Australia's Prime Minister Morrison has sold the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactor concept as being a "sealed system" that therefore does not need complex Australian maintenance.
A January 14, 2022 comment from French Anonymous runs in the face of this, where Anonymous says:
"One the most critical element in a N plant is the steam generator (having pressurized water heated by the [Zirconium] Zr cladding on one side and steam for the turbine on the other side). Because it is a critical safety barrier it needs to be changed typically every 10 years in civilian plants. This is why in the US design it is located outside the reactor.
Conversely if you have a system engineered for simple (relatively) access to the reactor, you can locate these heat exchanger within the reactor and have highly compact design"."In 1998, [HMS] Trenchant experienced a steam leak, forcing the crew to shut down the nuclear reactor. In 2000 a leak in the PWR1 reactor primary cooling circuit was discovered on [HMS] Tireless, forcing her to proceed to Gibraltar on diesel power.[17] The fault was found to be due to thermal fatigue cracks, requiring the other Trafalgar-class boats, and some of the remaining Swiftsure-class boats, to be urgently inspected and if necessary modified.[17]"
"In 2013 the [UK] Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator [of "nuclear hazards"] reported that the reactor systems were suffering increasing technical problems due to ageing, requiring effective management. An example was that [HMS] Tireless had had a small radioactive coolant leak for eight days in February 2013.[18]"
4. Apparently less than 10 postgraduate nuclear engineers a year are trained in Australia for defence and civilian roles. This is expected to escalate into 100s of Australians needing to be trained yearly to meet submarine reactor inspection and maintenance safety needs.