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Comment by kylehotchkiss | Hacker News Reader

There's some issues with pirates in many parts of the world though (source: Captain Phillips movie). It's just not practical to really secure container ships from every feasible sea and air attack surface, unless there was a big red button that just drops the reactor into the depths of the ocean.

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And even without pirates, merchant vessels have incidents with disturbing frequency. A lot of these incidents never have a cause firmly attached to them, because the crew's all dead, the ship is somewhere in a 10,000 square kilometer stretch of ocean, and that ocean is 1km+ deep. Not that the wreck being known and (relatively) shallow is a panacea either, as the variety [0] of hypotheses concerning the cause of the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck should demonstrate.

I trust the US Navy to operate reactors at sea - they've done a damn good job of it over the years, with no losses since 1968. And even those losses (USS Thresher, SSN-593 [1] and USS Scorpion, SSN-589 [2]) haven't caused radiation leaks. Merchant shippers? Yeahhhhh.... No.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald#Hypothese...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)

How often are subs lost? I have no recollection of numerous losses, but I think they’re also only ran by nations. I wonder if they’re inherently more stable.

I'm pretty sure submarines are lost more often than surface warships are - the difference between small incident and loss of ship is just so much smaller. And to confirm that I can't think of any surface warships that have been lost by the US or Russian navies out of combat since 1950, but both have lost several submarines in that same time period.

Your general point is correct. But the USS Guardian surface ship was lost when it ran aground in 2013. It didn't quite sink but couldn't be repaired.

Other entries would be USS Benevolence [0] in 1950, USS Hobson (DMS 26) [1] in 1952, USNS Mission San Francisco (T-AO-123) [2] in 1957, USNS Mission San Miguel (T-AO-129) [3] in 1957, USS Stickleback (SS-415) [4] in 1958, USS Grouse (AMS-15) [5] in 1963, USS Bache (DD-470) [6] in 1968, USS Frank E Evans (DD 754) [7] in 1969, USNS Sgt. Jack J. Pendleton (T-AKV-5) [8] in 1973 and USS La Moure County (LST-1194) [9] in 2000.

But I think that's the rest of the noncombat, post-1950 losses. Lots of support ships, DDs and a single sub.

And thanks for the mention of the USS Guardian - I had no idea the USN still operated wooden-framed ships!

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Benevolence

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hobson_(DD-464)

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Mission_San_Francisco

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Mission_San_Miguel

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stickleback_(SS-415)

5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Grouse_(AMS-15)

6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bache_(DD-470)

7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Frank_E._Evans

8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Sgt._Jack_J._Pendleton_(T...

9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_La_Moure_County_(LST-1194)

Maybe you could get the US Navy to crew a few container mega-ships in the national interest of international commerce? Reducing climate change and political concern over the carbon involved is arguably a better use of the Navy's time than fleet exercises, and it wouldn't take that many people.

There are over 9,000 fully cellular container ships operational right now, and container ships are only 13% of global merchant shipping capacity. The roughly 70 ~20k TEU megaships all together are only 10% of total container ship capacity. A few megaships is insignificant in overall economic terms.

What is the other 87%? How is that possible if 90% of goods are transported by sea?

The majority of goods are on bulk carriers and tankers. Grain, coal, oil, etc.

The parent said “container ships are only 13% of global merchant shipping capacity”. I’m wondering how else goods are being transported...

Indeed, bulk carriers and tankers are ships that aren't container ships.

Sure, but as a whole they have had a few rough years.

https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crash...

Right, but even those accidents wouldn't have caused a radiation leak if the destroyers in question were nuclear powered.

K-431 - 1985 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-431

K-219 - 1986 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-219

Burevesnik - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident

I think the US Navy would be very interested to learn that it supposedly operated Soviet submarines.

I agree there's a problem with pirates in some parts of the world. Source: I used to work in this area.

I recall a shipping lane chart that showed large carriers making a wide swing around and away from somalia.

Ships can be obscenely ill-regulated at sea. Also the crew is, due to greedy owners, a skeleton thereof and paid like dirt (and not necessarily treated much better). Anyone pushing for nukes on large ships needs to work in the industry first before opining.

Pirates aren't stealing nuclear fuel from operating reactors. It will literally kill them before they get away with it.

They could potentially breach a reactor deliberately but again...why? It would kill them and not achieve anything.

The design for nuclear reactors in commercial shipping has been to use sealed modular units, who's security system would be that attempting to remove or breach would drop the whole unit to the bottom of the ocean where only nation-state level specialized resources could recover it expediently.

> Pirates aren't stealing nuclear fuel from operating reactors.

They don't need to steal the fuel, just find a buyer for the ship and the fuel that comes with it.

And what if they try doing it in shallow waters or on shore?

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