1990 MIT Thesis on Effect of Enrichment on Submarine Reactor Design

This thesis was done to determine the effects of variation of Uranium enrichment on nuclear submarine reactor design. It makes significant assumptions but takes a disciplined physics based approach to answering the question. The thesis concludes that 7% enrichment is not practical, 20% enrichment could achieve similar lifetimes to 97.3% enrichment but at the sacrifice of being larger and heavier.