When America Dreamed of a Nuclear-Powered Cargo Fleet
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20 odd years in aviation only brought us from the Wright Flyer to the Spirit of Saint Louis. 20 odd years of automobiles brought us from the original Benz to the Model T. 20 odd years of computing only brought us from the ENIAC to the Intel 4004.
On the other, an old article on HN criticized the fact than garage science/fablabs in nuclear area became forbidden since the war, which prevents disruptive young tinklers from stumbling upon a revolutionnary discoveries.
It seems we can do the maths for this easily to dismiss solar and wind, but, when it comes to nucular we are in denial. It takes a lot of energy to dig up Canada/Australia/wherever to get the U308 stuff, then a whole lot more to process it. Then there is the building of the nucular plant plus the decommissioning. Oh, and the waste disposal along the way, not cheap in raw energy terms.
Some costs such as the brains of the boffins needed to build these things may not have a raw energy price, that you might have to measure in pobble beads and pence, but, I just want a simple energy in -> energy out ratio. Do nucular power plants actually work out as cheap as the proponents imagine?
This I do not think is clear because there are so many other reasons nucular power plants get built. In the UK we ended up with so many nucular power plants because of the Cold War 'requirement' to have the bomb, and to create the bomb grade material needed for the U.S. (where there never were things like 'fast breeder' reactors).
France lost out when the oil reserves were carved up by Churchill and Roosevelt after WW2 so nucular became quite a thing in France. Their power is cheaper than what there is in the UK and most of the rest of Europe. So nucular is cheap, the French proven it so? Again, not really. They had their own reasons, e.g. also desiring nucular weapons, a seat at the UN and some (non-fossil) power. Sure, economics came into it but there were these other imperatives.
There is also the matter of 'Lockheed Martin' accounting. Bribes, billion dollar cost over runs, project delays, pork barrel politics and vested interests. We don't seem to have that in Denmark where the wind turbines seem to come from these days but nucular is mired in 'Lockheed Martin' accounting issues.
RE various problems of costs you've mentioned, I do think we're applying a double-standard here, but it's a double-standard against nuclear. I rarely see people talking just about how much solar is subsidized (two or three years ago AFAIR it was government subsidies that made PV installations make any economical sense for anyone, though I've heard it might have changed recently), or how much bribery is going on with those infrastructure projects.
The article also mentioned that she was built just as the container revolution was beginning, and that also doomed her to a diminishing availability of bulk cargo to haul.
Overall impressions were that it was a really nice ship. Too nice. It had portholes with rotating shades made of polarizing filters - you spun the inner one 180 degrees to block out the sun. Which is very very cool, but not something a cargo ship would normally feature.
Would a modern mega-huge container ship benefit from being nuclear powered? Maybe. The additional shielding and steel bracing needed to protect the piping and core would add significant cost to the construction, but the zero extended fuel cost might make that cost efficient. A larger question is whether a nuclear powered ship would be allowed in some ports, such as Japan or New Zealand.
In fact, on the list of busiest ports by container volume, Rotterdam, at #11, is the first I might be worried about, and then Hamburg and Antwerp, at #15 and #16.
With the size of cargo container ships built nowadays, the additional engineering requirements of a full-blown built-in nuclear reactor is more than justified. Even retrofitting the largest bunker-burning ships might be justified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...
Utilizing nuclear power would be a great way of minimizing greenhouse emissions, plus it would be more cost effective in the long run. It's a shame the engineers were lazy and dumped eradicated waste overboard in their designs.
You could even provide power to local ports if necessary during humanitarian efforts. Or sell power to the local utility while docked and get a check in the mail.
EDIT: Are you a Thorium startup reading this on HN? GO AFTER THIS MARKET.
I think the sail technology is much nearer term, but thorium will probably be the long-term. Helps the space industry if I understand the waste product correctly.
Torium Investing: http://www.thenuclearmetals.com/thorium/
The overall point is good, that's just not a good source.
Eh what? Boilers? Nope. Massive, bigger-than-house diesel ENGINES are used.
So there are other means of propulsion for large ships besides diesel.
Oh, and even steam turbines are still used (on natural gas carriers, they simply burn some of the cargo!).
For the merchant ship application, it seems a reach to believe that the benefits of greenhouse gas reduction can be most efficiently achieved by replacing diesel engines with nuclear reactors.
[1]http://www.oregon.gov/energy/nucsaf/docs/naval_nuclear_react...
"In her first year she had to release more than 115,000 gallons of low-level radioactive water into the sea"
On the balance, I think I would prefer the greenhouse gases.
1) timing wise, wow, hitting just before containers is just bad luck
Sorry, too many movies and TV shows with nuclear as the bad guy. We need to get over it to replace current power generation, but someone is going to have to do one hell of a sales job.
This scheme is indefensible, please don't try.
The problem is not lack of support for nuclear but tolerance for dirty and unsafe fossil fuels. We need to deal with that using nuclear or solar or whatever.
The problem is that you get people who think you'll glow in the dark if you live near a perfectly functioning power plant, then you get people on the other side who say it's fine to drink plutonium, and both sets of crazies are louder than any reasonable discussion in the middle.
Basically all of the real-world problems with handling nuclear waste are because anti-nuclear advocates prevent any action from being taken to handle waste, but meanwhile there are operating reactors producing waste and that hasn't stopped. So nuclear plant operators are forced into ad-hoc solutions for waste disposal because nobody will let them do it right.
I think the biggest restraint on the nuclear industry is that it is a complex social structure. Getting many different groups to work towards a common goal is fiendishly difficult. And with nuclear power this issue is safety critical. If the team does not function properly it could cause safety risk. The only way to resolve that premanantly is smaller reactors that don't need such huge teams.
From the FSAR (Final Safety Analysis Report) for the ship, STS-004-002, section 7.1.2 we obtain the following:
"During the NSS's operational period, most of the leakage from the primary system was from the buffer seal (SL) system reciprocating charge pumps and from the diaphragm-operated relief valves. Maintenance techniques for the buffer seal charge pumps (which took suction downstream of the primary system demineralizers) were steadily improved. Improvements in the design and testing sequence of the relief valves reduced the leakage. As a result of these improvements, leakage was reduced from a maximum of 1200 gpd [gallons per day] to 50-100 gpd. Leakage from the buffer seals of the control rod drive shafts and from the valve stem packing was always well within acceptable and anticipated limits."
(The buffer seal system described above provided a positive inflow of water into the reactor through the control rod drive shaft seals, preventing leakage out of them; the diaphragm operated relief valves are overpressure protection for the reactor plant. The implication of the buffer seal pumps taking suction downstream of the demineralizers is that the water is highly purified after having passed through them; thus, any leak off is purified as well.)
The process was that accumulated leaked coolant was stored in tanks. Prior to discharging this liquid , the tanks were sampled to ensure they were within Federal (US 10 CFR 20, Table II, MPCW) limits. After this was guaranteed, the water was safely discharged at sea.
Significantly radioactive material, such as ion exchanger resin or any such, was not discharged at sea but rather at approved facilities such as that at Todd Shipyards, Galveston Texas or else onto dedicated servicing barge NSV ATOMIC SERVANT. No solid materials were dumped at sea.
This paranoia over radiation needs to end.
Do you understand what little effect 3 mile island had versus what the media affect was? Do you get that they put out a movie with Jane Fonda that was one of the nails in the nuclear coffin because of that little leak? Do you get that much radioactive water released was enough to trigger the paranoia?
I would rather they never built the damn ship since it is just another "look at them dumping radioactive waste" event.
We need nuclear, we don't need political pride projects.
My current hope for nuclear is thorium and I hope they have the common sense to hire a PR firm and brand it well. Maybe pebble reactors would be able to make a run at it. More PR and one hell of a story. Maybe someone like Musk to user it in as the next great thing.
In fact, given the choice, I would rather drink the water directly out of the Savannah's holding tank than breathe the exhaust of a bunker-burning cargo ship.
While I couldn't find the numbers to back this up, I suspect that unfiltered water from the Mississippi River is more radioactive, thanks to the lingering fallout from nuclear weapons tests.
An item can be classified as low-level nuclear waste if it exits a controlled nuclear facility with lower levels of radioactivity than the same sort of item found in general commerce. A paper hospital gown discarded from a radiation therapy room is LLW, even if it is less radioactive than another paper gown from another part of the same hospital that had pureed banana spilled on it.
Gallon simply does not have a conversion factor to Becquerels. The total volume of waste released tells us absolutely nothing about the actual or potential environmental damage that release represents.