Interesting topic but what a terribly written article. Did they just ask ChatGPT a few questions and paste together random chunks of the answers? It keeps suggesting there are downsides, but never even names one.
Presumably the main concern would be fallout from the reactor if the ship sinks. Kind of hard to think of any other real problems.
The older generations kept leaking contaminated water (reactor coolant), many harbors simply refused entry because they didn’t know the risks involved, and I’m pretty sure the decommissioning isn’t clear either. The way current laws are set up, it’s quite possible that these things go through a few hands and end up on a beach in some underdeveloped country and get dismantled like any other ship under horrible working conditions - but now with the added benefit of nuclear contamination.
There definitely would have to be solid decommissioning and waste disposal procedures.
AFAIK a sunken reactor is not as big of a threat to life as a one (marine or land-based) that releases nuclear material in the atmosphere, so the biggest issue should be what may happen before the reactor sinks.
Anyway IMHO the biggest issue with nuclear is not its safety, but rather that, even when it operates without the slightest of incidents, it produces waste that needs to be kept “safe” for periods of time that exceed the age of most nation states (let alone private companies).
It’s true waste can be a problem. Incidentally, that’s one reason why thorium is a far better fuel since the waste is only dangerous for around 500 years compared to thousands of years for uranium.
only dangerous for around 500 years
That “only” is just ridiculous :)
Just try to imagine the history of a nuclear waste storage site from the 1500s… how many budget cuts would have it seen? how much buck-passing when it changed hands as a result of war of revolution? how many times would it have been bombed? (and it’s not like we’ve had bombing for a very long time).
We are just not responsible enough to play around with nuclear. Hell, we are showing we are even not responsible enough for hydrocarbons.
(yes, I do know some amount of nuclear waste, from medical applications etc., is definitely worth it and unavoidable - let’s just keep it to a minimum)
These advanced reactors are safe, efficient and ‘leaner’ than the first and second generations of nuclear power technology. Of course, you already know that this source is neither renewable nor clean, which is not a good idea, according to what we think.
These authors don’t sound like they have a very good grasp of the tech they’re “reviewing”…
This is a trash article.
Here’s the Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/maersk-agrees-study-nuclear-powered-container-shipping-2024-08-15/
It makes it clear that Maersk has joined a study being lead by Lloyds Register and Core Power to assess the potential of using 4th generation nuclear reactors on cargo ships.
A couple of demonstration nuclear powered commercial ships have been built in the past (by the US, Japan, & Germany), but they’ve all been too expensive to operate commercially and have all been retired or converted to diesel, mostly due to being too complicated to maintain and repair, and too specialized to benefit from any economies of scale.
The US Navy and France both currently operate nuclear powered aircraft carriers, the US, UK, Russia, France, India, and China all operate nuclear powered submarines, and Russia has a bunch of different nuclear powered military ships and icebreakers so it’s not a radical concept, and I have no idea where the linked article is getting the “only 4 have ever been built” claim.
Lloyds Register has also been running these studies for years, the only real interesting tidbit here is that Maersk is interested and they’re big enough to move the needle singlehandedly, but again they’re just signing up to participate in an early high level assessment of the idea, the assessment could just say ‘nah, not worth it’ and this is just a non story.
Jesus. Just use sails ffs.
Oh fuck no. What happens when a nucelar powered cargo ship does business with a country committing a genocide, and then the allies of the oppressed shoot it down for their war crime profiteering?
