30 Years Without Refuelling: Is the Future of Ships Nuclear?

Though aircraft carriers and submarines powered by nuclear energy have existed for years, they have yet to be fully embraced by the commercial shipping industry. But now, with the frantic push towards greener, more sustainable ships, eyes are turning back towards nuclear power.

[Interestingengineeringofficial]

To read more about this, take a look at our article on Interesting Engineering:

[MBBurchette]

The biggest obstacle to nuclear powered merchant vessels is ignorance. It is so deeply rooted and widespread that I doubt it could be overcome so long as another options exist.

[hypercomms]

These are ships that will not be going to the beaches of Bangladesh, or India to be broken up….there will need to be plan for the disposal of their cores… and you cannot put these ships in reserve for 50 years while leading their radio activity in the reactor cores to decay away…. there will need to be a proper and agreed process for the disposal of the reactor cores. I am for nuclear energy but this is an important policy and procedure that needs to be worked out.

This cannot be based on processes used by the US Navy or the Russsian navy because those processes will not scale to the number of reactors that need to be disposed at end of life, if scale to power the large number of oil tankers, or large bulk carriers built each year.

[Sacto]

About time people figured it out! The development of small modular reactors could mean cargo ships with no more petroleum burning emissions and possibly allow for more powerful propulsion systems for cargo ships to travel _faster_ . Imagine a very large cargo vessel carrying over 13, 000 TEU's of containers traveling not at 10-11 knots at sea, but more like 30 knots at sea.

[brianlittle]

They should make a nuclear powered tv so I can still watch my show when the power goes out.

[davidarens]

Please consider a nuclear tug it could latch onto the back of the ship provide propulsion and never enter a harbor. Gets around a lot of the restrictions

[NWer-cu]

Some Somali or Houthi in the future: "Look at me. I'm the reactor engineer now."

[jaspervandervelden]

Not every harbour accepts nuclear vessels ;)

[templar]

Security level of those ships will be the number one problem.

[jenslrkedal]

I have been wondering, why we have not been seeing a lot of nuclear powered big container ships. The savings on bunkering costs alone must be a huge incentive. I suspect that the nuclear price pr kWh is simply much too high? The CO2 reduction developments in shipping is currently based on expensive, fabricated fuels. If nuclear energy had a reasonable price tag, nobody would look into alternative fuels.

[backacheache]

Perhaps the solution is to use the "shipping container" format that land-based SMR's are talking about using meaning you swap the whole system-in-a-container rather that refueling or maintaining the reactor directly, this way it wouldn't require anything specialist just the tools and equipment a port already had anf is familiar with

[TOPTECH-rr]

Such a great collection of powerful machines!

[jimwinchester]

This is actually an excellent idea. The only real barrier now is that it would make such vessels an even more attractive terrorist target.
The solution for that is to wait just a bit longer for thorium reactors to become more commerically viable (the thorium chain cannot be used to make a runaway chain reaction - hence, no explosion). Then it'll be a no-brainer - especially for the super-size ships that can't come into conventional ports anyway.

[DanH-uf]

Wind power is not being utilized enough. Wind foils and wind turbines can be used on ships to save a lot of fuel.

[JSM-bbu]

40% of all shipping is transportation of fossil fuels.

[robertbaico]

Thank you IMO for putting effort in order to progress and make a balance around the world in the shipping industry .
Thanks for the chanel for the video.✌️🤞

[jamesmatticks]

Well, since the average merchant ship is built to last, maybe 20-25 years, the cost of nuclear ships may not last as long as the reactor!

[bobred]

Nuclear merchant ships: Somali pirates will highly approve the upgrade.

[Greguk]

This is never going to happen.just look at how difficult normal land based nuclear plants are to approve. As mentioned, no port will allow them to dock. Just make current engines more efficient with better fuel and systems

[Tullochr]

Uranium (Radioactivity) -> Nuclear (Heat + Electricity) -> Synthetic Fuels (Chemical)

Only possible if the Base Price of Nuclear Energy is at least 1/10 the cost of Fossil Fuels due to Transformation Losses