https://theconversation.com/remembering-antarcticas-nuclear-...
It sounds like the Antarctic design deserves some ridicule.
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/radiation/sources/...
Edit: A history of the plant: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/
It was an army plant, the reactor is listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program
"The Navy shuts down and dismantles a nuclear reactor in Antarctica", "Sometime soon the US Navy will have to find some place to quietly dispose of [...] by-product of 10 years of operating a small military power reactor in Antarctica", "The Navy considered nuclear power particularly suitable for the inland bases, where oil fuel was being flown in over such long distances[...]", "all the electricity for the 1,000 men stationed at the Navy's McMurdo Sound".
McMurdo station[2] "built by the US Navy Seabees".
Army Nuclear Power Program on Wikipedia[3] "PM-3A: 1.75 MW electric, plus heating and desalinization. McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Owned by the Navy."
[1] https://books.google.se/books?id=wwoAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA32&ots=V...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program
Still wrong, made != owned
Change "Navy made a nuclear reactor" to "Navy comissioned, owned, operated, bungled, mismanaged, wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on, a nuclear reactor". Happy?
The lunar night is 14 days long
"By the end of the 1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as dramatically as once believed. [...] Eventually, more than 120 reactor orders were ultimately cancelled and the construction of new reactors ground to a halt."
"Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were cancelled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable"
"As many as 30 new reactors were planned by 2009. As of February 2021, only two new reactors are still under construction, both at Vogtle. The project has announced significant delays and budget overruns. Most of the other new builds and the equally extensive list of upgrades to existing reactors have been shelved"
And the story is similar in the UK. (NB. that's not saying "one outage in a year" it's saying "an outage lasting at least a year".)
Nuclear power has not had the 70 years of intense funding, competition, year on year improvement that computing has had. There's fewer nuclear plants now in the UK and USA than there were in the heyday. Yes civilian nuclear tech and military tech will have improved somewhat, but the idea that we just wait 70 years of not running nuclear reactors in remote hostile places and now suddenly we'll be much better at it doesn't sound very plausible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reac...
I don't think shipping in diesel is viable for the moon, though, which sort of changes what is cost effective.
Submarines are run by a crew of trained specialists at all kinds of high stakes systems, including the reactor.
On top of all that, are fission reactors compatible with VC fund liquidity horizons? I think that may be part of why some startups are focusing on operating instrumentation and software. You can patent that and sell it as a product separate from the reactor. Or worst case backstop your investors from losing their whole investment.