Inside the fight over alternative sub fuel

[rangerrebew]

Inside the fight over alternative sub fuel

A handful of lawmakers want the Navy to research low-enriched uranium fuel to reduce nuclear weapons proliferation. But funding bans are on the horizon.
LAUREN C. WILLIAMS and CAITLIN M. KENNEY | JULY 24, 2023 05:29 PM ET
NAVY NUCLEAR CONGRESS SCIENCE
   
There’s been a small but persistent push to get the Navy to look at using low-enriched uranium—instead of the highly enriched variety—to power its future submarines. But Congress is poised to slam the door on more research, at least for the next year, and that could scuttle the possibility of using it on the next generation of U.S. subs.

The push is led in the House by Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., a former high-energy physicist who contends that the United States would be safer if it developed warship reactors that did not require highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons.

“It's a crucial thing that we will continue R&D. We know it's possible to build submarines that have low-enriched uranium—the French do it, the Indians do it, the Russians do it. It's possible to do this. And the question is, how do you minimize the performance trade-off and enough to convince countries that this is a better route than maintaining a large stockpile of weapons-grade uranium?” Foster said at a recent House Rules Committee hearing on the 2024 defense authorization bill.

https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2023/07/inside-fight-over-alternative-sub-fuel/388791/

[Kamaji]

Why?  Is there a substantial threat of U.S. subs being taken over and their reactors stripped by bad actors who are trying to obtain weapons-grade uranium?

[rangerrebew]

The push is led in the House by Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., a former high-energy physicist who contends that the United States would be safer if it developed warship reactors that did not require highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear weapons.
 

First of all, you knew it had to be a democrat who started this lunacy.  This is military wokeness at its most maniacal.  The military is supposed to worried about defeating enemies, not the environment.  With ships not operating as efficiently as an enemy's is a sure way to be conquered by the enemy.  I saw this in the Indian Ocean when our battle group was a met by a Russian battle group in 1976.  Their ships were still burning coal oil and were spotted long before we saw the ships themselves.  In a combat situation, their ships would have been destroyed before the Russian crews ever saw our ships.  They would have had a good view of our planes as they were being decimated, though.

[Kamaji]

First of all, you knew it had to be a democrat who started this lunacy.  This is military wokeness at its most maniacal.  The military is supposed to worried about defeating enemies, not the environment.  With ships not operating as efficiently as an enemy's is a sure way to be conquered by the enemy.  I saw this in the Indian Ocean when our battle group was a met by a Russian battle group in 1976.  Their ships were still burning coal oil and were spotted long before we saw the ships themselves.  In a combat situation, their ships would have been destroyed before the Russian crews ever saw our ships.  They would have had a good view of our planes as they were being decimated, though.