4 ms·

Ignoring all the safety and security concerns nuclear cargo ships would have, I can't imagine it being very economical.

XorNot 4y ago
Security is not much of a concern. An attempt to seize the ship means you can failsafe the reactor and drop it to the bottom of the ocean. Pirates and lesser nation-states won't have the resources to recover it.
- manfre 4y ago
  Then there would be a nuclear reactor sitting on the ocean floor for some unknown amount of time.
  - mwint 4y ago
    But in the scheme of things, that’s fine. There are several nuclear subs and munitions at the bottom and there aren’t reports of terrible radiological effects.
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      The lack of reports means very little.
      - mwint 4y ago
        Nah, we all know that there are dozens of entities out there who would _love_ to publish the "Sunk US sub causing elevated radiation levels!" article. The incentive is high. So the absence of the report does mean something.
        goodpoint 4y ago
        ...and how are they going to collect evidence?
        imtringued 4y ago
        Literally nobody cares.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Denial of service attacks on ocean shipping are a lot easier if every ship dumps the engine at the first sign of trouble.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Unless you're actually boarded, why would you drop the reactor? The point is that a hypothetical commercial shipping reactor would have to be a self-contained, intrinsically safe design with no user-servicing - this is the sort of design pebble-bed reactors the general modular reactor concept points towards. The idea is that the reactor is mounted at the bottom of the hull, basically only provides electricity out as a "black box". It's not reachable by the crew from inside the ship, and gets a set of failsafe charges which cut it loose from the ship if it becomes unhappy about it's situation - i.e. if its GPS signal is cut for too long, if it strays from it's geofence boundary, or if someone tries to breach it's location in the ship. Even if you paid off the crew, they don't have control over the powerplant. Fairly obviously you wouldn't want to leave a reactor on the seafloor, but if it drops itself then like a blackbox it triggers a sonar beacon and whoever commissioned it (presumably a well-regulated US firm) would respond to collect it.
- nradov 4y ago
  You've got to be kidding. Low paid commercial crews are subject to bribery, and often don't even keep a close watch for security threats. Plus no nation state will allow a nuclear powered merchant vessel into port if there's a risk of a damaged reactor getting dumped into their waters. It's just totally unrealistic, the kind of thing that only a programmer with zero time on the water would propose.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
  - ourmandave 4y ago
    But the web based interface would be beautiful and the [Jettison Core?] button fully A/B tested.
thelastgallon 4y ago
There are 100+ nuclear submarines. Who know where they are? What safety precautions do they follow? Which country's jurisdiction? The right metric is deaths/TWH. Nuclear is the safest by a wide margin, 1000x safer than coal. [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- MobiusHorizons 4y ago
  This is true on average, but of the available nuclear technologies, reactors used on ships and subs have the highest enriched uranium (making them inherently more dangerous just as a target of non nuclear nations). I believe they are also responsible for a large number of accidents, although when those occur, the affected personnel are usually limited to the crew.
- klyrs 4y ago
  They're run exclusively by militaries, which have notoriously liberal budgets and conservative operational safety. Shipping merchants reverse both tendencies. Nuclear isn't safe by its nature, nuclear is safe in the right hands and horribly catastrophic otherwise.
- adrianN 4y ago
  It's a big difference whether the boat the reactor is on has guns and is run by a military or whether it's a random private enterprise without guns. You don't want enriched uranium like it's used in nuclear submarines to fall into the wrong hands.
  - sneak 4y ago
    The kind of fissile stuff being proposed for most forward-deployed reactor designs is not useful for weapons. The biggest danger is blowing up the reactor itself, causing it to be a type of dirty-but-conventional bomb, a non-nuclear (fission/fusion) blast.
    - hnaccount_rng 4y ago

Security is not much of a concern. An attempt to seize the ship means you can failsafe the reactor and drop it to the bottom of the ocean. Pirates and lesser nation-states won't have the resources to recover it.

manfre 4y ago
Then there would be a nuclear reactor sitting on the ocean floor for some unknown amount of time.
- mwint 4y ago
  But in the scheme of things, that’s fine. There are several nuclear subs and munitions at the bottom and there aren’t reports of terrible radiological effects.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    The lack of reports means very little.
    - mwint 4y ago
      Nah, we all know that there are dozens of entities out there who would _love_ to publish the "Sunk US sub causing elevated radiation levels!" article. The incentive is high. So the absence of the report does mean something.
      - goodpoint 4y ago
        ...and how are they going to collect evidence?
      - imtringued 4y ago
        Literally nobody cares.
adrianN 4y ago
Denial of service attacks on ocean shipping are a lot easier if every ship dumps the engine at the first sign of trouble.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Unless you're actually boarded, why would you drop the reactor? The point is that a hypothetical commercial shipping reactor would have to be a self-contained, intrinsically safe design with no user-servicing - this is the sort of design pebble-bed reactors the general modular reactor concept points towards. The idea is that the reactor is mounted at the bottom of the hull, basically only provides electricity out as a "black box". It's not reachable by the crew from inside the ship, and gets a set of failsafe charges which cut it loose from the ship if it becomes unhappy about it's situation - i.e. if its GPS signal is cut for too long, if it strays from it's geofence boundary, or if someone tries to breach it's location in the ship. Even if you paid off the crew, they don't have control over the powerplant. Fairly obviously you wouldn't want to leave a reactor on the seafloor, but if it drops itself then like a blackbox it triggers a sonar beacon and whoever commissioned it (presumably a well-regulated US firm) would respond to collect it.
nradov 4y ago
You've got to be kidding. Low paid commercial crews are subject to bribery, and often don't even keep a close watch for security threats. Plus no nation state will allow a nuclear powered merchant vessel into port if there's a risk of a damaged reactor getting dumped into their waters. It's just totally unrealistic, the kind of thing that only a programmer with zero time on the water would propose.
- goodpoint 4y ago
- ourmandave 4y ago
  But the web based interface would be beautiful and the [Jettison Core?] button fully A/B tested.

thelastgallon 4y ago

There are 100+ nuclear submarines. Who know where they are? What safety precautions do they follow? Which country's jurisdiction? The right metric is deaths/TWH. Nuclear is the safest by a wide margin, 1000x safer than coal. [1] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

MobiusHorizons 4y ago
This is true on average, but of the available nuclear technologies, reactors used on ships and subs have the highest enriched uranium (making them inherently more dangerous just as a target of non nuclear nations). I believe they are also responsible for a large number of accidents, although when those occur, the affected personnel are usually limited to the crew.
klyrs 4y ago
They're run exclusively by militaries, which have notoriously liberal budgets and conservative operational safety. Shipping merchants reverse both tendencies. Nuclear isn't safe by its nature, nuclear is safe in the right hands and horribly catastrophic otherwise.
adrianN 4y ago
It's a big difference whether the boat the reactor is on has guns and is run by a military or whether it's a random private enterprise without guns. You don't want enriched uranium like it's used in nuclear submarines to fall into the wrong hands.
- sneak 4y ago
  The kind of fissile stuff being proposed for most forward-deployed reactor designs is not useful for weapons. The biggest danger is blowing up the reactor itself, causing it to be a type of dirty-but-conventional bomb, a non-nuclear (fission/fusion) blast.
  - hnaccount_rng 4y ago