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Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic. Shipping goods is one major source of CO2 and other pollutants, as most ship engines are way dirtier than any car engine. If this concept works out, we have an almost magic bullet to cut ship emissions by 90%. And at that level, suddenly other concepts for the remaining motor power required become feasible. Those wings could be covered with solar cells for electric populsion and ships can carry large batteries. Or biofuels, hydrogen etc. Not only the emissions, but the requirement for motor powers have been cut by 90%.

On the other side, as someone who likes sailing boats of all kinds, it is just gorgeous. Imagine the seas populated by those great ships.

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> Shipping goods is one major source of CO2 and other pollutants, as most ship engines are way dirtier than any car engine.

This is only kind-of true. Ship engines are dirtier in the sense that they produce worse NOx/SOx (causes of acid rain) and particulate matter (causes of haze and breathing issues). These issues are serious, but they have led to countless articles with very misleading headlines like "Big polluters: One massive container ship equals 50 million cars"[1].

For global warming (CO2 and other greenhouse gases), shipping does create a decent fraction of emissions (~2% of manmade co2 emissions in 2018[2]), but nowhere near what land-based transport creates (trucks+passenger cars put out roughly ten times what boats do [3]). Attempts to address the particulate/sox/nox has included LNG powered ships[4], which allow unburnt methane to escape, which results in worse GHG emissions (but less of the "emissions" that allow headlines like "shipping is as bad as 50 million cars!"). And if you look at a different statistic, ocean shipping of goods seems almost responsible (eg, ocean shipping has the lowest "CO2 per tonne per km", far lower than rail/truck shipping[5])

All that said, reducing GHG emissions from shipping is great and necessary. I hope this project works out.

[1] https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

[2] https://maritimesky.com/2020/08/05/imo-has-published-its-4th...

[3] https://www.transportation.gov/sustainability/climate/transp...

[4] https://theicct.org/news/fourth-imo-ghg-study-finalreport-pr...

[5] https://timeforchange.org/co2-emissions-for-shipping-of-good...

I was in a very interesting presentation once about the impact of ships on clouds [1]. There is more depth into the impact of these vesels compared to only the amount of carbon emission. But honestly I am not expret, I found it intreresting that for example the shipping from europe to USA had some impact in the amount of clouds in nortern africa. Although, I cannot find the presentations I saw.

[1] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/91608/signs-of-ship...

Regulation has already lessened ship sulphur emissions a lot. And it is being tightened in other ways too.

IMO 2020:

> The global sulphur limit (outside SECA’s [SOx Emission Control Areas]) dropped from an allowed 3.5% sulphur in marine fuels to 0.5%.

> Over 170 countries have signed on to the changes, including the United States [https://www.imo.org/en/About/Membership/Pages/MemberStates.a...]

We really don't need this concept to work out in order to have clean shipping. We've had the technology for 70+ years, we just haven't implemented it because oil-fired ships are cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion

Certainly cleaner than oil-powered. But doubtfully cleaner than wind.

For wind you don't need mines, and extremely expensive storage facilities. For nuclear power you do.

Edit: obviously such a ship needs mining to get the metal to make such a ship, but so does a nuclear ship: after that, the wind-powered ship sails virtually for free forever, whereas the nuclear ship needs a small stream of plutonium in- and a small stream of highly "dirty" waste going out.

Consider however that a modern sailship needs a thermal engine for practical and safety reasons: you want to be able to avoid storms, calm periods or inconvenient winds that can make you drift hundreds of miles from your original destination, all of these big problems during the Age of Sail.

This is in fact why we abandoned sailing ships for merchant fleets: they run on the Sun's free nuclear fusion energy, but they are very inconvenient! So a modern sail ship will need to use its engine, and therefore I'm not sure they would be cleaner than a nuclear fission ship.

No ship sails forever. And given the amount of energy you get per kilogramm, nothing beats nuclear which is why the waste stream for anything that is nuclear-powered is extremely small.

I‘m also pretty sure that even a sail ship will have fossile-powered backup generators. No one is going to design such a big ship with no additional backup power supply and certainly those aren’t just batteries.

I don’t understand why people here still keep coming up with arguments against nuclear when countries with a large share of nuclear in their energy mix have the lowest emissions in their energy sector.

Oh, and the waste isn’t really a problem. In fact, nuclear waste is one of the best types of waste.

See: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

I am very much for nuclear power. Especially the new generation of generators (with that said as someone pointed out there is problems with mining the fuel). But even with that said, that doesn't mean I would automatically be for putting it on a ship. One of the first thing I would say about nuclear power plants is to out them in places with a stable environment (maybe not places with earthquakes or huge storms) and putting it on a moving ship is kinda spitting in the face of that. I mean I might be wrong, havent looked very deep into marine nuclear but it feels scary when thinking of how often ship disasters happen. I think convincing people of nuclear on land is a large enough endeavor.

The US Navy has safely operated hundreds of marine nuclear reactors for 70+ years without any major issue. The technology is there if we actually wanted to stop polluting the planet.

The crew, maintenance, processes (including security) of US Navy subs is at a vastly different level from a typical merchant ship.

I agree with the concern about crew qualification, but maybe at least convert the worst offenders? The Guardian said [1] that "just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars". Why not convert those 15-20 biggest ships to nuclear (with a UN or IAEA compliment aboard if you want)? I believe this could be a huge win for the environment achievably today with mature technology.

That was a story from 2009, and it was referring specifically to sulfur dioxide rather than all air pollution:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...

The high SO2 pollution was because heavy fuel oil used in oceanic shipping could have a very high sulfur content, up to 4.5%. The global limit has been lowered to 0.5% this year. In designated Sulfur Emission Control Areas the limit has been lowered to 0.1% since 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_Control_Area

The sulfur dioxide emissions from shipping have been slashed since that Guardian article was written. Other air pollution from shipping was not greater than that from cars in the first place.

Why would you trust cost cutting shippers with nuclear reactors?

Install catalysators instead.

Cool. Let's start by storing the waste in your backyard. Where your kids play. Let's see how you keep defending that "best type of waste" position while pushing your kids' wheelchair when they are on chemo.

Edit: To everybody downvoting me here, it's easy to say that it's the best type of waste as long as it's somebody elses problem.

To which I want to add: nuclear waste is the worst type of "somebody elses problem".

Not just geographical, as with most "NIMBY". But in time. It takes (tens of)thousands of years before it is no longer anyones problem. To put htat in perspective: if the egyptian Pharao's had decided to power their enterprice with nuclear power and store the waste "in a place up north where no-one lives", western europe would have large uninhabitable places - still.

> Shipping goods is one major source of CO2 and other pollutants,

It's less than 4.5% of CO2 emissions. Incredibly low good compared to the volume of goods and the benefits.

You can remove other pollutants with regulations. Requiring exhaust scrubbers or using other fuels has worked miracles in EU.

You can reduce CO2 emissions even more with slower speeds, thinner ship shape and cleaning the bottom of the ship regularly.

Getting rid of 4% of the total human CO2 emissions is huge. On top of that pollutants like fine particles. Switching to mostly-sail powered shipping reduces all emissions of a ships engine by 90% in one big step, the remaining 10% are even easier to clean up, as scale matters.

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