9 ms·

The ship that failed to change the world

144 points by darrhiggs 12y ago

barrkel 12y ago
Cleanup after an accident isn't exactly cheap. I was surprised to read that the cost of the Costa Concordia cleanup - involving a refloat - is over $1.5 billion, not including disposal. That's for a conventional cruise liner, not nuclear. That ship only cost $570 million new.
krschultz 12y ago
Even the US Navy is backing away from nuclear power. They only build nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. They used to build nuclear powered cruisers. It is more expensive to build, to maintain, to break down at the end, and to train the many crews that will serve over the ship's lifetime. Only when you absolutely need a nuclear reactor does it make sense to absorb that expense.
- TomGullen 12y ago
  Worst case scenario, what could happen if the nuclear reactor failed or was damaged in some way? I see the benefits, but attaching them en-masse to various classes of warships seems like a recipe for disaster if war does actually break out.
  - cobrausn 12y ago
    The bottom of the ocean is generally a very good 'containment system'. That's not to say there won't be environmental damage, but we do have some examples to go off of to indicate how much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarin...
    - mpyne 12y ago
      Not to mention all the sunken Soviet/Russian submarines (most of which have two nuclear reactors instead of one).
      - gabriel34 12y ago
        None of these examples were worst case scenario. How well does the ocean absorbs the ionizing radiation from a meltdown or some other extreme event? Would part of the ocean's water become radioactive and spread through currents? Are the oceans so voluminous that the effect would be only a minor increase in radiation levels?
        dalke 12y ago
        The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster gives a good approximation of what that would look like. "Pretty well", "yes, but well below what's considered safe limits", "yes, detectable but minor."
        mpyne 12y ago
        Well the mantle of the Earth (including its radioactive components that power plate tectonics) is literally pouring forth into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean (in the valleys of the mid-Atlantic Ridge) and that seems to have not caused noticeable calamities... which is because yes, the ocean really is that voluminous. As it turns out the ocean is also really good at both shielding radiation (water is what the nuclear experts use in large amounts, after all) and diluting radioactive contaminants, if it came to that, until the radionuclides themselves decay away and become stable. Additionally it's not as if radioactivity is infectious or permanent. If something is radioactive here and I move it over there, it can't be radioactive in both places, which is why dilution is so effective.
        stefantalpalaru 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation
        12y ago
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    In a war where significant numbers of aircraft carriers are being blown up the environmental damage from this is probably among the least of our concerns.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
  That makes no sense-a nuclear powered carrier that doesn't require underway replenishment, would be much more capable if its escorts also didn't require conventional oil fueling. If the US had continued to build nuclear powered surface ships through the end of the cold war, then it probably wouldn't be so expensive-economies of scale, plus you'd still have the infrastructure and training pipeline there.
  - 30thElement 12y ago
    Carrier attack groups have a refueling ship along with all the cruisers/attack ships. It probably makes sense, just going by the size differences the carrier would use more conventional fuel than all of its escorts combined, so having the carrier be nuclear powered doubles your range.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    > That makes no sense-a nuclear powered carrier that doesn't require underway replenishment, would be much more capable if its escorts also didn't require conventional oil fueling. The battle group still needs underway replenishment for food, ammunition, avgas, maintenance materials, and all the other various and sundry items required to keep ships functioning. Fuel isn't that big a deal when combined with all of these other items. Also, nuclear reactors were replaced with gas turbines in surface ships. Nuclear is attractive versus the older oil-fired boilers. Large gas turbines changed the calculus. The steaming range of cruisers and destroyers with gas turbine power plants is excellent, hence the reason fuel is not a big deal to add to all the other stuff that needs to be provided for the battle group.
  - forgotketchup 12y ago
    Lack of qualified operators is real operational problem. Majoring in physics pretty much guaranteed you a NROTC scholarship, if you wanted one, back when I was in undergrad. Around a third of my cohort (and the ones graduating immediately before and after mine) were in NROTC, and every last one of them was earmarked for the nuclear program when they finished school. I'd speculate that the Navy simply doesn't have enough personnel to put a nuclear drive-train on every cruiser, much less the entire fleet. Edit: grammar Edit2: Also, keep in mind that aircraft don't run on uranium. A carrier group needs tanker replenishment anyway, so switching to nuclear ship propulsion doesn't save you from needing to worry about the logistics of transporting large volumes of flammable liquid to the group.
- stox 12y ago
  The reason the Navy has moved away from Nuclear for cruisers is that nukes do not like their load to be highly variable. Cruisers, by their very nature want to throttle up and down very quickly. Carriers and subs, on the other hand, transition from full throttle to idle very infrequently.
linohh 12y ago
There are still some nuclear powered ice breakers in operation. The last one was finished in 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
- dalke 12y ago
  The idea was to also have nuclear powered merchant ships and passenger ships. As the article comments: > Unlike the commercial shipping industry, the military did embrace nuclear. Of the estimated 700 nuclear-powered vessels which have seen service over the years, including the 200 currently at sea, the majority are military ships and submarines. Dedicated Russian ice-breaking ships are the only civilian examples.
realrocker 12y ago
Unless human race invents better non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the Nuclear age won't arrive.
- dm2 12y ago
  They've been invented, but we're not giving up our current nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun Thermobaric bombs are non-nuclear but do lots of damage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon These are big enough for most tasks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator http://theaviationist.com/2012/02/12/mop/ http://theaviationist.com/2012/02/12/mop/ Unrelated but cool if you like massive weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT5jo7aZzTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT5jo7aZzTw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    The railgun isn't quite a WMD though, is it?
    - dm2 12y ago
      It's debatable. Fire it at a ship/building and most of the people on that ship/building would die. I don't think many objects could survive being hit by a railgun, is that considered mass destruction? According to US law it would be considered a WMD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Criminal_.28civilian.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Crim... "any device or weapon designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury by causing a malfunction of or destruction of an aircraft or other vehicle that carries humans or of an aircraft or other vehicle whose malfunction or destruction may cause said aircraft or other vehicle to cause death or serious bodily injury to humans who may be within range of the vector in its course of travel or the travel of its debris." "Indictments and convictions for possession and use of WMD such as truck bombs, pipe bombs, shoe bombs, and cactus needles coated with a biological toxin have been obtained under 18 USC 2332a."
dbarlett 12y ago
Savannah will be open to the public on October 19 [1]. Well worth it if you're in the area. [1] http://portfestbaltimore.com/highlights/ http://portfestbaltimore.com/highlights/
- chiph 12y ago
  The NS Savannah was previously at Patriot's Point in Charleston SC, and I got to go through her. She hadn't been de-fueled so you couldn't go through the reactor spaces, but there was a window that you could look through and see it (Oooo! Atoms!) The polarized windows are interesting -- you rotate the inner half until at 90° they are dim. But it never got dim enough where you could sleep during the day in a cabin. It is a beautiful ship, and it's obvious from looking at it vs. a modern container ship why it wasn't a commercial success. But as a technology demonstrator, I think it was mostly successful.
  - pnut 12y ago
    In the late 80's, I snuck past the barricades and explored the engine room for over an hour. It was part of a boy scout excursion that had us camping on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, so we had after-hours access to the facilities. The catwalks were partially intact and it was a very dangerous, decayed industrial environment. Lots of negative space indicated that some large components had been removed.
  - vibrolax 12y ago
    The reactor was actually de-fueled long before that in 1975, but the reactor vessel has still not been removed and the associated parts await eventuall decontamination and decommissioning. As a 6 year old child of the Atomic Age, my parents took me to tour the Savannah at her Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale FL) stop in 1964. The view through a window at the nearly featureless grey reactor vessel was anticlimactic. The most memorable sight for me was the stainless steel bar/lounge for the passengers. It looked like it had never been used. When I was about 10 years old I built a plastic styrene model, which included a detailed reactor that I carefully painted in he assigned colors colors. All this detail disappeared forever into the grey containment vessel.
cstross 12y ago
One thing the article doesn't mention is that the Savannah was designed for an earlier age -- like the Bristol Brabazon, a large piston-powered airliner that arrived just in time for the jet age, the Savannah was a traditional break bulk cargo ship (with passenger quarters) that arrived just as the multimodal freight container revolutionized freight shipping (and the passengers who had formerly travelled by sea finally made the transition to cheap-enough jet travel). Savannah was called for by Eisenhower in 1953 but didn't enter service until 1962 -- just too late to be an attractive proposition. Multimodal container transport really caught fire between 1955 and 1970 and the Savannah couldn't be retrofitted as a container ship (nor would it have been efficient as one: its cargo capacity of 14,000 tons is tiny by modern container freight standards).
- FroshKiller 12y ago
  If the phrase "Multimodal container transport really caught fire between 1955 and 1970" ignites anyone's interest, you should check out a book called The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. It's a somewhat dry (by nature) but fascinating history of the topic.
  - Bulkington 12y ago
    The Box is more than a history of container transport and its world-changing impact. It's a real lesson for entrepreneurs: Visionary takes on tradition-bound oligopoly; regulators can't cope with radical concept; international standards committees are about settling past political grievances and settling for laughable compromises, rather than setting the best course future efficiencies. Highly recommend, as did Bill Gates, who ties it explicitly to developments in computing: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Box http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Box
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    Can't recommend this book highly enough. Among other details, HN readers will appreciate that the global continer system represents packet switching in its original form.
- 12y ago
dm2 12y ago
It would be nice to put them on new oil tankers, but then what would we do with all the excess bunker fuel? Can low quality fuel be used for anything else? Also it would be very bad if one was taken by pirates, much worse than any existing cargo or oil ship. Putting nuclear reactors on airplanes is just asking for trouble. Planes crash and it's very difficult to avoid, even a B2 has crashed and it's almost 100% computer controlled.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  You can "just" build out more of the right type of refinery capacity (assuming the economics work out right). I don't know much about it, but I'm pretty sure much of it can be cracked and that the desulphurization is more expensive than it is impossible.
  - dm2 12y ago
    This looks like a good explanation of what you are talking about: http://www.kittiwake.com/refinery_process http://www.kittiwake.com/refinery_process
- forgotketchup 12y ago
  The (historically) low price of bunker fuel led to the development of turbine locomotives for railroads[1]. The idea was that the low price made up for the inefficiency (in operational practice) of turbine engines. When the plastics industry figured out how to use bunker fuel, turbine locomotives became uneconomic to operate. I'd guess that nuclear cargo ships would simply lead to slightly cheaper plastic. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_GTELs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_GTELs
MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
Meanwhile, in Russia: http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-designs-nuclear-train http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-design...
coldcode 12y ago
One of the guys at my first job at General Dynamics in the 80's worked on the nuclear airplane. They all thought it was dumb idea at the time.
- Already__Taken 12y ago
  They all wanted to work on that type of reactor and the airplane was the last way to get the money.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    Let's spare a few moderated neutrons for Project Pluto: http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
ericcumbee 12y ago
seems like this would be the perfect use case for the SSTAR reactors that are being developed at Livermore Lab.
bane 12y ago
I've always been curious at the strange lack of foresight during the nuclear age of what to do with the waste. It's almost South Parkian: 1: Fuel a Ship with nuclear power 2: Collect Radioactive waste 3: ??? 4: Profit! As always, I wonder, what was the plan exactly? What did the engineers of yesteryear actually plan to do with the stuff?
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  I'm curious as to the actual plans as well, but I suspect the early engineers seriously underestimated how dangerous the waste materials were going to be. Of course, now I think we overestimate.
  - k__ 12y ago
    I guess, they just were lucky. The power nuclear fission got us was remarkable and when they started, the marked wasn't regulated, so the companies could make huge amounts of money. This money was free to pay lobbying. They just outperformed the law makers.
    - rsynnott 12y ago
      That's not really the way it was; the regulation was always quite tight, and the lack of nuclear development today (outside China and to an extent France) is due to deep public mistrust more than anything else, though changes in the economics of power generation favouring high cost per kWh but low capital cost due to liberalisation of the market are also a factor.
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    They knew very well how dangerous it was. However, you have to look at the timescale. The first nuclear power plants were built in the 50s. In 1952, 12,000 people died in London in a few days in the Great Smog. The Love Canal catastrophe, which ultimately caused mass birth defects and cancers, would not be revealed for another 20 years. The Bhopal Disaster, which killed 16,000 people and caused 558,000 injuries, happened in _1984_. Non-nuclear industrial disasters greater than any actual nuclear disaster which has ever occurred were a fact of life. For that matter, they still are, to a lesser extent; for all the worry about nuclear waste, power-plant waste has never killed anyone, excepting a small number (< 20) deaths at reprocessing plants, while conventional waste kills thousands every year.
georgecmu 12y ago
Just three other nuclear merchant ships were built - the German oil transporter Otto Hahn; Japan's freighter Mutsu; and the Russian ice-breaking container vessel Sevmorput. Like the Savannah, they are no longer in service. Umm, so the first nuclear ice-breaker was built by the Soviet Union in the 50s and was in service since 1959, 3 years before Savannah made its maiden voyage. Unlike Savannah, Lenin was in use for 30 years until it was decommissioned in 1989. Also in contrast to Savannah, its success led to 8 more Soviet nuclear ice-breakers built between 1975 and 1990. In fact, the most recent nuclear ice-breaker was built by Russia and entered service in 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
- sdm 12y ago
  Those nuclear ice-breakers are not merchant ships. Their primary purpose is not to carry containers or people.
  - nickpinkston 12y ago
    But the real point isn't to strictly define the benchmark, but more what it looks to elucidate: large scale nuclear ships and their outcomes. Russia (probably from not having to deal with protests as much as Western countries) made their nuclear ships and they perhaps proved to stand the test of time. (?)
    - Moto7451 12y ago
      Russia has had a history of making a lot of interesting Nuclear powered things. I present to you the Nuclear powered lighthouse: http://englishrussia.com/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-nuclear-lighthouses/ http://englishrussia.com/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-...
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    They exist mostly to facilitate merchant ships, though.
- rsynnott 12y ago
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I wonder if the TerraPower or other small scale nuclear startups are thinking about this as a market. It seems a traveling wave reactor would be a good candidate given its fuel usage profile.
rdl 12y ago
A nuclear-powered civilian ship could make sense today -- ironically, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) or bigger would be the most economical use -- at sea most of the time, on long trips, and huge.
- aninhumer 12y ago
  Also, if you crash it, fears about radiation leakage will distract everyone from the oil spill!
vince_refiti 12y ago
Luckily, this also failed to change the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
- shutupalready 12y ago
  Speaking of nuclear-powered aircraft, care to guess who holds the patent on that? It's none other than Richard Feynman, as related in this hilarious passage from his famous biography: --- quote --- One time when I happened to be home, the telephone rings: it's LONG DISTANCE, from California. In those days, a long distance call meant it was something very important, especially a long distance call from this marvelous place, California, a million miles away. The guy on the other end says, "Is this Professor Feynman, of Cornell University?" "That's right." "This is Mr. So-and-so from the Such-and-such Aircraft Company." It was one of the big airplane companies in California, but unfortunately I can't remember which one. The guy continues: "We're planning to start a laboratory on nuclear-propelled rocket airplanes. It will have an annual budget of so-and-so-many million dollars . . ." Big numbers. I said, "Just a moment, sir; I don't know why you're telling me all this." "Just let me speak to you," he says; "just let me explain everything. Please let me do it my way." So he goes on a little more, and says how many people are going to be in the laboratory, so-and-so-many people at this level, and so-and-so many Ph.D's at that level . . . "Excuse me, sir," I say, "but I think you have the wrong fella." "Am I talking to Richard Feynman, Richard P. Feynman?" "Yes, but you're.. "Would you please let me present what I have to say, sir, and then we'll discuss it." "All right!" I sit down and sort of close my eyes to listen to all this stuff, all these details about this big project, and I still haven't the slightest idea why he's giving me all this information. Finally, when he's all finished, he says, "I'm telling you about our plans because we want to know if you would like to be the director of the laboratory." "Have you really got the right fella?" I say. "I'm a professor of theoretical physics. I'm not a rocket engineer, or an airplane engineer, or anything like that." "We're sure we have the right fellow.' "Where did you get my name then? Why did you decide to call me?" "Sir, your name is on the patent for nuclear-powered, rocket-propelled airplanes." "Oh," I said, and I realized why my name was on the patent, and I'll have to tell you the story. I told the man, "I'm sorry, but I would like to continue as a professor at Cornell University." What had happened was, during the war, at Los Alamos, there was a very nice fella in charge of the patent office for the government, named Captain Smith. Smith sent around a notice to everybody that said something like, "We in the patent office would like to patent every idea you have for the United States government, for which you are working now. Any idea you have on nuclear energy or its application that you may think everybody knows about, everybody doesn't know about: Just come to my office and tell me the idea." I see Smith at lunch, and as we're walking back to the technical area, I say to him, "That note you sent around: That's kind of crazy to have us come in and tell you every idea." We discussed it back and forth--by this time we're in his office--and I say, "There are so many ideas about nuclear energy that are so perfectly obvious, that I'd be here all day telling you stuff." "LIKE WHAT?" "Nothin' to it!" I say. "Example: nuclear reactor . . . under water. . water goes in . . . steam goes out the other side . . . Pshshshsht--it's a submarine. Or: nuclear reactor . . . air comes rushing in the front. . . heated up by nuclear reaction . . . out the back it goes . . . Boom! Through the air--it's an airplane. Or: nuclear reactor . . you have hydrogen go through the thing . . . Zoom!--it's a rocket. Or: nuclear reactor . . . only instead of using ordinary uranium, you use enriched uranium with beryllium oxide at high temperature to make it more efficient . . . It's an electrical power plant. There's a million ideas!" I said, as I went out the door. Nothing happened. About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says, "Feynman, the submarine has already been taken. But the other three are yours." So when the guys at the airplane company in California are planning their laboratory, and try to find out who's an expert in rocket-propelled whatnots, there's nothing to it: They look at who's got the patent on it!

144 points by darrhiggs 12y ago

Cleanup after an accident isn't exactly cheap. I was surprised to read that the cost of the Costa Concordia cleanup - involving a refloat - is over $1.5 billion, not including disposal. That's for a conventional cruise liner, not nuclear. That ship only cost $570 million new.

krschultz 12y ago

Even the US Navy is backing away from nuclear power. They only build nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. They used to build nuclear powered cruisers. It is more expensive to build, to maintain, to break down at the end, and to train the many crews that will serve over the ship's lifetime. Only when you absolutely need a nuclear reactor does it make sense to absorb that expense.

TomGullen 12y ago
Worst case scenario, what could happen if the nuclear reactor failed or was damaged in some way? I see the benefits, but attaching them en-masse to various classes of warships seems like a recipe for disaster if war does actually break out.
- cobrausn 12y ago
  The bottom of the ocean is generally a very good 'containment system'. That's not to say there won't be environmental damage, but we do have some examples to go off of to indicate how much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarin...
  - mpyne 12y ago
    Not to mention all the sunken Soviet/Russian submarines (most of which have two nuclear reactors instead of one).
    - gabriel34 12y ago
      None of these examples were worst case scenario. How well does the ocean absorbs the ionizing radiation from a meltdown or some other extreme event? Would part of the ocean's water become radioactive and spread through currents? Are the oceans so voluminous that the effect would be only a minor increase in radiation levels?
      - dalke 12y ago
        The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster gives a good approximation of what that would look like. "Pretty well", "yes, but well below what's considered safe limits", "yes, detectable but minor."
      - mpyne 12y ago
        Well the mantle of the Earth (including its radioactive components that power plate tectonics) is literally pouring forth into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean (in the valleys of the mid-Atlantic Ridge) and that seems to have not caused noticeable calamities... which is because yes, the ocean really is that voluminous. As it turns out the ocean is also really good at both shielding radiation (water is what the nuclear experts use in large amounts, after all) and diluting radioactive contaminants, if it came to that, until the radionuclides themselves decay away and become stable. Additionally it's not as if radioactivity is infectious or permanent. If something is radioactive here and I move it over there, it can't be radioactive in both places, which is why dilution is so effective.
        stefantalpalaru 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation
        12y ago
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  In a war where significant numbers of aircraft carriers are being blown up the environmental damage from this is probably among the least of our concerns.
ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
That makes no sense-a nuclear powered carrier that doesn't require underway replenishment, would be much more capable if its escorts also didn't require conventional oil fueling. If the US had continued to build nuclear powered surface ships through the end of the cold war, then it probably wouldn't be so expensive-economies of scale, plus you'd still have the infrastructure and training pipeline there.
- 30thElement 12y ago
  Carrier attack groups have a refueling ship along with all the cruisers/attack ships. It probably makes sense, just going by the size differences the carrier would use more conventional fuel than all of its escorts combined, so having the carrier be nuclear powered doubles your range.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  > That makes no sense-a nuclear powered carrier that doesn't require underway replenishment, would be much more capable if its escorts also didn't require conventional oil fueling. The battle group still needs underway replenishment for food, ammunition, avgas, maintenance materials, and all the other various and sundry items required to keep ships functioning. Fuel isn't that big a deal when combined with all of these other items. Also, nuclear reactors were replaced with gas turbines in surface ships. Nuclear is attractive versus the older oil-fired boilers. Large gas turbines changed the calculus. The steaming range of cruisers and destroyers with gas turbine power plants is excellent, hence the reason fuel is not a big deal to add to all the other stuff that needs to be provided for the battle group.
- forgotketchup 12y ago
  Lack of qualified operators is real operational problem. Majoring in physics pretty much guaranteed you a NROTC scholarship, if you wanted one, back when I was in undergrad. Around a third of my cohort (and the ones graduating immediately before and after mine) were in NROTC, and every last one of them was earmarked for the nuclear program when they finished school. I'd speculate that the Navy simply doesn't have enough personnel to put a nuclear drive-train on every cruiser, much less the entire fleet. Edit: grammar Edit2: Also, keep in mind that aircraft don't run on uranium. A carrier group needs tanker replenishment anyway, so switching to nuclear ship propulsion doesn't save you from needing to worry about the logistics of transporting large volumes of flammable liquid to the group.
stox 12y ago
The reason the Navy has moved away from Nuclear for cruisers is that nukes do not like their load to be highly variable. Cruisers, by their very nature want to throttle up and down very quickly. Carriers and subs, on the other hand, transition from full throttle to idle very infrequently.

linohh 12y ago

There are still some nuclear powered ice breakers in operation. The last one was finished in 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker

dalke 12y ago
The idea was to also have nuclear powered merchant ships and passenger ships. As the article comments: > Unlike the commercial shipping industry, the military did embrace nuclear. Of the estimated 700 nuclear-powered vessels which have seen service over the years, including the 200 currently at sea, the majority are military ships and submarines. Dedicated Russian ice-breaking ships are the only civilian examples.

realrocker 12y ago

Unless human race invents better non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the Nuclear age won't arrive.

dm2 12y ago
They've been invented, but we're not giving up our current nuclear weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun Thermobaric bombs are non-nuclear but do lots of damage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon These are big enough for most tasks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator http://theaviationist.com/2012/02/12/mop/ http://theaviationist.com/2012/02/12/mop/ Unrelated but cool if you like massive weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT5jo7aZzTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT5jo7aZzTw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch
- oafitupa 12y ago
  The railgun isn't quite a WMD though, is it?
  - dm2 12y ago
    It's debatable. Fire it at a ship/building and most of the people on that ship/building would die. I don't think many objects could survive being hit by a railgun, is that considered mass destruction? According to US law it would be considered a WMD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Criminal_.28civilian.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Crim... "any device or weapon designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury by causing a malfunction of or destruction of an aircraft or other vehicle that carries humans or of an aircraft or other vehicle whose malfunction or destruction may cause said aircraft or other vehicle to cause death or serious bodily injury to humans who may be within range of the vector in its course of travel or the travel of its debris." "Indictments and convictions for possession and use of WMD such as truck bombs, pipe bombs, shoe bombs, and cactus needles coated with a biological toxin have been obtained under 18 USC 2332a."

dbarlett 12y ago

Savannah will be open to the public on October 19 [1]. Well worth it if you're in the area. [1] http://portfestbaltimore.com/highlights/ http://portfestbaltimore.com/highlights/

chiph 12y ago
The NS Savannah was previously at Patriot's Point in Charleston SC, and I got to go through her. She hadn't been de-fueled so you couldn't go through the reactor spaces, but there was a window that you could look through and see it (Oooo! Atoms!) The polarized windows are interesting -- you rotate the inner half until at 90° they are dim. But it never got dim enough where you could sleep during the day in a cabin. It is a beautiful ship, and it's obvious from looking at it vs. a modern container ship why it wasn't a commercial success. But as a technology demonstrator, I think it was mostly successful.
- pnut 12y ago
  In the late 80's, I snuck past the barricades and explored the engine room for over an hour. It was part of a boy scout excursion that had us camping on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, so we had after-hours access to the facilities. The catwalks were partially intact and it was a very dangerous, decayed industrial environment. Lots of negative space indicated that some large components had been removed.
- vibrolax 12y ago
  The reactor was actually de-fueled long before that in 1975, but the reactor vessel has still not been removed and the associated parts await eventuall decontamination and decommissioning. As a 6 year old child of the Atomic Age, my parents took me to tour the Savannah at her Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale FL) stop in 1964. The view through a window at the nearly featureless grey reactor vessel was anticlimactic. The most memorable sight for me was the stainless steel bar/lounge for the passengers. It looked like it had never been used. When I was about 10 years old I built a plastic styrene model, which included a detailed reactor that I carefully painted in he assigned colors colors. All this detail disappeared forever into the grey containment vessel.

cstross 12y ago

One thing the article doesn't mention is that the Savannah was designed for an earlier age -- like the Bristol Brabazon, a large piston-powered airliner that arrived just in time for the jet age, the Savannah was a traditional break bulk cargo ship (with passenger quarters) that arrived just as the multimodal freight container revolutionized freight shipping (and the passengers who had formerly travelled by sea finally made the transition to cheap-enough jet travel). Savannah was called for by Eisenhower in 1953 but didn't enter service until 1962 -- just too late to be an attractive proposition. Multimodal container transport really caught fire between 1955 and 1970 and the Savannah couldn't be retrofitted as a container ship (nor would it have been efficient as one: its cargo capacity of 14,000 tons is tiny by modern container freight standards).

FroshKiller 12y ago
If the phrase "Multimodal container transport really caught fire between 1955 and 1970" ignites anyone's interest, you should check out a book called The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. It's a somewhat dry (by nature) but fascinating history of the topic.
- Bulkington 12y ago
  The Box is more than a history of container transport and its world-changing impact. It's a real lesson for entrepreneurs: Visionary takes on tradition-bound oligopoly; regulators can't cope with radical concept; international standards committees are about settling past political grievances and settling for laughable compromises, rather than setting the best course future efficiencies. Highly recommend, as did Bill Gates, who ties it explicitly to developments in computing: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Box http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Box
- alexqgb 12y ago
  Can't recommend this book highly enough. Among other details, HN readers will appreciate that the global continer system represents packet switching in its original form.
12y ago

dm2 12y ago

It would be nice to put them on new oil tankers, but then what would we do with all the excess bunker fuel? Can low quality fuel be used for anything else? Also it would be very bad if one was taken by pirates, much worse than any existing cargo or oil ship. Putting nuclear reactors on airplanes is just asking for trouble. Planes crash and it's very difficult to avoid, even a B2 has crashed and it's almost 100% computer controlled.

maxerickson 12y ago
You can "just" build out more of the right type of refinery capacity (assuming the economics work out right). I don't know much about it, but I'm pretty sure much of it can be cracked and that the desulphurization is more expensive than it is impossible.
- dm2 12y ago
  This looks like a good explanation of what you are talking about: http://www.kittiwake.com/refinery_process http://www.kittiwake.com/refinery_process
forgotketchup 12y ago
The (historically) low price of bunker fuel led to the development of turbine locomotives for railroads[1]. The idea was that the low price made up for the inefficiency (in operational practice) of turbine engines. When the plastics industry figured out how to use bunker fuel, turbine locomotives became uneconomic to operate. I'd guess that nuclear cargo ships would simply lead to slightly cheaper plastic. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_GTELs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_GTELs

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago

Meanwhile, in Russia: http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-designs-nuclear-train http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-design...

coldcode 12y ago

One of the guys at my first job at General Dynamics in the 80's worked on the nuclear airplane. They all thought it was dumb idea at the time.

Already__Taken 12y ago
They all wanted to work on that type of reactor and the airplane was the last way to get the money.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  Let's spare a few moderated neutrons for Project Pluto: http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html

ericcumbee 12y ago

seems like this would be the perfect use case for the SSTAR reactors that are being developed at Livermore Lab.

bane 12y ago

I've always been curious at the strange lack of foresight during the nuclear age of what to do with the waste. It's almost South Parkian: 1: Fuel a Ship with nuclear power 2: Collect Radioactive waste 3: ??? 4: Profit! As always, I wonder, what was the plan exactly? What did the engineers of yesteryear actually plan to do with the stuff?

vonmoltke 12y ago
I'm curious as to the actual plans as well, but I suspect the early engineers seriously underestimated how dangerous the waste materials were going to be. Of course, now I think we overestimate.
- k__ 12y ago
  I guess, they just were lucky. The power nuclear fission got us was remarkable and when they started, the marked wasn't regulated, so the companies could make huge amounts of money. This money was free to pay lobbying. They just outperformed the law makers.
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    That's not really the way it was; the regulation was always quite tight, and the lack of nuclear development today (outside China and to an extent France) is due to deep public mistrust more than anything else, though changes in the economics of power generation favouring high cost per kWh but low capital cost due to liberalisation of the market are also a factor.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  They knew very well how dangerous it was. However, you have to look at the timescale. The first nuclear power plants were built in the 50s. In 1952, 12,000 people died in London in a few days in the Great Smog. The Love Canal catastrophe, which ultimately caused mass birth defects and cancers, would not be revealed for another 20 years. The Bhopal Disaster, which killed 16,000 people and caused 558,000 injuries, happened in _1984_. Non-nuclear industrial disasters greater than any actual nuclear disaster which has ever occurred were a fact of life. For that matter, they still are, to a lesser extent; for all the worry about nuclear waste, power-plant waste has never killed anyone, excepting a small number (< 20) deaths at reprocessing plants, while conventional waste kills thousands every year.

georgecmu 12y ago

Just three other nuclear merchant ships were built - the German oil transporter Otto Hahn; Japan's freighter Mutsu; and the Russian ice-breaking container vessel Sevmorput. Like the Savannah, they are no longer in service. Umm, so the first nuclear ice-breaker was built by the Soviet Union in the 50s and was in service since 1959, 3 years before Savannah made its maiden voyage. Unlike Savannah, Lenin was in use for 30 years until it was decommissioned in 1989. Also in contrast to Savannah, its success led to 8 more Soviet nuclear ice-breakers built between 1975 and 1990. In fact, the most recent nuclear ice-breaker was built by Russia and entered service in 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker

sdm 12y ago
Those nuclear ice-breakers are not merchant ships. Their primary purpose is not to carry containers or people.
- nickpinkston 12y ago
  But the real point isn't to strictly define the benchmark, but more what it looks to elucidate: large scale nuclear ships and their outcomes. Russia (probably from not having to deal with protests as much as Western countries) made their nuclear ships and they perhaps proved to stand the test of time. (?)
  - Moto7451 12y ago
    Russia has had a history of making a lot of interesting Nuclear powered things. I present to you the Nuclear powered lighthouse: http://englishrussia.com/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-nuclear-lighthouses/ http://englishrussia.com/2009/01/06/abandoned-russian-polar-...
- rsynnott 12y ago
  They exist mostly to facilitate merchant ships, though.
rsynnott 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I wonder if the TerraPower or other small scale nuclear startups are thinking about this as a market. It seems a traveling wave reactor would be a good candidate given its fuel usage profile.

rdl 12y ago

A nuclear-powered civilian ship could make sense today -- ironically, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) or bigger would be the most economical use -- at sea most of the time, on long trips, and huge.

aninhumer 12y ago
Also, if you crash it, fears about radiation leakage will distract everyone from the oil spill!

vince_refiti 12y ago

Luckily, this also failed to change the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

shutupalready 12y ago
Speaking of nuclear-powered aircraft, care to guess who holds the patent on that? It's none other than Richard Feynman, as related in this hilarious passage from his famous biography: --- quote --- One time when I happened to be home, the telephone rings: it's LONG DISTANCE, from California. In those days, a long distance call meant it was something very important, especially a long distance call from this marvelous place, California, a million miles away. The guy on the other end says, "Is this Professor Feynman, of Cornell University?" "That's right." "This is Mr. So-and-so from the Such-and-such Aircraft Company." It was one of the big airplane companies in California, but unfortunately I can't remember which one. The guy continues: "We're planning to start a laboratory on nuclear-propelled rocket airplanes. It will have an annual budget of so-and-so-many million dollars . . ." Big numbers. I said, "Just a moment, sir; I don't know why you're telling me all this." "Just let me speak to you," he says; "just let me explain everything. Please let me do it my way." So he goes on a little more, and says how many people are going to be in the laboratory, so-and-so-many people at this level, and so-and-so many Ph.D's at that level . . . "Excuse me, sir," I say, "but I think you have the wrong fella." "Am I talking to Richard Feynman, Richard P. Feynman?" "Yes, but you're.. "Would you please let me present what I have to say, sir, and then we'll discuss it." "All right!" I sit down and sort of close my eyes to listen to all this stuff, all these details about this big project, and I still haven't the slightest idea why he's giving me all this information. Finally, when he's all finished, he says, "I'm telling you about our plans because we want to know if you would like to be the director of the laboratory." "Have you really got the right fella?" I say. "I'm a professor of theoretical physics. I'm not a rocket engineer, or an airplane engineer, or anything like that." "We're sure we have the right fellow.' "Where did you get my name then? Why did you decide to call me?" "Sir, your name is on the patent for nuclear-powered, rocket-propelled airplanes." "Oh," I said, and I realized why my name was on the patent, and I'll have to tell you the story. I told the man, "I'm sorry, but I would like to continue as a professor at Cornell University." What had happened was, during the war, at Los Alamos, there was a very nice fella in charge of the patent office for the government, named Captain Smith. Smith sent around a notice to everybody that said something like, "We in the patent office would like to patent every idea you have for the United States government, for which you are working now. Any idea you have on nuclear energy or its application that you may think everybody knows about, everybody doesn't know about: Just come to my office and tell me the idea." I see Smith at lunch, and as we're walking back to the technical area, I say to him, "That note you sent around: That's kind of crazy to have us come in and tell you every idea." We discussed it back and forth--by this time we're in his office--and I say, "There are so many ideas about nuclear energy that are so perfectly obvious, that I'd be here all day telling you stuff." "LIKE WHAT?" "Nothin' to it!" I say. "Example: nuclear reactor . . . under water. . water goes in . . . steam goes out the other side . . . Pshshshsht--it's a submarine. Or: nuclear reactor . . . air comes rushing in the front. . . heated up by nuclear reaction . . . out the back it goes . . . Boom! Through the air--it's an airplane. Or: nuclear reactor . . you have hydrogen go through the thing . . . Zoom!--it's a rocket. Or: nuclear reactor . . . only instead of using ordinary uranium, you use enriched uranium with beryllium oxide at high temperature to make it more efficient . . . It's an electrical power plant. There's a million ideas!" I said, as I went out the door. Nothing happened. About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says, "Feynman, the submarine has already been taken. But the other three are yours." So when the guys at the airplane company in California are planning their laboratory, and try to find out who's an expert in rocket-propelled whatnots, there's nothing to it: They look at who's got the patent on it!