Bringing Puntification to the Masses

I think people still don't understand the changes that have been made to reactor designs since some of the big disasters. For example the problems at Chernobyl were from shutting off the safety systems. Some of the newer designs have the safety system that unless the control system is actively doing things to keep the reactor going, the reaction can't continue on its own. And the inner shells that are designed to not handle any excess pressure, and that when breached dampen the reaction to the point of shutdown.

And there's the mention in the article that there's already a ton of nuclear subs out there (both Russian and US - the US has tons of floating ones too).

I know that nuclear reactors are more safe now, I just got done reading an article on the current generation of reactors.
I think the biggest shortfall of Chernobyl was the people involved. The new designs are being built to fail safe, which is great, but can you ever pull the human factor out of the equation?
Another issue with Chernobyl was that it wasn't being maintained properly by the Soviets. I know they're doing a lot better now but still....


And as far as nuclear subs, I feel like the amount of power that is put out by this will be much more than a sub. I'm more envisioning a power plant with water wings. Probably not the most accurate but that's what I have in my head and it's kinda amusing.
If what they're doing is basically building a nuclear sub and then mounting and outlet to the hull for the city to plug into, fine, fair enough, not a huge deal.
I wonder how these will be maintained. Seems like with subs going to and from ports there natural opportunities for maintanence. I wonder if they'll tow these back or do it in place or how that whole thing'll work out.
I know my post was a bit knee-jerk, -2 for me.

I guess I wasn't totally clear on that. They actually did a decent job at the preventing the operator from causing problems. Basically to get the thing to be able to go out of control, one would have to physically go in and effectively rebuild the core of the reactor. It's not something that can be done from the controls. As for the design, I'm guessing it'd be something closer to a nuclear ship like an aircraft carrier, especially since it just appears to be for naval stuff.

When I was reading the article I was all fired up to write a response but then I got to the comments and saw that Jeremy already did. I have to admit that I enjoy nuclear power discussions and educating people on its merits. I blame a research paper in high school and Dr P's nuke class at the good ole BU. Best class I ever took at Bethel.