Nuclear power seems like a good option for non-military boats too, like container ships and oil tankers. It's already a very well proven maritime technology.
It’s almost all cars, trucks, and electric power, so those are the things it makes the most sense to worry about as opposed to things that are much harder to decarbonize and account for less emissions.
[0] https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2023...
- costs for a single ship reactor (shipping is extremely price and cost sensitive)
- time, and lost revenue (a ship not carrying cargo is only costing money, see above) for refuelling
- piracy and terrorism (I am not really convinced risking having some pirate group somewhere capture nuclear reactor is a good idea)
Imagine one target being nuclear powered.
We only did a demo ship, which was combination cargo and passenger. The principal cost was being rejected from ports for their lacking acceptance procedures, a first-mover cost. Nuclear shipping has never been “found to be a stupid idea.” It was simply never explored.
I was referring to the NS Savannah [1]. Put her engine and crew requirements on a modern supertanker and you have an economically viable, environmentally friendly ship.
And the latest Russian buold programm delivered:
- Artika, laid down in 2013 and delivered in 2017, entry into service delayed from 2019 to 2020 and again to 2021 due damages during trials
- Sibir was laid down in 2015 and delivered operationally in 2022
- Ural was laid down in 2016 and entered service in 2022
- Yakutia was laid down in 2020, planned entry into service is 2024
- Chukotka was laid down end of 2020, planned entry into service is 2026
Source: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-...
That's it for civilian nuclear vessels. Meanwhile, in 2022 (a slow year apparently), 182 tankers, 350 container vessels and 69 car transporters were ordered. I didn't find actual deliveries after cursory search.
Source: https://insights.clarksons.net/2022-shipbuilding-review/
As for the small, mass producable reactors needed for civilian use:
"At the moment, several technology providers are dealing with manufacturing of prototypes, the development processes of which are at different levels of maturity, envisaging more or less a decade before completing proof of concepts."
Source: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/maritime-industry-exp...
The first source also has this to say about NS Savannah and the Herman Otto Hahn:
Development of nuclear merchant ships began in the 1950s but on the whole has not been commercially successful. The 22,000 tonne US-built NS Savannah, was commissioned in 1962 and decommissioned eight years later. The reactor used 4.2% and 4.6% enriched uranium. It was a technical success, but not economically viable. It had a 74 MWt reactor delivering 16.4 MW to the propeller, but the reactor was uprated to 80 MWt in 1964. The German-built 15,000 tonne Otto Hahn cargo ship and research facility sailed some 650,000 nautical miles on 126 voyages in 10 years without any technical problems. It had a 36 MWt reactor delivering 8 MW to the propeller. However, it proved too expensive to operate and in 1982 it was converted to diesel.
Meanwhile, the US Navy has nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, but all other nuclear surface vessels have been retired.
In short, we are at least ten years away from a suitable proof of concept reactor design (tue NS Savannah one already showed to be not economical), let alone from having an industrial base to build hundreds of those each and every year.
And therein lies the big problem with nuclear power: it is too expensive and takes too much time to be of any good short term. And if we managed to find a solution short term, and in a lot of cases we already have technical solitions that are deployed, we don't need nuclear mid to long term anymore.
Big batteries? https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-28/making-waves-e...
Hydrogen fuel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_ship
Yeah, those options seem simpler.
Second, CO2 is at very low concentrations in the atmosphere. Direct atmospheric carbon sequestration is expensive and slow. The biggest startup in the synthetic fuel business is behind schedule and is struggling to solve these two main challenges [2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
2. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/25/1050899/promethe...
> As of 2021, green hydrogen accounted for less than 0.04% of total hydrogen production. Its cost relative to hydrogen derived from fossil fuels is the main reason green hydrogen is in less demand. For example, hydrogen produced by electrolysis powered by solar power was about 25 times more expensive than that derived from hydrocarbons in 2018.
You know, like Musk did with EVs and charging networks.
By comparison, the economics nuclear powered ships are not that much worse than conventional propulsion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah#Economics_of_nucle...
But honestly, I reached the point where I claim the same "just build it" approach the pro-nuclear crowd is using regardless of data and facta. Especially since I know from a project I was involved in before COVID hit, that green hydrogen produced PV is absolutely feasible and commercially viable. To do so at tue scale needed requires political action and subsidies, and the tech has still a lot of room for improvement. I say this is good news.
It'd be really great to link to that project and actually demonstrate this claim of commercial viability. We have at least one demonstration of a nuclear powered merchant ship operating over the span of a decade. Can we say the same for a green-fuel powered vessel?
https://www.ship-technology.com/projects/viking-energy-cargo...
The same vessel will be launched early next year with an ammonia fuel cell.
LNG can be produced using green energy, the actual engine doesn't care how the fuel was produced.
Regarding the green hydrogen project: it was a proposed pilot production site to produce green hydrogen. And the business case was actually positive. No idea where that project is now, tuey needed EU funding and that was hard to come by during Covid. And after, I stopped being a freelance consultant.
Synthetic natural gas has all the same problems as green hydrogen, with the added challenge of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. It's only been cheaply produced using byproduct CO2 from industrial processes. Which isn't actually carbon-neutral, it's just using CO2 that would have been released into the atmosphere anyway.
https://www.valves-community.com/en/cryogenic-air-gases/synt...
But honestly, why am I doing your internet searches for you? And why don't you know any of this already?
But unfortunately this method does not scale. The amount of fuel produced would be limited by the amount of carbon sequestered by plants. You'd be cutting down forests faster than they replenish if you tried to fuel cargo ships with this method.
> And why don't you know any of this already?
I do, and unlike you I understand how existing power to gas prototypes are using biomass or industrial byproduct CO2 rather than direct atmospheric sequesteration. This is sidestepping the most challenging part of producing synthetic hydrocarbons on a large scale.
Prometheus Fuels are the main player in attempting to solve direct atmospheric sequesteration of carbon dioxide. But they've still not delivered on that objective.
See how this game can be olqyed in both directions? Difference being, all the real money, and industry, is going for green fuels and not nuclear power when it comes to ships. I tend to believe those people.
Again, how many ships have been powered by green fuels? How many have been powered nuclear reactors? One of those is infinitely larger than the other. One of these technologies has over half a century of real world usage.
Comparing white papers about synthetic fuels with the cost history of actual nuclear powered ships that were built and operated for a decade or longer is comparing apples to oranges.
We do have technology so to produce green fuel for ships, and the whole shipping industry, from carriers to builders, is pursuing that in their goal of carbon neutral in 2050.
Of course there is still the possibility of those people being oart of a grand anti-nuclear conspiracy. Or they analyzed the tech and costs and came to an informed solution, one that is now global policy. You pick.
You realize there's a nuclear powered cargo ship in operation right now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
This technology not only exists, it's being used presently. And that's on top of the other three nuclear cargo ships that were previously built. We still have those proven designs.
> We do have technology so to produce green fuel for ships, and the whole shipping industry,
We do not. Existing synthetic gas plants are not capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. They are either using biomass or industrial byproduct CO2. The former of which does not scale, the latter is not truly carbon free it's just using carbon that would have been released into the atmosphere anyway. Neither is a pathway to producing green fuels at scale. Startups are pursuing atmospheric carbon sequestration, but it's proven elusive so far.
Again, those other cargo ships, NS Savannah, Otto Hahn and the Japanese one, were all economical failures, the Japanese one was even a technological failure. That makes a grand total of around 7 civilian maritime NPPs in operation, all Russian, with less than one built per year. Global shipping needs hundreds of those, at cost point competitive with alternatives to be viable. That tech, or capacity to build those numbers, simply doesn't exist. heck, that is even mentioned as a direct quote in the Reuters article that is being paraded around.
Again, if you're going to say that civilian nuclear maritime propulsion doesn't exist, because there have only been 7 such ships built by four different countries then green fuels powered cargo ships don't exist either. Again, how many cargo ships have been powered by green fuels? How many have operated for more than a decade?
A couple of questions, answer those or just, pardon my French, shut up:
How do you think all those hundreds of nuclear ship reactors will be built yearly?
Have you heard of NOx catalysts?
Are you aware of the possibility to generate hydrogen through electrolysis?
Hoe do you square the fact that litterally nobody in the shipping industries is making the case for nuclrar powered cargo vessels?
Literally nobody, huh? https://maritime-executive.com/article/abs-completes-groundb...
Any "brilliant" thoughts on zhe other questions? Or the fact that your articke ends with pointing out nuclear propulsion was considered promising in the 50s and was a dead end ultimately?
If you want to play the game of digging up studies that didn't go anywhere, I need some time so. Just from top of my head:
flying wing passanger aircraft, that was something! Even Airbus launched studies into it, and man was it promising!
Plenty of "normal" ships are already hybrid electric like trains, so swapping out the diesel generator isn't particularly a science project and doesn't affect the already electric propellors.
You mostly need a financial incentive to burn clean methanol, ammonia or whatever. That's the hard part.
https://www.marinelink.com/news/maersks-first-teu-methanolfu...
And all the ships they've ordered since 2021 can run on methanol:
https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/12/07/maersk-to-de...
There are several green gas projects under way - capital plants take time - eg. the Gibson Island project won't be online and producing until 2026.
Prometheus Fuels is the main player trying to do direct atmospheric sequesteration. But they've not succeeded yet.
Andrew Forrest [1] has laid out plans to dramatically increase global green hydrogen production on the back of western australia's mining of close to a billion tonnes of iron ore per year (ie. experience of industry at large scale).
https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...
The aim is to do whatever required to directly fuel existing mining truck fleets and bulk carriers.
https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-systems-integratio...
We do not need an alternative to the Haber process, the idea is to use electrolysis to produce hydrogen from sea water. There is room for improvement in the process but the technology is old and well understood.
There are other ways to store hydrogen, and it's far from certain ammonia will win out in the marketplace, but there are no serious alternatives to hydrogen as an energy carrier in the long term for this application. Everything else is just impractical and even more expensive.
Just like flight fuel, it has seen little change because it is quite heavily subsidized in its current form. The day we collectively stop and start taxing it like other fuels, the market will change overnight.
Also something I learned recently is that the idea that biofuels are a no go because they compete with food is a simplistic deflection. Looking at Brazil as an example the biofuel crops like sugarcane and groundnuts are grown in marginal land in the south that wasn't being used for agriculture. The main driver of Amazonian deforestation is cattle ranching.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi...
>> In the short term, advanced biofuels will play a key role in the reduction of CO2 emissions. In the medium and long-term, green hydrogen-based fuels are set to be the backbone for the sector’s decarbonisation.
Hydrogen is currently produced via steam reformation [1], which emits carbon dioxide. Electrolysis is less efficient and corrosion of electrodes inhibits scale.
Nuclear maritime propulsion is far more mature than any of the alternatives. Submarines and warships have been using it for over half a century. Could a technological breakthrough create a better alternative? Maybe, but we can't move ships with potential technologies until said technologies make the transition from "potential" to "real".
And for what it's worth, some shipbuilders are exploring nuclear cargo ships: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/maritime-industry-exp...
There is no industrial base dor this at the moment. And then there is the IRENA commission, tasked with developing a strategy to decarbonize shipping, and they went with green fuel instead of nuclear. And that commission included ship builders, operators and other domain experts.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Renewable_Energy...
https://cms.globalmaritimeforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/...
-> page 9 refernces the hydrogen and amonium based fuels
That was developed in the frame of this:
https://unctad.org/news/transport-newsletter-article-no-108-...
The IRENA page provided said information in an easier to digest form so.
The only source talking about nuclear reactors for civilian shipping was that Reuters article. Personally, I'd take exhaustive reports and internationally accepted strategies above some statement made towards Reuters.
But heavy oil is much cheaper and will be used forever untill gasoline/diesel cars/trucks will pass away.
Anhydrous ammonia will be produced at massive scale in tropical synthesis facilities for delivery worldwide. This is why long-term storage is not considered important.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212A_submarine
The reason why those systems aren't deployed to civilian surface ships is easy: cost.
That submarine also does not use batteries for energy storage, it uses hydrogen gas (almost certainly produced via steam reformation).
But no, 2,800 km isn't short. Not feasible for commercial ise, sure, but then no submarine technology is commercially feasible. It is too specialized.
Hence, green fuel as the preferred, and most realistic, option to decarbonize shipping.
> ...no submarine technology is commercially feasible. It is too specialized.
Except that's demonstrably false. Many (most?) subs use nuclear propulsion, and there are civilian ships that use nuclear propulsion. The NS Savannah was operated successfully for a decade [1], and several Russian ice breakers for even longer than that.
The fact that organization with the explicit goal of lobbying for renewables [2] prefers green fuel does not make it the optimal choice. It's the optimal choice to advance that group's goal of promoting green fuel, because nuclear power at scale is a competition risk for wind and solar
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Renewable_Energy...
All in all, besides the niche need of the Russians for nuclear powered icebreakers, there were three civilian nuclear ships: NS Savannah (economical failure), Otto Hahn (likewise and retrofitted with a diesel engine) and the Japanese one (forgot the name, but that was both a technological and economical disaster).
And that is ignoring the fact that naval nuclear reactors are among the most well guarded secrets a nation has, none of that tech will ever see civilian use for that alone (the current generation thaz is, the reactors used in the three vessels mentioned showed already to be unfeasible for commercial use).
Edit: Nuclear power is nowhere near to be a risk for wind and solar, wind alone adds multiple NPPs worth of capacity to the grid every month while the added net nuclear capacity is basically negligible for decades now. Nuclear is not, and won't be, built at scale in the next decades. Only potential exceptions are India (good, otherwise they would build coal plants) and China (purely political, and at the same time Chine is building even solar and wind power than nuclear).
Even just one example is an infinitely larger fleet of nuclear powered cargo ships than green-fuel powered cargo ships.
Nuclear maritime propulsion isn't exactly a mystery. The basic operating principle of both pressurized water reactors and lead cooled reactors are known. All of the West's main geopolitical rivals (Russia, China) already have nuclear powered submarines - I'm not sure how you think technology for nuclear powered cargo ships are going tip the balance militarily.
This means, new reactor tech needs to be developed from basically scratch. And no, the mere handful of Russian icebreakers, and that one cargo ship which is half an icebreaker, don't count. Not if we talk about thousand of commercial vessels in operation.
One last question: Do you think we are faster to develop and build the tech and infrastructure for green fuels (which are needed everywhere from ships to planes) or to develop and build the industrial base to produce hundreds of small scale maritime nuclear reactors (for we don't even have the reactor tech yet)?
Nuclear maritime propulsion is demonstrably closer to production than synthetic fuels. The former has been used in hundreds of warships and four cargo ships over the span of half a century. The latter is currently only produced using concentrated CO2 from biomass or other industrial byproducts (which is not something available at scale), and are not used for maritime propulsion.
a) military nuclear technology will never see civilian use, claiming otherwise is beyond naive and ignorant
b) civilian nuclear powered vessels have been tried and deemed uneconomical (no, one specialized cargo ship requiring the power from a nuclear reactor to break through 1.5 m of ice doesn't count...)
- so far a grand total of 600 maritime reactors (see point one for the military part) in history have been built globally, 400 or so of which are still in operation, in order to decarbonize global shipping that is close to the number of reactors needed yearly, and not even the military providers have the capacity to build that many (e.g. the Russians built, what, six of those since 2014!)
You keep hand-waving all of that away...
By comparison, how many green fuel powered cargo ships have been in operation for over a decade? If hundreds of nuclear powered vessels operated for over half a century is too immature, then green fuel powered ships are even less mature that nuclear maritime propulsion.
Again, how many ships have been operated with green fuel? There are LNG powered ships, but none using LMG produced in a carbon free manner. As stated above, producing artificial hydrocarbons remains out of our capabilities. Existing power to gas prototypes are really just converting biomass to methane and that method is limited by biomass availability . There are smaller prototypes for hydrogen powered ships, but nowhere near the size of the NS Savannah and they haven't been operated for nearly as long. And I can find no examples of an ammonia powered ship.
Again, how many examples of green fuel powered cargo ships in commercial operation can you give? Not fossil fuel powered ships that can theoretically run off green fuel if we hand wave away the challenge of producing artificial methane. But ships actually using green fuel in the same vein that the NS Savannah actually used civilian nuclear maritime propulsion?
I get it, you area NS Savannah and nuclear fanboy, reality so simply doesn't agree with you, nor do the relevant industries.
Meanwhile, we already have decades of operational experience with civilian nuclear maritime propulsion. It's objectively more mature technology than green fuel.
And for the record, I do indeed know hydrogen powered combustion engines work. Perhaps you're unaware that by virtue of hydrogen's much hotter combustion temperatures, it's hard to avoid producing nitrogen oxides (a greenhouse gas) as a byproduct in hydrogen combustion engines [1]. Hydrogen fuel cells are an alternative, but those have less power to volume ratios and have never been deployed at the scales required for nuclear maritime propulsion. Not only that, containing and plumbing all this liquid hydrogen is a challenge, too. There's more complexity than you think to make a hydrogen engine that doesn't emit greenhouse gases.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion...
We also have more experience using biogas to be burned in combustion engines and turbines of any sort, as we do creating said biogas.
We also way more experience in creating sythetic fuels, and using electrolysis to create hydrogen out of sea water (green hydrogen).
Those are all solved problems, and thisbis not my opinion, as opossed to you, but facts confirmed by the very industries involved in ship building and shipping.
Really pointless to discuss with ignorant tech illiterates like you.
And again, how many of those are using hydrogen, ammonia, or synthetic methane?
> We also way more experience in creating sythetic fuels, and using electrolysis to create hydrogen out of sea water (green hydrogen).
Absolutely not. Almost all synthetic fuels is using biomass as an input, which does not scale. And only tiny, tiny fraction of hydrogen is produced in a carbon neutral manner. Less than 0.05%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen
Again, if these are solved problem, show me the fleet of ships powered by hydrogen, ammonia, or synthetic methane.
Nuclear technology: if it isn't exactly the same thing we need, no matter how close, it doesn't exist.
Hydrogen etc.: we have a rough analogy and no real way of getting from there to here, therefore it is proven technology.