In response to Anonymous from France’s December
30, 2023 comments:
If South Korea (SK) experiences
great difficulties developing its own submarine reactors SK money may make France
more willing to supply K22 or K15 reactor technology:
- a changing
reactor tech proliferation environment, led by the US and UK’s AUKUS reactor offers
to Australia, has probably weakened the Western world's reactor proliferation taboo
- again SK
and even Japan may be willing to offer high prices, making French naval reactor
technology a highly profitable defence export item.
This may initially be for SK and Japanese SSBN (rather than SSN) reactors
- such reactors need not be as miniaturised and operate on gradual acceleration
and deceleration compared to SSN reactors. Their SSBNs may be bastion protected if in the near seas. Bastion protection
may compensate for the more extended time for SK and Japan to develop more difficult
SSN technology.
Your claim may well be accurate that the LEU K22
is probably very similar to the civilian NUWARD SMR proposed by Électricité de France (EDF) .
- Yes SK, with its Small Modular Reactor (SMR) designs for the KEPCO BANDI-60 (60 MWe) PWR and KAERI SMART (100MWe) PWR, might eventually develop an efficient submarine reactor.
Equally Japan’s JAERIMRX (30-100MWe)
PWR may result in a submarine reactor. Also Japan’s operation of theMutsu 36MWth nuclear powered civilian ship has given
Japan some propulsion experience.
However SK or Japanese adoption of French, US or UK reactor tech could minimize extended indigenous development times and cost. This is why the UK pressed for a US S5W reactor installed in HMS Dreadnought (S101) in the early 1960s. Subsequently some US S9G reactor tech has reportedly gone into the UK’s latest reactor, the PWR3.