Nuclear Power Too Expensive

Since 04-18-03

NUCLEAR POWER TOO EXPENSIVE

Naval engineers have struggled for the best part of a century to keep submarines under water for longer while making them quiet enough to evade detection, an elusive dream until the advent of nuclear propulsion in the 1950s.

Nuclear technology allowed submarines to travel rapidly over thousands of miles to theatres of war, but proved too expensive for all but the biggest naval powers, while the radiation shields required to protect crews meant they were too large to operate effectively in coastal waters and shallow straits.

The U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union all tried after World War Two to develop a non-nuclear alternative to diesel power, with the front-runner for many years being the use of concentrated hydrogen peroxide to produce steam and drive a turbine.

"Compressed gas has its own hazards, particularly in a warship," said Mike Proudlock, a former British naval officer who spent seven years training submarine crews, adding that the test vessels often ended up floating to the surface in a cloud of white smoke, earning one the nickname "HMS Exploder".

The U31, which costs around $300-350 million, switches to fuel cells when it needs to loiter unnoticed at low speeds, but still relies on a diesel engine at higher speeds, meaning it can't compete with nuclear submarines on long-haul missions.

"With our experience of using conventional submarines you can do the long transits but you tend to be much slower," Proudlock said. "We got a nuclear sub to the Falklands in two to three weeks. A conventional submarine couldn't manage that."