1. Strengths and weaknesses

Today, the breakthrough of the PWR in the civil sector is no longer due solely to its military origins, with the reactor on the Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine to enter service in 1955 [7], [8]. In the search for new thermal neutron technologies (1), every possible combination of nuclear fuel, moderator and coolant has been tried out, in a wide variety of designs. If some of them have proved usable, it's because of the PWR's robustness, rusticity, compactness, safety, resistance to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and potential for industrial development, all of which are key to its success.