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Unlike conventional ships that rely on fossil fuels can drive for a long time without refueling Nuclear-powered merchant ships have the potential to reduce operating costs and increase
Unlike conventional ships that rely on fossil fuels can drive for a long time without refueling Nuclear-powered merchant ships have the potential to reduce operating costs and increase efficiency. Given the current climate change and global warming, and when decarbonising These ships can save our world as they will play an important role.
In fact, this is not something that has not been thought of or done. The US, Japan, Germany and Russia have tried this in the past. Unfortunately, this technology, which also faces many technical, economic and regulatory challenges, has been interrupted. Anyway Promising work on this to carry out. Let’s first look at the history of using nuclear energy in cargo ships, and then see what kind of work is being done at the moment.
In the late 1950s, the first nuclear-powered commercial ship was launched. At a cost of $46.9 million It was the “NS Savannah” built and launched in 1959. It was a demonstration project funded by US government agencies that aimed to demonstrate the potential use of nuclear propulsion in carrying cargo and passengers. The ship’s name is derived from the SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
NS Savannah had a single 74 MW Babcock & Wilcox nuclear reactor driving 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 charge. The ship, with a capacity of 60 passengers and 14,040 tons of cargo, served between 1962 and 1972, visiting 45 ports in 20 countries and of 450,000 nautical miles more he had travelled.
NS Savannah, left to the sea of nuclear waste, of 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.
Nuclear-powered commercial craft outside Savannah; “Otto Hahn“(Germany), “mutsu“(Japan) And “Sevmorput“(Russia) used to be. Otto Hahn was launched in 1968 and transported ore and oil between Europe, South America and Africa until 1979. It was converted to a fossil fuel system in 1980 and was demolished in 2009.
Mutsu was launched in 1974 and worked mainly for research purposes until 1992. The ship was decommissioned in 1995 and rebuilt in 1997. to a conventionally powered research vessel converted. Launched in 1988 Sevmorput, the only nuclear-powered freighter still active. The ship operates as an icebreaker freighter for the Russian Arctic.
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 concerns, and regulatory hurdles. It could be used much more successfully for warships, especially submarines and aircraft carriers, where the benefits of nuclear propulsion, longevity and high speed outweigh the costs and risks.
Some shipping companies and researchers are particularly focused on decarbonising shipping. In the face of increasing pressure, is trying to revive 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 being carried out by a Finnish company called Fennovoima is to icebreakers and other Arctic ships investigates the feasibility of using small modular reactors to provide power.
Inside from HMM Several maritime companies and other organizations of South Korean origin, including one of the most, signed a cooperation agreement in February. In the context of cooperation working with small modular nuclear reactors a merchant ship It is desired to create, but they have not commented because they are at the 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 put together a shortlist of six potential reactor designs that could function on a group of merchant ships and His progress was pretty good too.. Norway even aims to run the natural gas tanker Cadiz Knutsen on nuclear energy.
In fact, this type of fuel use has been effectively eliminating reactor collapse since the 1960s because fuel already melted and is ready to evacuate to stop a possible leak.
The problem with solid fuel is that when reactions get out of control, meltdowns can occur, causing the fuel to overheat and melt and risk breaching the reactor shell. Although it has been used since the 1960s, the reason why it is still not widespread and not used very actively is that corrosion in reactors technical problems.
A few nuclear power experts believe that large container ships for only 20 years He’s talking about being active. This means that the nuclear reactors placed in the ships at such a cost will be dismantled again, spending the same amount of resources.
However, this is not unsolvable. Brazilian nuclear and energy research at his institute Researchers Ondir Freire and Delvonei Alves de Andale believe that the development of new reactors for large freighters has a high initial cost, but that the switch from fossil fuels to nuclear power will be cost-effective in the long run. For this, they say, small reactors could be developed that could be removed from one ship and installed on another ship or type of facility.
There is of course also a legal dimension to this business, any accident on a nuclear powered ship. who will be held responsible very important point. A separate regulation should be drawn up and legal rules should be laid down for this area: is the owner, the operator, the manufacturer of the nuclear reactor or the flag state, the country of registry of the ship, responsible?
We explained that nuclear reactors will be the widely used source of energy in the world in the future and companies have been researching in this direction since this morning. This, however won’t happen soon. For example, the earliest screening date for the NuProShip project’s first nuclear reactor ship, one of the examples we’ve given, year 2035.
The Savannah, which was built in the US in 1818 and was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, 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 is also named after this ship. That is why this ship, although it suffered a setback in the 1950s, is still alive today and for the foreseeable future. a pioneer for building nuclear-powered ships appears in…
Source: Web Tekno
Ashley Johnson is a science writer for “Div Bracket”. With a background in the natural sciences and a passion for exploring the mysteries of the universe, she provides in-depth coverage of the latest scientific developments.
