The Road to a Carbon-Free Future: Nuclear Powered Merchant Ships

Unlike conventional ships that rely on fossil fuels able to run for a long time without refueling Nuclear powered merchant ships have the potential to reduce operating costs and increase efficiency. Given today’s climate change and global warming, and in decarbonization These ships can save our world, given that they will play an important role.

As a matter of fact, this is not something that was not thought of or done. The USA, Japan, Germany and Russia have tried this in the past. However, this technology, which also faces many technical, economic and regulatory challenges, has unfortunately been interrupted. Nevertheless Promising work on this topic at the moment executing. Let’s first dive into the history of the use of nuclear power in cargo ships, then let’s take a look at what kind of work is being done right now.

Nuclear powered commercial ships date back to the 1950s.

The first nuclear-powered commercial ship was launched in the late 1950s. At a cost of $46.9 million It was the “NS Savannah” that was built and launched in 1959. It was a demonstration project funded by US government agencies that aimed to showcase the potential use of nuclear propulsion in transporting cargo and passengers. The ship’s name derives from the SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

NS Savannah had a single 74 MW Babcock & Wilcox nuclear reactor powering two steam turbines and a single propeller, had a maximum speed of 21 knots and had a range of 300,000 nautical miles on a single fuel load. The ship, which has a capacity of 60 passengers and 14,040 tons of cargo, served between 1962 and 1972, visited 45 ports in 20 countries and from 450,000 nautical miles more he had traveled.

N. S. Savannah, left to the sea from nuclear waste, from the inability to control radioactivity And due to high maintenance costs It was deactivated in 1971. It is currently on display as a museum in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

NS Savannah was not the only example, after which three different countries ventured into the nuclear-powered cargo ship business.

Nuclear powered commercial vessels outside of Savannah; “Otto Hahn“(Germany), “mutsu“(Japan) And “Sevmorput“(Russia) was. Otto Hahn was launched in 1968 and carried ore and oil between Europe, South America and Africa until 1979. It was converted to a fossil fuel system in 1980 and was scrapped in 2009.

Mutsu was launched in 1974 and operated mostly for research purposes until 1992. Decommissioned in 1995, the ship was rebuilt in 1997. to a conventional powered research vessel converted. Launched in 1988 Sevmorput, the only nuclear-powered cargo ship still active. The ship operates as an icebreaker cargo ship for the Russian Arctic region.

development of nuclear merchant ships; To date, it has faced many challenges, including high construction and operating costs, safety and security concerns, public opposition, environmental issues and regulatory hurdles. It could be used much more successfully for warships, especially submarines and aircraft carriers, where the advantages of nuclear propulsion, long endurance and high speed outweigh the costs and risks.

But the use of nuclear power on commercial ships is making a comeback.

Some shipping companies and researchers are particularly focused on the decarbonisation of the shipping industry. In light of the increasing pressures, is trying to reinvigorate the idea of ​​nuclear-powered merchant ships.

For example, a consortium of European companies called SMR-Sea can be installed on existing or newly built ships. a modular small nuclear reactor They are developing a concept for Another project carried out by a Finnish company called Fennovoima is to icebreakers and other Arctic ships explores the feasibility of using small modular reactors to provide power.

These projects are using smaller, safer and more cost-effective reactors. difficulties experienced by previous nuclear powered merchant ships they aim to surpass.

Inside of HMM Various maritime enterprises and other organizations of South Korean origin, including one of the most, signed a cooperation agreement in February. Within the scope of cooperation working with small modular nuclear reactors a merchant ship It is wanted to create, but they have not made a comment as they are at the very beginning of the work.

NuProShip (Nuclear Propulsion of Merchant Ships) started in Norway. According to project manager Jan Emblemsvg of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the group behind this initiative has compiled a shortlist of six potential reactor designs that could function on a group of merchant ships and His progress was pretty good too.. In fact, Norway has a goal of running the natural gas tanker Cadiz Knutsen on nuclear power.

These last two groups that we talked about are for nuclear energy. molten salt reactors they plan to use.

In fact, this type of fuel use since the 1960s effectively eliminates reactor meltdowns because fuel already melted and is ready to evacuate to stop a potential leak.

The problem with solid nuclear fuel is that when reactions get out of control, meltdowns can occur, causing the fuel to overheat and melt and risk breaching the reactor enclosure. Although it has been used since the 1960s, the reason why it is still not widespread and not used very actively is that corrosion inside reactors technical difficulties.

Even if these problems of the reactors are solved, adapting them to commercial cargo ships is also a problem.

A few nuclear power experts believe that large container ships for only 20 years He talks about being active. This means that the nuclear reactors placed inside the ships at such a cost are dismantled again, spending as much resources.

However, this is not unsolvable. Brazilian Nuclear and Energy Research at his institute Researchers Ondir Freire and Delvonei Alves de Andale believe that while developing new reactors for large cargo ships has a high initial cost, switching from fossil fuels to nuclear power will be cost-effective in the long run. For this, they think, small reactors can be developed that can be removed from one ship and installed on another ship or some other type of facility.

There is also a legal dimension to this business, of course, from any accident on a nuclear powered ship. who will be held responsible very important point. A separate regulation should be prepared and legal rules should be determined just for this area: Will the owner, operator, nuclear reactor manufacturer or the flag state, which is the country of registration of the ship, be responsible?

We have been explaining that nuclear reactors will be the energy source in general use in the world in the future and that companies are doing research in this direction. However, this won’t happen anytime soon. For example, the earliest screening date set for the first nuclear reactor ship of the NuProShip project, which is one of the examples we gave, year 2035.

See the butterfly effect that SS Savannah initiated?

The Savannah, which was built in the USA in 1818 and was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, was scrapped due to its limited cargo capacity. became the ancestor of steamships. For the next few decades, steamships dominated the seas.

We said that NS Savannah was also named after this ship. Therefore, although it suffered a setback in the 1950s, this ship is still alive today and in the near future. a pioneer for building nuclear-powered ships appears in…