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So what other ships are ran on nuclear power? I can only think of military vessels who have basically unlimited budget, personnel and oversight and tons and ton
by r0ckarong 3y ago
So what other ships are ran on nuclear power? I can only think of military vessels who have basically unlimited budget, personnel and oversight and tons and tons of extrinsic factors to not want to have a failure.
How would you translate this to one of the most competitive, cost cutting industries with a notorious history of accidents and poor labor conditions?
- zrail 3y agoCompletely sealed power plant packs. Refueling requires swapping the entire power plant and sending it back to the manufacturer for recycling.
- r0ckarong 3y agoDoesn't cover lost or abandoned vessels. Who pays for the recovery when one of these sink? The insolvent carrier company? Who is accountable if the maintenance isn't done properly and one of these has some sort of serious malfunction that releases radiation? So many scenarios that are covered by government in a military scenario that can be circumvented in a billion ways in the private sector. The amount of legislation it would need to make this somewhat isotope tight is unfathomable and there would be a lot more money behind poking holes in it than to make it truly safe.
- moffkalast 3y agoSubmarines, aircraft carriers, some cruisers, icebreakers, and the one cargo ship Sevmorput. Safety's probably not as much of a prohibitive factor as raw cost.
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoAll designed for the least price sensitive customers globally. Nuclear powers' navies.
- moffkalast 3y agoPlus they conveniently already have a nuclear programme to source fuel and engineers from.
- pfdietz 3y agoAnd even in those navies, most ships are not nuclear.
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoYep. Even all aircraft carriers outside the US and France are conventionally fueled. For example the British: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth-class_aircraft_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth-class_aircraft... Or even within US navy the the WASP class capable of supporting F-35Bs. Not a true carrier but most nations would call it one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assault_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assault_... The niche nuclear truly stands out in is for submarines where nuclear propulsion has unmatchable capabilities.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sillywalk 3y agoThe Russians have had nuclear powered icebreakers since the late 1950s.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
- immibis 3y agoThe Russians have also left broken nuclear reactors at the bottom of the sea, because they don't care about the environment very much.
- tticvs 3y agoOr: they have correctly identified that environmental harms from a small amount of fissile material in the ocean are so negligible it rounds to zero. Compared to the very real harms caused by oil leaking from existing cargo ships this would be a massive upgrade.
- aaronblohowiak 3y agothat's less of a problem than air pollution or global warming.
- electricships 3y agoyeah nuclear cargo ships seem fancyful if there are angel investors here for solving deep sea clean shipping, please email me pros: global moat, commodity components, price parity at $80/barrel , massive upside cons: very early, capex heavy, long timelines