Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China(gcaptain.com)
gcaptain.com
Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China
https://gcaptain.com/nuclear-powered-24000-teu-containership-china/
9 comments
Molten salt reactors with circulating fuel salts are hopelessly complex and totally impractical. There is no way China will ever actually build this. To understand why take a look at the amount of robotic equipment required to maintain the primary loop of this reactor mockup at ORNL:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uHT-w2x6dDg
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uHT-w2x6dDg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom.
I recently found and got digitized an amazing documentary about the Savannah: https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-07-12-the-nuclear-ship-s...
Also, she's currently for sale if you're interested. If they don't find a buyer it'll be scrapped.
Also, she's currently for sale if you're interested. If they don't find a buyer it'll be scrapped.
The reactor is unfortunately already removed though :(
> Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom
To be clear, the NS Savannah was a showpiece. It was part passenger, part freight in a way that made no economic sense but looked fantastic and showed the concept could work. It ultimately failed because it had to bear the brunt of port negotiations. But that's a policy hurdle.
To be clear, the NS Savannah was a showpiece. It was part passenger, part freight in a way that made no economic sense but looked fantastic and showed the concept could work. It ultimately failed because it had to bear the brunt of port negotiations. But that's a policy hurdle.
Oh for sure, it was an atom corps show piece to flex their muscles, and probably also to entice ports to allow nuclear powered ships since many did not before it existed.
The fact that we as a world economy are not significantly relying on nuclear power at this point is one of the biggest failures of climate change policy, if not the biggest failure ever. Yes, waste is a concern which needs to be managed responsibly. But at worst, the waste would only contaminate a finite area where it is stored. Climate change will affect literally everywhere on Earth. The US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record, yet people still fall victim to FUD insinuating that using nuclear is automatically asking for another Chernobyl or Fukushima. If you aren't serious about nuclear, you aren't serious about climate change.
I entirely agree with your big-picture analysis. However, that
> the US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record,
in no way implies that the notoriously fly-by-night shipping industry would achieve similar performance!
Also the largest historical concern about nuclear cargo ships has been proliferation: if a significant quantity of fissionable material is floating about (literally and metaphorically) in private hands, then it would become orders of magnitude easier for malicious non-state actors to get ahold of, with potentially disastrous consequences, on a world-historical scale. Given the instability, corruption, and hostility of various nuclear-armed states in the last couple of decades, that cat may already be out of the bag, and that concern could (and perhaps should) be disregarded. I don't know, and I doubt anyone does. Institutional conservatism in this area is, however, understandable.
> the US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record,
in no way implies that the notoriously fly-by-night shipping industry would achieve similar performance!
Also the largest historical concern about nuclear cargo ships has been proliferation: if a significant quantity of fissionable material is floating about (literally and metaphorically) in private hands, then it would become orders of magnitude easier for malicious non-state actors to get ahold of, with potentially disastrous consequences, on a world-historical scale. Given the instability, corruption, and hostility of various nuclear-armed states in the last couple of decades, that cat may already be out of the bag, and that concern could (and perhaps should) be disregarded. I don't know, and I doubt anyone does. Institutional conservatism in this area is, however, understandable.
> The US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record
Loss of the vessel is a unique concern for naval equipment. The reactors on the Scorpion and Thresher have been slowly diffusing into the environment for the past 50 years. I'd be interested to know how contamination from these compares to Fukushima.
Loss of the vessel is a unique concern for naval equipment. The reactors on the Scorpion and Thresher have been slowly diffusing into the environment for the past 50 years. I'd be interested to know how contamination from these compares to Fukushima.
The Navy periodically takes radioactivity measurements near the wrecks, and has never found anything out of the ordinary that I can find online.
This report from 2019 agrees:
> The conclusions of this report confirm the results of previous environmental monitoring expeditions and demonstrate that the THRESHER and SCORPION have had no discernible effect on the radioactivity in the environment
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/09/f66/NT-19-1....
> The conclusions of this report confirm the results of previous environmental monitoring expeditions and demonstrate that the THRESHER and SCORPION have had no discernible effect on the radioactivity in the environment
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/09/f66/NT-19-1....
> Yes, waste is a concern which needs to be managed responsibly.
More than that: if I understand correctly, there are some newer designs which can take the waste of older plants, 'burn' it while extracting more energy, leaving a smaller amount of less-problematic waste at the end.
For that reason alone we should be building some of those newer plants. If (beyond burning through older plants' waste) they are safer, more efficient and/or have a 'nicer' fuel cycle of their own: bonus.
But for cost / climate etc: probably too little, too late. Renewables + storage will do the job. And later on, bring in fusion.
More than that: if I understand correctly, there are some newer designs which can take the waste of older plants, 'burn' it while extracting more energy, leaving a smaller amount of less-problematic waste at the end.
For that reason alone we should be building some of those newer plants. If (beyond burning through older plants' waste) they are safer, more efficient and/or have a 'nicer' fuel cycle of their own: bonus.
But for cost / climate etc: probably too little, too late. Renewables + storage will do the job. And later on, bring in fusion.
Nuclear is just not economical enough. Compare eg. to solar, where we installed the equivalent of 413 nuclear power plants just this year:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/11/28/solar-surging-58-in-2...
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/11/28/solar-surging-58-in-2...
Does that include the cost of energy storage? Solar only works because fossil fuels can pick up the slack at night
With the current trajectory of batteries, it is not looking like the cost of overnight storage is going to break the economics of solar.
Seasonal storage is another issue all together. Also, very northern latitudes may be better served by nuclear power.
Seasonal storage is another issue all together. Also, very northern latitudes may be better served by nuclear power.
Grid battery storage would have to fall in cost far more than expected to be practical. Goldman Sachs analysts don’t see costs falling by more than a factor of 2 for the foreseeable future.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-veh...
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-veh...
This analysis only looks at vehicle batteries, but there are a ton of technologies that aren't suitable for vehicles that _are_ suitable for the grid due to weight concerns and a lot of them have room to become significantly cheaper than lithium.
I just don't think the grid storage market is going to be leftover vehicle batteries. The demand will be big enough that battery technology will be tailored toward grid storage; cheaper batteries that are less dense, super-high lifecycle numbers that cars don't need, less need for high charge and discharge rates.
This thread is about power plants for cargo ships. Your response (while germane in other contexts) is a non-sequitur.
Nuclear civilian ships never took off in the First World due to the cost of dealing with silly regulations.
I suspect China will care very little about our silly regulations.
I hope they make a lot of things work that our C-suite lawyers and MBAs never understood the math on.
I suspect China will care very little about our silly regulations.
I hope they make a lot of things work that our C-suite lawyers and MBAs never understood the math on.
It says they will use a molten salt reactor--has anyone made one of those work reliably? I don't actually know--I just have a vague sense that every molten salt reactor I've read about suffered from corrosion problems and had to be shut down.
I'm in nuclear and I'm super annoyed at the mass hysteria around announcing projects like this using totally unproven reactors.
Just start with a time-honed PWR to decarbonize now and deal with the uncertainty and challenge of MSR development as a potential upgrade for later.
MSRs need tons of development. See ORNL-5018 https://doi.org/10.2172/4227904
Just start with a time-honed PWR to decarbonize now and deal with the uncertainty and challenge of MSR development as a potential upgrade for later.
MSRs need tons of development. See ORNL-5018 https://doi.org/10.2172/4227904
> MSRs need tons of development. See ORNL-5018
I think what you meant to say is the west needs tons of development to catch up.
China already has TMSR-LF1 cleared for startup and expects to be able to start building MSRs for other countries by 2030. Half of all currently under construction reactors are in China, and they have plans for 154 in the next 15 years.
I think what you meant to say is the west needs tons of development to catch up.
China already has TMSR-LF1 cleared for startup and expects to be able to start building MSRs for other countries by 2030. Half of all currently under construction reactors are in China, and they have plans for 154 in the next 15 years.
No, I meant what I said. TMSR-LF1 is a remake of ORNL's MSRE. After MSRE, the experts from that program wrote ORNL-5018 explaining what was needed to come next to commercialize the technology. China's done a great job of rebuilding knowledge needed to run a small reactor experiment. Now the hard work can begin.
To my point, the United States basically threw in the towel in 1970 despite the director of ORNL calling it the facilities greatest technical achievement. The only reason uranium won out over thorium was because the waste was weapons grade and useful during the cold war. Unlike the US, China has very little in the way of domestic uranium supplies - but incidentally has massive thorium stockpiles from its monazite mining.
I think it is naive to assume that an operation with effectively limitless funding led by the former director of CERN has only managed to clone a 50 year old research project without any advancements. Maybe a better perspective is that that given the strategic value they just aren't sharing the details with the rest of the world.
I think it is naive to assume that an operation with effectively limitless funding led by the former director of CERN has only managed to clone a 50 year old research project without any advancements. Maybe a better perspective is that that given the strategic value they just aren't sharing the details with the rest of the world.
> The only reason uranium won out over thorium was because the waste was weapons grade and useful during the cold war.
This is such a common myth that it inspired me to write a whole thorium myths page to explain how and why it's not true, back in 2014: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth1
Happy to discuss more but I've said a lot on that page.
This is such a common myth that it inspired me to write a whole thorium myths page to explain how and why it's not true, back in 2014: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth1
Happy to discuss more but I've said a lot on that page.
Absolutely said a lot about the technical and economic justifications, but don't really address the political aspect at all. Remember the that decision was made by the AEC, which at the time was heavily influenced by the Military Liaison Committee. Also forgive me if I don't agree that the people who oversaw unethical human experimentation for 30 years and released radiation over my home town might not have made their decision based on the same sound reasoning you lay out.
If you haven't read it already, Dr. Weinberg's memoir does a good job detailing the politics around the demise of the MSR.
If you haven't read it already, Dr. Weinberg's memoir does a good job detailing the politics around the demise of the MSR.
The decision to shut down the Molten Salt Program within the AEC was driven by Milton Shaw, who also and at the same shut down numerous other programs: sodium graphite program (Hallam), organic program (Piqua), superheat BWR (Bonus, Pathfinder), high temperature gas, etc. He shut these down because he wanted all focus to be on the Fast Breeder Reactor (Clinch River). This was all in 1968.
Uranium-fueled commercial reactors never had anything to do with making plutonium for weapons. Plutonium was made by graphite and heavy water moderated reactors at Hanford and Savannah River.
I have read Weinberg! It's my favorite book. It's interesting that at the end he was more excited about the PIUS PWR than the MSR. Here are my reading notes: https://whatisnuclear.com/weinberg.html
Uranium-fueled commercial reactors never had anything to do with making plutonium for weapons. Plutonium was made by graphite and heavy water moderated reactors at Hanford and Savannah River.
I have read Weinberg! It's my favorite book. It's interesting that at the end he was more excited about the PIUS PWR than the MSR. Here are my reading notes: https://whatisnuclear.com/weinberg.html
Surely a ship at sea need not be worried about such a well-understood problem as salt corrosion!
Or lack of coolant water...
Amazing. Truly amazing if they ship the ship.
Shipping industry could use nuclear. They’re large, in water, carry 1000s of containers. If all container ships are zero emission, that makes a decent difference in global emissions.
Shipping industry could use nuclear. They’re large, in water, carry 1000s of containers. If all container ships are zero emission, that makes a decent difference in global emissions.
Given chinas massive economic downturn theres no shortage of container ships.
That statement does not make sense.
Container ships are transporting manufactured goods from China to other countries - US, EU, ROW.
If there are no shortage of container ships that means that those regions are experiencing economic downturn, not China.
Chinese economic downturns will result in "no shortage of" ships that carry raw materials.
The problem is the vast amount of pollution that those ships generate. In theory this alternative would provide the same service with far less ecological impact. Actually getting modern nuclear reactors to perform as expected has resulted in complications.
Anyhow, interesting dual use and program derisking thoughts there.