Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2025)

Norway has had two small experimental nuclear reactors since the 50s or so, and they're getting decommissioned. Turns out that's expensive. Very expensive. Current estimates have ballooned to 56 billion NOK ($5.6b).

So what does SMR decommissioning look like?

At least this project has skipped the huge NIMBY issue by putting them on ships. And if anything goes wrong I'm sure nobody would mind glow-in-the-dark sushi...

PaulHoule · 7h ago

Decommissioning isn’t usually as bad as building reactors — it’s not unusual for decommissioning projects to come in under budget and early.

FridayoLeary · 10h ago

What makes is it so expensive?

magicalhippo · 1h ago

In the case of our experimental reactors, a large part as I understand it is that they were fooling around in the 60s. Thus a lot of "meh just put it over there" scenarios and such, without much consideration of the consequences.

Another point is that Norway has no way to process the leftover materials, and currently nowhere to store the processed materials.

So we need to ship the highly radioactive stuff abroad, and build a storage facility for when it's processed.

_aavaa_ · 8h ago

Small reactors miss out economies of scale that large reactors get access to. Halving the size of a pipe doesn’t halve the cost.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK · 8h ago

How safe are these reactors in the war that is coming?

SilverElfin · 10h ago

Russia built a floating reactor recently too. I wonder if it is too much of a risk though. Polluting fishing waters doesn’t sound good.

phillipseamore · 3h ago

There are hundreds of nuclear reactors sailing around our oceans in ships and submarines and have been doing so for more than 70 years. Most estimates are above 400 total reactors though the actual count isn't really known since nearly all of these are military vessels.

inejge · 8h ago

Operating since 2019/2020:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

It's in the far north, I'm not sure how much fishing is going on around there, or how a potential radiological leak would spread around.

whaleofatw2022 · 6h ago

It looks like each of its two reactors are a good bit more powerful than what is in an Ohio Class Submarine, but far less than what's in a Gerald R Ford class Aircraft carrier. For whatever thats worth

rasz · 6h ago

North of Norway has ~5 euro/MWh power most of the year https://euenergy.live/country.php?a2=NO3 , nuclear cant beat that.

lysace · 10h ago

> The floating plants are expected to supply electricity to nearby offshore platforms and feed power into the onshore grid.

Norwegian offshore platforms means it's related to fossil oil/gas extraction.