Chinese Company Considers a Future With Nuclear Cargo Shipping – Your Thoughts?

As soon as private enterprise is allowed to develop nuclear powered engines we WILL see huge progress in the safety and security of the units, not to mention the rapid reduction in cost of technology. Some day when the majority of people realise the fact that the CRIMINAL degradation of our planet by our oil & auto/transport industry (that is fuelled by greed) is far worse than the threat by terrorism, the people will DO something about both evils.

PS Terrorism is not synonymous with Islam, just anti governance and greed in general!

nanotek79 – the humble sail was beaten in the market for commercial shipping by the humble steam engine burning coal in the middle of the 19th century, even though the steam engines were far less efficient and more dirty than those used today. They came with a lot of disadvantages, including the need to buy fuel, but they had some key advantages – like the ability to deliver cargo at the agreed upon time. Sailing vessels were and are notoriously unpredictable.

Sails also work best if the ship is very light – there is a reason why competitive sailors ride on boats with very Spartan interiors and massive sails.

Sails also require skilled, experienced operators who do not want to take frequent showers since there is little excess power capacity for making fresh water.

What about the humble sail?

Alan:

I wrote an article a long time ago about what the experience of the one of a kind NS Savannah should have really taught us. You can find it here:

http://www.atomicinsights.com/jul95/failure.html

Here is a key quote from that article:

“n the words of Robert J. Bosnak, a former officer in charge of the Marine Inspection team that regulated the Savannah, “The Savannah performed well from an operational point of view, but in my opinion her designers condemned her to a short life by her hybrid design as a passenger-cargo vessel. Neither function of the ship proved to be economically viable, and MARAD (Maritime Administration) chose not to spend additional monies to convert her to an all cargo, or an all passenger vessel, but instead removed her from service. I regret that this happened.”

As a result of her design handicaps, Savannah consumed approximately $2 million more per year in operating subsidies during her four year career in international trade than a similarly sized Mariner class ship with an oil heated steam plant. This extra subsidy became a target for economy-minded legislators.

In 1972, when Savannah was laid up, the cost of a ton of oil was about $20.00. A ship with a 20,000 horsepower engine using 1970s technology would have burned about 120 tons per day for a daily fuel cost of about $2,400. By early 1974, following the Arab Oil Embargo, a ton of bunker fuel cost about $80.00. That same ship’s daily fuel bill would have suddenly increased to more than $9,000. Savannah’s fuel cost would not have changed as a result of the Oil Embargo. If the oil-burning ship operated for 330 days per year (which is common in the world of merchant shipping), the increase in its annual fuel expenditure would have more than eliminated the difference in Savannah’s operating costs, even with all of her inherent disadvantages.”

BTW – diesel fuel for ships currently costs about $500 per ton while the cost of fuel for nuclear power plants has actually decreased in price since 1972 and currently is roughly equivalent to buying oil priced at about $2.00 per barrel – or $15 per ton.

It is this fuel price savings that frees up plenty of money to pay for crew members and the protective layers that would prevent collisions and impacts from damaging the nuclear power plant.

Here is another by the way – In January 2005 the USS San Francisco ran into an underwater mountain at high speed – reportedly in excess of 25 knots. Though there were 20 people injured (one killed) and more than 100 million dollars in damage to the ship, the reactor plant was not damaged. It supplied the power to get the ship back to port safely. That is an example of how resilient you can make a nuclear propulsion plant because it has extremely compact and low cost fuel that does not require massive storage tanks.

@Mathew

Try using wikipedia, it helps.

Do you know how much Uranium is in the oceans already, the amount is staggering, even though its only 3 parts per billion. The R/D has even been done to extract it, its not as cheap as direct mining yet. If the entire electric power industry went nuclear, the fuel would come first from uranium mines, thereafter by reprocessing the stockpiles of so called high level waste, and finally from the oceans, enough to last for millenia. We could also use mined Thorium. So I guess the oceans have been devastated ever since they came to be.

Also 8 nuclear vessels have already gone to the bottom of the oceans, 4 Soviet, 2 Russian and 2 US resting on an already radioactive seabed.

Also biofuels are only going to help a teeny little. There simply isn’t the land to grow all the biostock needed to process into the biofuels to replace the fossil fuels we use now. Think in terms of millions of years of plant vegetation getting cooked into fossil fuels and then being consumed in about 200 years or so. Doing the same thing with technology would require many earth surfaces to produce the same energy content as fossil fuels we are using up. We cannot conceivably duplicate what the earth has done for eons at the much faster rate we consume it. It is easy to see why, solar radiation is incredibly diffuse and plant or algae processes are very inefficient at converting solar energy into any usable form. Just the transport and processing often uses as much energy as was in the original stock.

In other words one of these is going to happen.

We go nuclear power or drastic lifestyle reductions or population cuts.

Hell no. One nuclear spill could devestate the oceans. Then the exxon Valsez would finally not be that big of a deal. Use bio fuels you morons.

Thanks all: interesting perspectives.

Remember this idea was brought up over 30 years ago in the US.

This is not a new idea. What it is is a good idea. Imagine if all shipping was shipped through US guaranteed SAFE nuclear powered super shippers?

My fear is that China won’t build these vessels as safely as they should. Look at some of the construction problems they’ve had in the last few years.

The only problem is that the US would never do it because of lack of leadership and the obsolete slow and costly design and construction processes.

But if it can be done safely we will all benefit. The only problem is that it is another case where the US gives up more of their position as a world leader.

But this is what happens when we haven’t had far seeing leaders for a long time.

Sorry about being negative here.

Been there, done that. I refer all to the article on nuclear-powered cargo ships in Wikipedia. Fuel is just a portion of total operating costs. It wass non-fuel operating costs which shut down NS Savannah. I have been onboard Savannah and spoke with several of her former crew.

It’s unlikely that the chinese could find a ==truly profitable== operating niche for their version. The chinese aren’t stupid, they will discover during their preliminary research that going nuke entails greater labor, wharfage, etc costs. They might choose to eat those by putting quasi-military labor onboard and running the ship only domestically, as a prestige item. US MARAD did something quite similar; eventually got tired of paying for it. The Chinese will eventually also quietly drop it. History usually does repeat itself.

PS.. your idea of a ‘nuclear hybrid’ is ill conceived. 1) A nuclear ship is a nuclear ship… they can’t remove the ‘fuel’ just to enter port. 2) On average 5000 people live and work on each nuclear aircraft carrier with typically 80 crew per nuclear sub and NONE of them die from radiation exposure!

One large container ship emits as much pollution each year as 50 million cars so I think Nuclear powered merchant ships are inevitable. http://electric-vehicles-cars-bikes.blogspot.com/2009/05/big-polluters-one-massive-container.html

Consider this: a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has more than twice the power output of the largest container ship yet can go 20 years between refueling and the US Navy has accumulated over 5,400 reactor years of operating 80 ships/subs without incident.

Okay if transport ever goes nuclear, large ships, trains, and maybe even planes, and space craft, we are so going to be living in the world of Thunderbirds and International Rescue and that evil dude The Hood right about in the 21st century!

Okay I grew up on Gerry Anderson TV so I’m still disappointed that none of that stuff ever came to be.

Except for the possibility of terrorist attacks its a win on almost every count esp if its thorium based. Maybe a nuclear battery already developed by a couple of companies is big enough to do the job. Since there should be dramatic savings on fuel and possible carbon credits, the savings can be used for both armed guards and a thorough check on loading of cargo containers.

Its sad that the slightest possible threat would force us to continue using bunker oil. You don’t even have to put something onboard, a hostile boat that gets too close could still launch a small missile, and just stay away from Somalia.

If they use thorium reactors then I have absolutely no problem with it, but the fact that less than 1% of all container ships are scanned for any type of material means that loading one container full of C4 or ammonium nitrate and then detonating a proxy dirty bomb would be far too easy.

Rod what is the worse case scenario? 3 fishing boat loaded with tnt ramming the nuke boat one after another sending a radioactive cloud over 1/8 a mile of a port area?

Some ports are also moving to require ships at anchor in harbor to run off shore power rather than run their own deisel generators to generate power. This is a good opportunity to reduce pollution in ports.

Although I am generally sceptical of large nuclear reactors on land being a good alternative to renewable resources like wind,solar, geothermal, etc., the idea of a nuclear powered cargo (or even cruise) ship is intriguing since renewable energy (other than problematic biofuels) are not practical for such ships. I think that it would be possible – and is a absolute must – to design such an animal to make it a poor target for terrorists.

Yet, in the end, I think the planet will ultimately have to see us ship much less stuff.

That’s all we need now. As along as there is izlam, there will be terrorism . PERIOD!

The Chinese just paid a ransom to the mohamedon hijackers of one of their cargo ships last week.

I am sure that a nuclear powered commercial vessel would be a high value target for izlam. Imagine the izlamonian prestige of blowing one of them up in a big port city…………….allah!

Pirates highjack slowly moving ships. They would have a very difficult time highjacking a high speed nuclear ship manned by well trained operators and security personnel.

I would love to see some because of economic/environnemental reasons, it’s way cheaper/cleaner then oil. However, safety and proliferations concern must be adressed, if they can’t, well its too bad.

For safety, I don’t know, the hybrid system seems appealing but it’s a bad idea to shutdown and turn it on too frequently, it maybe safer just too keep it running (high temperatures changes isn’t good). I don’t know but I think we can found something.

As for proliferation concerns, I seems somali pirates can just capture anything they want, they recently captured an UAE oil tanker ! I don’t think it can be viable to protect such ship. Their crew is very limited (20-25) and thus become an easy target. If it’s possible to put a reactor on a ship and defend it, why we don’t defend other ships without reactors ?

My thoughs are they board a ship with like 50 or hell even 100 armed mens and take control of the ship. Even if you add guards, double crew (25 to 50) you can’t do shit.

The problem with a nuclear reactor is that even if they can’t really blow (kamiakaze can blow up more), they can release lot of radiation, which is bad.

We already have nuclear ship in and under the ocean. Nuclear subs have been in the ocean since 1954 and the first of 4 nuclear cargo ship was built in 1962. Since then, we have also added 10 nuclear powered aircraft carriers.(Nimitz class)

I oppose it however due to security and safety. If they build a nuclear cargo ship, they will have made a renewable, portable power source that will last for years. Then they plan on sending it out into the middle of the ocean… by itself. Just how many people do you think would kill for that?

Pirates will never come close to stealing a nuclear sub or aircraft carrier, they do however hijack cargo ships all the time. Last year Somali pirates mounted 111 attacks and captured 42 ships, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Make one nuclear and I bet they will start getting backing from terrorist organizations world wide.

Susan – I would be happy to have nuclear commercial ships. I spent a few years in engineering assignments on board US nuclear submarines, including 40 months as the Engineer Officer (a job that my friends on surface ships would call “Chief Engineer Officer”). I have been in downtown Fort Lauderdale, Charleston, Port Canaveral, and St. Croix.

A common perception is that Navy nuclear propulsion is okay because we have such highly trained people and a seemingly unlimited budget. The reality is a bit different. The Navy recruits people with care and provides them with good training, but we are not supermen. I was just 27 years old when I took charge of my department. My undergraduate degree was in English, albeit with some reasonable amount of chemistry, physics, math and engineering courses required of all Naval Academy midshipmen. I had also gone through 12 months of intensive classroom and practical training and served for 27 months in a junior officer position to gain additional practical experience.

I had about 30 nuclear trained people in my department. There were about 5 chief petty officers who had 15-25 years of operating experience, but little to no college education. There were also 5 junior officers with degrees and technical training. Overall, the average age of the people in the department was about 22 and there were only about 8 degrees among us. (I had two by that time.)

Our budgets were also much more limited than most people realize; Congressional appropriators do not give the services unlimited checkbooks.

Though it may cost a bit more to train nuclear operators and we might need a few more of them, the real opportunity for economical operation comes from the fact that nuclear fuel costs about 1/40th as much as oil. A large ship can easily burn 1200-5000 barrels of oil per day as it is crossing the ocean.

At today’s price of $80 per barrel for crude oil, the price for the distilled fuel used on ships runs at about $120-200 per barrel depending on location.

That means that buying fuel for a large ship can cost from $144,000 – $1,000,000 per day. Reducing that fuel cost to a maximum of $25,000 per day for a ship that would otherwise burn 5,000 barrels per day can free up a lot of money to pay for well qualified crew members.

When it comes to pollution and safety concerns, they are even more important when close to populated areas than the monetary savings. Nuclear ships would not produce any air pollution at all.

Count me as a fan of the idea. It is definitely worth doing and certainly worth doing right.

Rod Adams

Publisher, Atomic Insights

Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast

Disclosure: I am also the founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. We would love to work on developing engines for commercial ships.

http://www.atomicengines.com/ships.html