I’ll eat my hat if cargo ships go nuclear. Even the US Navy stopped using nuclear for all but carriers. Shipboard nuclear is on another level to regular power plants for many reasons.
Cargo generally isnt a target in the same way
Now ask yourself this: do I want vessels flagged in the countries with the least regulations and the most corruption to be run by a for profit maritime shipping company that skimps on maintenance budgets and crew costs to be running nuclear reactors with highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) anywhere they want around the world, even through pirate territory?
Fuck No I don’t. I barely trust the nukes running them in the USN!
Even putting aside exceptional situations like with the Houthis, we tend to get one or two highly public ship accidents per year. It would not be nice to have an incident like that involving a nuke ship every few years.
I feel like the solution for decarbonizing shipping would be carbon capture. Have the ships store the combustion products rather than exhaust them out, then reprocess them back into fuel on land using some other energy source (say, nuclear).
if it worked out, it would at least be relatively easy since pretty much all our infrastructure is designed around hydrocarbons.
Would you like some ketchup or ranch sauce?