As a former navy nuke: no. I don’t want commercial vessels registered in Nosafetystandardsland to have nuclear power. Fuck no.
It’s also not even a little economical.
It’s also not even a little economical.
These nuclear vessels will likely have to be registered in countries with nuclear power already deployed. Nobody will allow Panama or Costa Rica to have an atomic ship - I am with you on that.
>It’s also not even a little economical.
If somebody is ready to put money to try making it economical, I would be cheering for them. Just put transparent rules & regulations and wait. If somebody comes up with a safe & profitable atomic ship, we all win.
Yes, with the reactor designs used by US Navy.
Akademik Lomonosov ([1]), a floating nuclear plant, uses "low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, with 14.1% average enrichment, with a fuel cycle of 3 years".
Commercial atomic container ships will likely be closer to Akademik Lomonosov than the US Navy fleet. And that's fine.
Maybe you could have a very large ship, larger than could go into a port, and it could perhaps ferry cargo around the world and as it reaches ports it offloads the cargo onto some waiting barges to be tugged into port? I imagine you would need to ship a LOT of goods FAST to make it worthwhile to use nuclear.
For nuclear shipping to become viable a reasonable set of trading countries would need to come together and set the standards that it’ll operate under.
Ha will have to borrow that