Episode Summary:
In 1959, an attractive cargo passenger vessel ordered by the US Maritime Administration was launched, the NS Savannah. As a demonstration for civilian use of the nuclear power plants than used in atomic submarines, the vessel operated well for over a decade and demonstrated safe, reliable operation. But since 1972, no other commercial cargo vessels have been built with nuclear propulsion. The economics of the 1970's, with relatively low oil prices made it impractical, but today the combination of higher oil prices, larger ships, more global trade and the need for lower CO2 emissions means that nuclear propulsion for commercial shipping has finally come of age.
Access all episodes of End of the Line on Engineering TV along with all of our other series.
Transcript of this week's show:
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and/or videos to which the transcript may be referring, watch the above video.
If you’re a fan of large engineering projects that are pleasing to the eye, take a look at this. This beautiful ship is the NS Savannah, a small cargo passenger vessel launched in 1959 in Camden, New Jersey under US Maritime Administration contract. At 600 feet long and 14,000 tons, she wasn’t big even by the standards of the day, and her 21 knot speed wasn’t record-breaking either. But the Savannah was and is a historically significant achievement, because it was nuclear powered. The ship was built to demonstrate that the same reactor technology that powered the then current nuclear submarines could also be used for civilian operation in surface vessels, and for over a decade the Savannah operated as a sort of floating goodwill ambassador for atomic propulsion.
What she couldn’t do however, was beat the economics of crude oil pricing circa 1972. Two dollar a barrel oil made bunker fuels dirt cheap and with a limited commercial supply of reactor components, fuels and personnel, civilian atomic ship propulsion lapsed into obscurity. Well, things are very different today. Crude oil is expensive. Cargo ships are bigger, much bigger. Global trade is much larger, with more goods train shipped than ever before, especially from the major manufacturing centres in Asia. And critically, governments worldwide are moving to rapidly decarbonize industries that are intensive fossil fuel users, one of which is commercial shipping.
From an engineering standpoint, there are plenty of good reasons for cargo vessels to go nuclear. Today’s supersized tankers and container ships need powerful engines, and fission technology is proven in large aircraft carriers. While nuclear qualified engineering personnel were a rarity in 1960, six nations operate nuclear vessels today, and the U.S. Navy alone qualifies hundreds of ship borne reactor personnel every year, offering a pre-existing nucleus of skilled people, many of whom would likely enjoy the ability to use their skills at sea in civilian life, with excellent pay and working conditions. Nuclear powered cargo ships could expect to sail for as long as five years before refuelling, allowing both faster turnaround and the potential to use port facilities where bunkering is unavailable, expensive or both.
And environmental benefits are of course obvious. In an age where the CO2 footprint of consumer goods shipped across the world is becoming a political issue, carbon free shipping may be able to operate at rates higher than fossil fuel hauled cargo. And with carbon taxes proliferating, shipping companies could not only avoid the taxes, but may be able to sell carbon credits to other companies, as Tesla does with electric cars.
There are lots of possibilities, and after 65 years of successful and safe reactor operation, there are no technical reasons to stop this from happening. If engineers ran government energy policy, I’m sure it would have happened years ago, but despite the urgent calls from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to accelerate the decarbonization of global economies, the same technically illiterate protest groups that have hobbled the nuclear industry for the last 50 years, are, inexplicably, still active. I suspect they have political motivations, and irrationally cling to their antinuclear stance despite the obvious benefits for CO2 emission reduction.
But the technology is proven, and it’s ready to go. It’s going to be interesting to watch how the conflicting demands of antinuclear groups and the global warming activists reconcile their differences. We are half a century late with nuclear powered commercial cargo vessels. It’s time to get going.