerant of error, devoting everything including his personal life to a cause, an obsession. Rickover established a constituency in Congress by superior salesmanship of his own product and skillful sowing of dissension and division in competing programs. Carefully slanting facts and covering up what he did not want disclosed, he skillfully manipulated his two bosses to become what the authors call "The Unaccountable Man." He destroyed any competing nuclear program within his own organization and any person likely to emerge as a competitor or successor. In time, he became increasingly conservative if not reactionary, putting space between himself and any responsibility for failure or accident. When the USS Thresher was lost in April 1963, he immediately phoned the Bureau of Ships to dissociate himself from any likelihood of failure of the nuclear plant in the incident. The bureau chief thought this action "thoroughly dishonest."
[+] [-] selimthegrim|6 years ago|reply
>The cult of personality produced other adverse side effects. Having achieved brilliant success with the pressurized water coolant system in the Nautilus installation, innovation in other types of plants was stifled. The USS Seawolf plant, developed in tandem with Nautilus, utilized liquid sodium as coolant, promising much smaller and more compact reactors. Because of limitations in metallurgy, the system was unsuccessful. The program was scrapped, and its obvious superiorities were never again reexamined, even after twenty years of further progress in nuclear technology. Rickover put the kiss of death on programs generated within the Office of Naval Research and elsewhere for smaller, lightweight reactors that could reduce the enormous size and cost of nuclear-powered ships. None saw the light of day; all were thwarted as interference in his work. When nuclear power was adapted to surface use for large combatants such as aircraft carriers and missile cruisers, new systems apparently were not examined. For instance, a smaller and more efficient combination of nuclear power for normal cruising plus an overdrive of conventional gas turbine plants for high speed use had been proposed but was not investigated further.
[+] [-] pdonis|6 years ago|reply
Why? The loss of the Thresher had nothing to do with any problem with its nuclear plant. It was a "subsafe" problem--inadequate QA on a pressure weld. The Navy responded with much stricter QA standards on pressure welds.
[+] [-] JohnCClarke|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
Often the problems involve plumbing. Sodium reactors have leaks and sodium fires. Helium gas-cooled reactors have helium leak problems. Ft. St. Vrain was a really good idea which had both helium leak and corrosion problems. Three Mile Island was a valve problem. Fukishima was a failure of the cooling system after a tsunami.
This is why some of the new designs are viewed skeptically. Molten salt reactors involve a chemical processing plant that works on radioactive materials. Radioactive chemical plants have always been troublesome. They tend to become toxic waste sites. (See Pantex, PUREX, etc.) Modular reactors with multiple reactors sharing the same cooling pool are at risk if anything leaks and contaminates the pool.
Commercial reactors have to be built for a 40-50 year lifetime to pay off. Anything inside the radioactive zone is essentially unmaintainable for that period. Complexity inside thus just doesn't work. Which is why we're stuck with water and pressurized water. Simple mechanically and chemically.
[+] [-] DennisP|6 years ago|reply
I think it's reasonable to suspect that we didn't find the best possible reactor design six decades ago.
[+] [-] perl4ever|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] factchecker01|6 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/G0p8bWYY7qM
[+] [-] watersb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandmeyer|6 years ago|reply
The best analogy I can give you is this: Imagine your CTO just decides to walk up to your datacenter to throw open a breaker or few to verify that your failover and redundancy tech works correctly.
The CTO doesn't do this often - just once every few months. Each time the failure mode is different. Remove a live hard drive, disconnect some network switches, etc. The only reason she does it to is to emphasize the importance of these drills upon her VPs and directors.
They run drills of this nature on their teams every few days.
[+] [-] redis_mlc|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz
Nuclear power is a game-changer, allowing aircraft carriers to sail completely around the globe at speeds fast enough to barefoot water-ski behind.
[+] [-] ambicapter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]