The following was recently shared with me. You can’t take it as “authoritative” but it is a lot better thinking on the topic than I’ve ever seen to date.
“Can a nuclear submarine [or ship] provide power to the grid in a disaster? I know it was done once after a Hawaii hurricane, but a Navy nuclear power officer recently listed the problems with the idea:
1. MOST IMPORTANTLY - There is no standard procedure to allow this. Submariners don’t brush their teeth without a vetted and approved procedure.
2. The vast majority of the rated power for a reactor is for propulsion and the vast majority of the electric capacity is for plant operations to support 100% reactor power.
3. The shore power breaker is not that big (compared to the needs of a city). It’s only meant to provide ship service power alongside the pier and sufficient power to start the reactor.
4. To jury-rig some cable into the power plant switchgear would violate many design criteria of the plant, the power plant electrical design is evaluated as a component of reactor safety to ensure it is safe. Imagine the vetting required for some Rube Goldberg solution, running an unapproved cable into the ER hatch would violate the plant’s containment. - I can’t imagine NAVSEA would risk a spotless, 100s of millions of hours (on well over 200 ships) of safe operation and a legacy of safety spanning 61 years when other solutions are available.
5. What do you do with the cable on the other side? The power grid has tons of reverse power protections and features to protect vital distribution equipment - how do you get it to the exact location you want it? There are no extension cords capable of handling that many amps long enough and if there are - the line loss would be huge. For the EE [electrical engineers] engineers and people in power generation- I also think it’d be a reactive power nightmare…
6. There are many, many other better sources for emergency power - by the time NAVSEA would give you permission you could fly in a several dozen caterpillar generators which would far exceed whatever power you hope to get out of a nuclear ship. One maritime pre -position ship carries more portable generators ( big 550KW ones) and the fuel for them and can be anywhere in a matter of days.”
