back to article Nuclear merchant ships could open up Arctic routes for real

British business interests are suggesting that it may be time to revive the idea of nuclear-powered commercial shipping. Media reports to the contrary, the Arctic is not yet open to normal merchant ships - but it might be opened up by nuclear ones, which would also offer zero emissions and freedom from high oil prices. Concept …

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  1. DaWolf

    4 pages of discussion

    and not a mention of terrorism or the threat of nuclear hijackings (unless I missed it?).

    Or a mention that this means nuclear being available to every country in the world - bye bye any non-proliferation treaty.

    1. pablo011
      Thumb Up

      For anyonw who is interested:

      Terrorists will not have too much of a problem getting certain nuclear materials anyway. It's enriching it in that certain way to make an A-Bomb thats the problem for them... along with handling it without the use of equipment. Uranium from these ships will be useless for making anything useful for the terrorists without the facilities. (thats even before the transportation of it without alerting powerful/trigger happy nations)... and no, bombing modern ships and nuclear power stations will not result in a nuclear bomb like explosions.

      I'm sure someone with more knowledge would be able to explain the science behind it.

      1. Fireice

        bombs and plant

        A nuclear bomb and a nuclear power plant are two completely different physical processes. For starters bomb uses fast neutrons and a power plant needs thermal. Worst that can happen in a plant is a meltdown, which stops the chain reaction but leaves behind extremely radioactive lava followed by a conventional explosion (most probably steam, as was the case in Chernobyl). Rest is just Hollywood stuff, I'm afraid.

        1. the spectacularly refined chap

          Re: bombs and plant

          For starters bomb uses fast neutrons and a power plant needs thermal...

          So you've never heard of fast breeders then? Thermal power plants are very much the exception rather than the rule. Uranium, even unenriched, is incredibly expensive stuff. It doesn't make sense to take that investment and piss 90% of its potential away in a thermal reactor.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      What are terrorists going to do?

      I'm a little puzzled by your response. What are nuclear terrorists going to do when they steal a nuclear powered merchant ship. I can just see the exchange:

      Pirate: I've just hijacked a nuclear merchant ship, given me $5mn

      Government Official: Or what?

      Pirate: Or we will generate some cheap electricity...

      Perhaps instead of generating cheap electricity, which is a threat I'm willing to accept, we are worried that they might take the reactor and ship it somewhere to be exploded with conventional explosives in a dirty bomb incident. Well, the reactor will likely weigh of the order of 20 tonnes at least, and have an extremely large containment cask that would require vast quantities of conventional explosives to blow up. Why bother shipping something of that size that won't really work that well, when instead 4 guys with homemade explosives in back-packs can cause so much damage to the London Underground. What about splitting open the cask to get the "dirty" insides, nice idea if you fancy getting fried by the radiation inside the thing.

      Overall, a marine reactor is pretty low risk, especially when you take into account that the Uranium inside it is, at best, 5% U235, so to get anything approaching weapons grade you still need a whole bunch of gas centrifuges, 20000sq ft of warehouse space, about 12 miles of class lined pipes, and a few dozen tankers full of Hydrofluoric acid - just like you do for Uranium pulled out of the ground.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        Adding to my last

        I wanted to add something to my post. This is a quote about a submarine nuclear reactor:

        "The reactor core of an S6G (26MWe) submarine nuclear power plant (just the vessel that holds the fuel and the fuel itself) weighs about 110 +/-3 tons. It needs 20000 gallons (80 tons) of water for coolant. After you add in the rest of its systems you are looking at at least 1000 tons of machinery. "

        So it appears I considerably underestimated the weight of a marine nuclear plant.

        1. Annihilator
          Boffin

          Not to mention

          even in the case of meltdowns, low doses of radiation as you'd expect in this sort of fallout are actually a "pretty piss poor carcinogen":

          http://www.newstatesman.com/200607170039

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Ian K
    Stop

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Build commercial nuclear-powered ship. Let it operate for a few years to build up an inventory of nice active fission products. Terrorists board ship in port, attach shaped charges to reactor, detonate. Cue harbour full of active isotopes (at best) or entire surrounding city dusted with same (at worse).

    Regular trade ports, with vast amounts of goods passing in and out every day, can't be made anywhere near as secure as military dockyards or nice, immobile nuclear power plants.

    This idea might be workable for icebreakers, which _can_ be maintained in secure facilities, but more general commercial cargo-carriers? <shudder> Please don't!

    1. Anton Ivanov
      Flame

      This will never fly for a completely different reason

      Russians, Canadians, Norwegians and even Americans consider the Arctic to be their economical interest zone. Even if their claim on the extensions is rendered invalid, both the north east and north west passage are within the UN-convention decreed economic zone boundaries.

      Anyone thinking that they will permit a selfpropelled nuclear driven ship through their economic zones instead of their own icebraker escorts is off the rails. So even if this ship is built, it will not be allowed anywhere near the route which is key to its economic viability.

      1. Marcus Aurelius
        Grenade

        Economic Zones

        Whilst they may be economic zones for mineral extraction purposes, they'll probably be regarded as "open seas" for the purpose of Maritime Traffic. The only probable problem areas are choke points such as the Bering Strait, where traditional territorial limits meet without any space in between.

  3. andy gibson

    Somali Pirates

    What happens if a nuclear vessel gets boarded by Somali Pirates? I'm sure any nuclear material on board a ship would be worth more than the ship or crew.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      re: Somali Pirates

      They'd probably wait for a container-ship full of Chinese extension cords to come along, hijack it too. Use them to wire the country for lights and sound.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Somali priates in the arctic

      ...or ice breakers off Africa?

  4. WonkoTheSane
    Pirate

    Nuclear Wessels?

    Just don't run one past the Somali coast!

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Joke

    It's happened then?

    "Nuclear power for commercial vessels is becoming significantly more attractive.............not least from an environmental perspective,"

    <Sad old git>

    When I were a lad, it were simple in the environmental activism business: Nuclear bad, non-nuclear good and every long-haired, kaftan wearing freak that could carry a banner knew it. Now there's all these bright young lads with thir sharp suits and their carbon emissions figures touting nuclear power as a good thing.

    It's enough to make you want to take off your sandals and shave.......

    </Sad old git>

  6. Velv
    FAIL

    Hazardous Cargo

    Given LNG is already classed as a Hazardous Cargo to which other shipping is advised to give a wide berth, is it really a good idea to stick it in the same ship as a Nuclear reactor???

    Just how far would the reactor be "blown" if there was a gas explosion?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      unless

      Unless it was a very funny design indead I doubt the reactor would be blown anywhere, the LNG containers being on the top and the nuclear reactor almost certainly being at the bottom and close to the rear and probably very secure.

      I know it's suprising but people that design these things tend to think about these kinds of problems.

      The worst thing to happen would be it sinks.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @AC 1916

        I believe the expression that you are looking for is:

        o a had na fort ov dat.

    2. 10over7
      Flame

      Hazardous lack of common sense with relevant results:

      This video is really rather stupid, but illustrates what happens when hot melty thing (In this case, thermite) meets flammable compressed liquid gassy thing (In this case a propane cylinder).

      <idiot>

      http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/897350/

      </idiot>

      It doesn’t actually explode, due to lack of oxidising agent in the tank - but makes a nice pretty tall flame that would probably make life on deck uncomfortable enough.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Alternatively

    ...we could get a handle on the NIMBYs and build Thorium Breeders on land and fuel *everything* with them for the next 5000 years.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel

    CANDU and THTR demonstrated it is possible on a large scale at competitve prices.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300

    The Chinese are building plants "like crazy" (sorry for sounding like a merkin) and they are eager to copy/extend *all* western and russian designs they can get hold of.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China#CAP1400_development

    Meanwhile, the science-illiterates bring Europe back into the Age Of The Windmill.

    Flame powered by Siberian Gas.

    1. Fireice

      fbr

      I admire your faith in accuracy of wikipedia. I wonder why then capacity of fast breeder reactors is less than 1% of all nuclear power generation? As usual wiki is correct, but they haven't mentioned that monetary cost of enabling safe access to a live reactor far outweighs any benefits. Since we are not going to run out of U-235 in this millennium this is a pretty sensible decision in my opinion.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Alert

        Thorium, CANDU, THTR

        Indeed breeder reactors are more difficult than simple U235 fission-reactors. Nevertheless Thorium is *already* a viable source of energy. THTR already operated and all the technological problems are fixable. Thorium reactors do *not* require liquid sodium.

        Indeed U235 is currently so cheap that Thorium is not yet competitve. Still, Thorium is much, much cheaper than Windmill energy. I also don't accept that "finance" argument. China currently has 10 reactors *under construction*, so the EU does not manage to finance reactors ? After all it is just the single biggest economic entity on the globe ???

        The Illiterates With Political Clout (aka "Green Party") are the problem. I would not be surprised to learn that they are financially supported by Vlad Gas Inc. and IbnSaud Oilco.

  8. Havin_it
    Flame

    Hundreds of tonnes of gas + nuclear reactor?

    I probably shouldn't say this, but that is an explosion I want to see.

    ...which I probably would, from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere...

    1. Arctic fox
      Joke

      @Havin_it

      I vote we take off and watch them from orbit whilst they nuke it (if I may be permitted to coin a phrase!).

  9. Roger Varley

    Nuclear Powered Merchants

    <Ring Ring>

    <Ring Ring>

    <Click>

    BCM: Babcock Marine Sales Department, how may I help?

    OBL: This Mr Laden here, OB Laden, I'd like to order one of your new nuclear LPG carriers please.

    <Pause>

    BCM: I'm not sure that we can do that.

    OBL: Ok, no worries.

    <Click>

    OBL:<aside>Anyone got the dialling code for Somalia handy?

  10. Neil Paterson

    For Orlowski's sake...

    Read up on your "eco-churnalism":

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/14/north_eastern_passage/

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Great idea.

    You can avoid the east coast of Africa for a start - cuts down piracy. Can't imagine many Somali "fisherman" braving the North Sea.

    Sadly, you would have to put up with the green lobby trying to board your ship at every opportunity. Doesn't happen so often with warships, since - well, they have guns...

    If they could make the reactors self-contained little pods(tm) which can be swapped out and replaced at the end of their life, or recharged, then they might be onto a winner.

    1. Roger Varley

      Great Idea

      That might prove tricky. Most LPG carriers will be heading in and out of the Gulf of Oman, and anything moving through the Suez canal kinda goes right passed it.

    2. bugalugs
      Jobs Horns

      @AC1413...self-contained little pods(tm)...

      I claim " a-pods " and grant public licence(!)

      steve, just becurse...

  12. easytoby
    Stop

    What could possibly go wrong

    Small, portable nuclear reactor - ready in a transporter box (ship) surrounded by huge amounts of explosive fuel (methane)..

    What could possibly go wrong !??!!!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Displacement hull speed

    Roughly the square root of the waterline length in feet multiplied by 1.4 would give you displacement hull speed in knots. So a ship 300 feet in length along the waterline would have to use shedloads more power to get beyond 24.5 knots. Maybe the formula for larger hulls in different, but for smaller hulls, I think that's the formula that holds good. I used to sail a 37' boat, which had heavy overhangs bow and stern, hence a waterline length of just 25', although the overhands made her wonderfully seakindly and dry. As a result, she sailed rather slowly, and we were frequently passed by little 27 footers with plumb bows. dealing ego-destruction all round :-(

    Or maybe I'm getting confused with maximum ethernet lengths.

  14. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
    Alert

    Liabillity insurance needed

    Bearing in mind how much noise is made by environmentalists about oil contamination if a ship founders, one wonders how much liability insurance would need to be carried by a company operating nuclear merchant ships.

    If a nuclear warship is damaged/founders, you expect (and this has been the case so far) that the nation operating the ship will carry the burden of recovery and clean-up of the wreck. There would need to be some guarantee that sufficient resource would be available to prevent nuclear contamination from a merchantman.

    If there were arguments and delays after such an accident involving a merchant ship, leading to nuclear contamination, then the outrage that would follow would make the Deepwater Horizon a mere storm in a tea-cup.

    I'd also expect that these nucular wessels (sorry, couldn't resist) would also have to be operated far from Somali pirates!

    BTW. The description for the warning exclamation icon reads "All hands man the pumps, run for the hills, batten down the hatches and so forth", so I thought it was appropriate.

  15. Anomalous Cowherd Silver badge

    Other routes? I hope not.

    I'd suggest running nuclear material on an unarmed merchant ship through the Suez might not be such a hot idea right now.

  16. moonface

    Get ready for a Cold War in the Arctic

    Articles like this make me wonder, by outlaying the benefits of nuclear powered vessels. Whether it is all a bit of a PR exercise to prepare the public, to get ready, to accept and support floating nuclear power stations.

    Especially with the Akademik Lomonosov (Russia's first floating nuclear power station) nearing completion and it spearheading Russia's renewed claims to Arctic territory. This looks like the West is preparing itself for catch up.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Somalia ?

    Better not sail past Somalia, wow the fun those folks could have with a full working nuclear reactor.

    Can we have a radiation icon ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pirate

      Do not board under penalty of BOOM

      Easy one: put up the Radiation logo on a flag, and threaten to blow up the reactor if the pirates come near. I doubt the pirates would be fearsome enough to risk getting nuked!

      We need an "atomic mushroom" icon...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Grenade

        I always thought

        That Reg readers were at least vaguely technical. Judging by some of the Nuclear misconceptions that are shown here and elsewhere in this thread I was wrong. A Nuclear reactor cannot "go boom" in the way a nuclear bomb can. It is against the laws of physics for a start. You can have accidents that release radiation, even highly dangerous radioactive heavy metals, but they can't go boom any worse than any other ship. Nothing in a nuclear reactor is explosive. The worst case results of a runaway reaction are meltdown. And the worst explosion you can get is probably a high pressure steam rupture in the reactor.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Flame

          No Boom, Just Bust !!!

          Tell That to the folks around Chernobyl.

          You Idiot!!!

          It Does Not Have To "GO BOOM"...

          ...TO Wipe Out Mankind!

        2. asdf
          Flame

          true but

          True enough obviously you would not get an a chain reaction fission explosion ala a nuclear weapon but you can get massive amounts of heat generated in a meltdown which can release radiation as in the case of Chernobyl act like a big dirty bomb (radiation released all over Northern Europe). Another problem with conventional nuclear ships is this would provide more material to get in the hands of the bad guys who couldn't go nuclear but they could go dirty with conventional explosions.

  18. Majid

    If you are patient...

    We can also burn up some more carbon based fuels, raise the temperature and have the changed climate melt the ice ?

    But seriously: Accidents will happen, so beter make sure that if a nuclear powered ship sinks, or explodes (which will happen). Theres no disasterous effects, before we try this on a large scale.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      @Majid

      "Accidents will happen, so beter make sure that if a nuclear powered ship sinks, or explodes (which will happen). Theres no disasterous effects, before we try this on a large scale."

      Nuclear vessels *have* sunk.

      Look up USS Thresher.

      It sank. Hull failed. Reactor containment vessel did not.

  19. Rogerborg

    Must use a lot of energy to displace all that water

    Why not invent some kind of boat that travels in a less dense medium - air, for example - then work on reducing friction further by placing it up on narrow wheels on steel land-sea-lanes?

    In the far flung future, I can imagine networks of these land-sea-lanes crossing distances of upwards of ten leagues, carrying goods and even brave souls at speeds approaching that of a barouche.

    1. Steven Jones

      Rail vs Shipping; fuel efficiency

      Of course it is not possible for a ship to travel as fast as a train, but the fuel efficiency of the former per tonne-km (over long distances) is considerably better than that of moving freight by train. Look up the statistics and it is as much as twice as efficient for inter-continental type distances.

      There are several reasons for that. Virtually any railway route covering thousands of km is going to have to traverse a mountain range. Hauling freight uphill costs energy. In contrast, oceans have the useful feature of being flat (or effectively so, with big ships an moderate seas). Then there is the very speed of rail which itself generates more friction and drag (and at relatively modest speeds - start pushing towards high speed train territory, and the fuel consumption goes up disproportionately. Then on rail there tends to be at degree of stop/start, and accelerating a few thousand tonnes to operational speed takes considerable energy (OK - there are regenerative braking systems on some electrified lines, but there is still a considerable loss of energy).

      As a simple example, a horse can easily pull a 35 tonne narrow boat. Indeed a couple of men can do it, albeit at a modest speed. That would be utterly impossible on rail.

      Then there is the embedded energy in the infrastructure and its maintenance. That's a huge amount on a permanent way of several thousand miles. In contrast, with shipping, you only have the docks at each end of the journey to worry about. The oceans in the middle are there for free.

      If you want to move large amounts of bulk cargo, albeit relatively slowly, then ships are far an away the most energy efficient way of moving them.

  20. Jared Hunt
    WTF?

    Am I mistaken...

    ...or are there commenters on this thread under the impression that weapons grade uranium is used in nuclear power plants?

    1. Munchausen's proxy
      Headmaster

      Not only that

      ...And that the amount of nuclear fuel on board will be in the same order of magnitude of the amount of oil now carried.

    2. Steven Jones

      Dirty Bombs

      You don't need weapons-grade uranium to make a "dirty bomb". Any reactor that has been running for a while will have a lot of highly radioactive isotopes that you really wouldn't want to have scattered around a city centre by a conventional bomb.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You are mistaken

      Nobody has mentioned Nuclear explosions, the concern is simply one of contamination, deliberate or accidental. Somali pirates would (I presume) only be interested in a ransom, rather than trying to build a weapon out of the reactor, though they might sell the thing to the highest bidder - who might know better what to do to weaponise it.

      No commercial reactors contain weapons grade Uranium. Some reactors contain "mixed oxide" fuel, which has easily (chemically) separable Plutonium in it. Plutonium, of the correct isotope, can be used to make bombs, a much simpler route than enriching Uranium. Furthermore, Uranium is about as toxic as maybe Arsenic - 100kgs will not make a wasteland. Plutonium is vastly more toxic - 50pg per kilo, LD50, 30 days. - i think that makes a mere 18 grams theoretically enough to kill half the world within the first 30 days.

      So, let's not use Plutonium in commercial reactors of any sort then. Uranium is plentiful and when its half gone, then we work out what to do next.

    4. Anton Ivanov

      No, but you do not need weapons grade uranium to make a big mess

      Chernobyl is a damn good example to this.

      1. Jared Hunt
        Grenade

        Chernobyl, ah yes, only a matter of time before someone mentioned that

        Chernobyl was an old, crap, badly designed and poorly maintained nuclear reactor and had most of the few safety features it actually posessed deactivated when the accident occured. You won't be seeing anything remotely like it on a seagoing vessel (or any new power plants for that matter).

        1. dpg21

          Risk analysis

          Yes, because there's never ever been a major accident in ANY modern industrial complex run by a western company because every thing is engineered so well now.... Hello? Deep water horizon called you say? Massive contamination was it? Ah, thanks for the update.

          As with the Deep Water Horizon, the Piper Alpha and Chernobyl the safety systems were disabled by human beings. No matter how clever the system is there will be a human dumb enough to bypass it. Although modern safety systems make the possibility of an accident very small, if the severity means that an area the size of Scotland has to be evacuated the risk is just not worth it to a lot of people.

          1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
            Boffin

            @dpg21

            You might stick Union Carbide's Bohpal plant on the list.

            Built (originally) for use in the US then shipped to India when the safety standard went up and run with various safety features shut down or not working until it when bang.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Pirate

          And It Could NEVER happen with a Russian, Chinese or N.Korean Ship, let alone to US,

          A few Safety Devices DISABLED...

          (BP OR Chernobyl style...ie: Let's try an Experiment..."I wonder what would happen if I...") .

          And just a few maintenance cycles missed...

          ( BP>"Yes, WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING"...While Rupturing the earths mantle)

          And the fact that "RUST NEVER SLEEPS"...

          JUST Give it 15 or 20 years and even a SOTA Nuke Barge "WILL BE A PIECE OF CRAP".... (Although a HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE PIECE OF CRAP!!!)

          IDIOTS!!!... You think it has to "GO BOOM" to become an environmental disaster.

          IT just has to leak make the earth UN-INHABITABLE. (IE: TOXIC)

          And a Pirates "SKULL AND CROSSBONES"

          for NOT "Not to be boarded",

          But to signify POISON, TOXIC, DEADLY, ...DEAD!

          NIMBY.

      2. peter_dtm
        FAIL

        What

        No it's a damn good example of crap control systems that you wouldn' want to run your central heating

    5. Chemist

      Re : Am I mistaken...

      Forget weapons - the contents of the reactor would make a VERY nasty dirty bomb

  21. S Larti
    Pint

    But surely...

    giant nuclear powered commercial vessels are only viable when International Rescue are standing by to save the world from the inevitable accident caused by local cuisine/interfering journalists/evil foreign types*

    *delete as applicable

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One small problem

    With one exception, the countries with experience building large bulk carriers are those that have no experience with building power reactors. Even if these things were to become a reality the ships wouldn't be built in the UK or the US - if we were lucky the reactors might be.

    The only major shipbuilder that has tried nuclear shipping was Japan whose Mutsu first sailed nearly 20 years after the keel was laid and which became infamous when a radiation leak was sealed with a mixture of boiled rice and old socks. She was scrapped in 1992 after running up bills of more than a billion dollars and having done no useful work. The Otto Hahn from Germany was eventually converted to diesel power as she was uneconomic on nuke juice and the very beautiful NSS Savannah was decommissioned because she couldn't make money.

    It'll be a brave company that sinks money into the quagmire of marine nuclear, especially now when shipping rates are very low and when there is a glut of cheap ships waiting for work. The whole things smells more like a company desperate for new outlets for its technology rather than any particular demand from users.

  23. Chemist

    Oh, great

    Just what we need - a mobile nuclear reactor that's capable of being hijacked

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A better idea

    Nuclear in a cargo ship is way too dangerous for multiple reasons. But an idea that could work is to have electric ships that recharge overnight at ports that have a single secure nuclear plant. Perhaps battery tech isn't advanced enough yet but you could certainly fit a shed load of lithium-ion cells in a 50,000 ton cargo vessel not to mention more esoteric types of battery that only work on large scales such as liquid metal ones.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      great idea, try Aluminium

      I like this idea, despite it being downvoted.

      there was a plan a couple of years ago to us cheap hydro electricity to refine aluminium - which has an energy density greater than oil. This is shipped as "energy" - it is then dissolved in a special battery, producing some aluminium salts which are kept for later recycling.

  25. Hermes Conran
    Alert

    Excellent idea

    Nothing would be able to stop these land ships! No Icebergs to worry about, just perhaps the wrong type of snow!

  26. Robert Hill
    FAIL

    SUCH a bad idea I don't know where to start...

    I am trying to figure out what scares me more:

    1) The fact that a ship-board nuclear reactor is VERY different from a land-based atomic power plant, in that it runs at much higher internal coolant pressures (to take less space on-board) and thermal ranges?

    2) That such plants are MUCH more likely to go unstable, and potentially very quickly in the event of a coolant accident (the most common kind).

    3) The fact that the Navy deals with this by rigorously training and re-training highly skilled reactor techs for on-ship use, which is a highly expensive undertaking

    4) Even WITH such extensive training, they still get it wrong from time to time, as the USSR did with the Lenin nuclear icebreaker:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_(nuclear_icebreaker)

    5) The fact that commercial cargo lines operate with the lowest-cost, just-barely-trained crews they can get away with, usually Asians or South Americans, often illiterate?

    6) The fact that commercial cargo carriers have no trained security force, nor weaponry in sufficient amounts, to safeguard such a nuclear, travelling plant...

    I mean, this is futurism circa 1955, when we thought that atomic cars would be in dealer's showrooms by the '70s...

    It is also an incredibly bad, bad idea. EPIC FAIL in the making...and I even endorse nuclear power on land.

    1. Fireice

      Not sucha a bad idea after all...

      Given the amount of thinking that you put into your post I can't believe that you missed the biggest point (others posting here are excused). Everybody can name two major nuclear power station accidents (the are no sea based power plants unless you use the other sense of the word or include some crazy on-the-spot Russian projects). Hardly anybody has heard about numerous maritime reactor accidents. Why? Comparing one to the other is like comparing a coal fired power plant to your grandma's stove.

      1. dpg21

        google it but...

        here you go:

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/3439005/Radioactive-water-leaks-from-nuclear-submarine-HMS-Trafalgar.html

        I put it to you the reason we don't hear about more leaks or accidents is that most sea going nukes are run by the military, and they are quite good at keeping stuff like that secret.

        1. Fireice

          Not so google

          Comprehension, comprehension, comprehension.... You completley missed the point of my post. Go back and read it again.

  27. Stevie

    Bah!

    This so-called "nuclear ship" is clearly a crudely mocked-up cgi picture rather than a shipping paradigm changer.

    I have grave reservations that the thing can be built at all if they can't even draw a convincing picture of it.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Brilliant idea...

    Let's carve lanes all across the Arctic with civilian run nuclear vessels that will always be 100% maintained and sea worthy with profit being the main goaline. Great idea...

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "weapons grade uranium"

    If civil nuclear technology can't be abused for weapons grade stuff why are the Yanks so upset about Iran's reprocessing? Please?

    Anyway, it doesn't have to be weapons grade uranium to be useful to a terrorist, does it? Criticality would be quite handy but even that isn't really necessary either.

    "400 rads, ladies and gentlemen. A lethal dose to anyone within a radius of ten yards. Get it while it's hot!" [jedburgh]

    (c) Troy Kennedy Martin, 1985 (?). Respect is due.

    1. Fireice

      Re: "weapons grade uranium"

      Oh, yes, the dirty bomb scare pops up once again.... I thought we got over it after the Bush years considering that the only people who wrote articles about it were government spin doctors and not scientists.

      Regarding the reprocessing, I think you answered your own question. They are upset about reprocessing (namely extracting Pu-239 from the fuel, which is how India and Pakistan got the bomb btw) and not the reactor bit. And, no, you can't do that in your garage.

    2. Jared Hunt

      The yanks are upset because...

      ...the Iranians are doing their own enriching. IRRC their excuse for enriching their own is because nobody will sell nuclear fuel to them 'ready made' as it were.

      If you have the technology to enrich unraium enough to make it into fuel, it isn't a huge leap to keep on enriching it till it's good enough for bombs.

      That and the fact that they are developing longer and longer range launchers at the same time does give them grounds to be somewhat suspicious.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Simple Reason

      The tech you use to convert Uranium out of the ground into the 5% U235 form for reactor use is the same tech you use to bring it up to the 99%+ U235 form you use for bombs. You just run the gas centrifuges for longer to purify the material. This is also the reason why many of the deals with states trying to build nuclear plants involve the superpowers giving them pre-built reactors to use. The hardest part of making a nuclear bomb is actually getting the fissile material. In the case of a Uranium based bomb you have to purify the junk you dig out of the ground. In the case of a Plutonium based bomb you have to manufacture the Plutonium in a fast breeder reactor. Either way it is very hard.

      Once you have the tech to make your Uranium reactors though, you also have the tech for a bomb. Selling people a reactor unit from Rolls Royce or similar does not give them any tech they need for a bomb though.

    4. Ian K
      Headmaster

      "Criticality would be quite handy but even that isn't really necessary either."

      Oh, it really is.

      Lazy Hollywood scripts have led to the phrase "the reactor's going critical" as being synonymous with "OMG it's about to explode, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES".

      In real reactors, criticality's the point at which new neutrons generated by fission exactly balance those lost by absorption, leaking out of the sides, etc... In other words, a critical reactor's one operating at a steady power level.

      To get to useful levels of criticality, you have to go through a period of the even more alarming-sounding supercriticality, where more neutrons are being generated than lost.

  30. Joe User
    Stop

    Forget blowing up the reactor

    Think "Chernobyl on the high seas".

  31. raving angry loony

    fission expeditions

    Nuclear power is a wonderful thing. Trouble is, what to do with the toxic radioactive waste that these things generate? Not to mention the radioactive nuclear plant once it needs to be replaced?

    Until the problem of either disposal or recycling is solved - and the solution is paid for by the people who profit from the nuclear plant, NOT by some unwitting 3rd party like the taxpayer - then as far as I'm concerned the whole thing is a non-starter.

    If someone comes up with a way to deal with the disposal problem though, by all means, bring on that nuclear fission!

  32. Jemma
    WTF?

    umm... what does this red flashing light mean...?

    The problem that everyone has missed so far as I can tell is the human one. Many container ships are crewed by people who have enough training to press the right button at the right time - any further than that and they are about as much use as the average PC World support engineer...

    Reactor systems arent all that complicated - when they are working well - their inherant problem is that when they go wrong, they tend to cause cock-ups of epic proportions... and some bloke whos training has been "push that button when the boat does this" is not going to have the first clue about sorting the problem out before half of Harwich is propelled into low earth orbit (not a great loss to the world methinks, but people are so litigious when half their family is wiped out)

    I heard tell that there was a relatively well thought out system that could use thorium as a power source instead of the more commonly used plutonium etc. Those reactors are more expensive but they dont tend to wipe out all life within a 50 mile radius when some idiot decides the reactor feed fail indicator is something to do with the stereo system..

    The inherant problem with nuclear power and general transportation is simple. Its the reason why putting something like a jet engine or a nuclear reactor in a Fiat Punto is not going to happen... the human issue. If you forget to top up the oil in your ICE car... you get a munched engine... if you fill up the reactor with tap water and it gets clogged with limescale... the resulting explosion could take a sizeable chunk out of whatever overpriced commuter village you happen to live in.

    As to the somalia issue, I dont think there is any point in running that sort of vessel out by there - water temperature is higher, you dont need stupid amounts of power to take 65,000 tonnes through an ice field at 15 knots. Even if pirates did get on board a nuclear vessel its very doubtful they'd be able to slap on a few charges to make the equivalent of a nuclear bomb using the implosion principle - they'd need more expertise than is available down the local souk...

    I concur with alot of people on here that its a bad idea - but I think its a bad idea simply because it relies on average people to run the ships if the running cost isnt going to be astronomical... and average joe and a nuclear reactor is a really really bad idea.... houston we have a problem is not going to be even close...

  33. ian 22

    No emissions <snicker>

    And Chernobyl produced no emissions, either.

    Reminds me of the "too cheap to metre" propaganda.

  34. Sentient
    Alert

    Time is Money,

    Maintenance costs time & money.

    Maybe we should call the first nuclear tanker Deepwater Horizon.

  35. AndyC
    FAIL

    Some facts from someone in the industry...

    There's a lot of talk about terrorists getting hold of the reactor/fuel and setting off a bomb, but, the reactor itself has a reactor vessel that is probably 6-12" thick (it has to be to withstand the pressure) so it would have to be a mightly large shaped charge to breach that! Additionally, if they did, somehow, manage to get to the fuel, they would be dead in seconds if they tried to handle it.

    The reactor vessel also would weigh somewhere in the region of 100 tonnes. So it wouldn't be easy to remove from the ship anyway. Even in an explosion of LNG, the reactor would be designed to fail-safe (yes, even a gas explosion can't outrun the trip switches to shut down the reactor).

    Oh and to reply directly to Robert Hill:

    1) The pressures are more than likely to be similar to a commercial PWR. After all, it will be a smaller reactor than Sizewell B (3000+MWth), producing much less power, so it follows that the pressures will be similar to or less than that.

    2) How are they going to go unstable? Remember, they are Pressurised WATER Reactors, on a ship that floats on a sea of, well, water... And how many coolant accidents have there been on commercial plants (much bigger and more powerful plants BTW), three? Four? (Sellafield fire, 1957, TMI 1979, Chernobyl 1986...)

    3) No argument there.

    4) Ditto, but you must remember that that was Russia. I can guarantee that the regulators would never let a nuclear powered ship anywhere near the EU if it's operators were not trained to the same or better standards as the Civil nuclear operators.

    5) See answer to 4.

    6) Look up the Devil Core on wikipedia. Just an instant (less than a second) of exposure to a criticality incident killed one and injured a few more. How are we going to get the highly radioactive fuel out of the reactor without irradiating anyone within 20 yards? I would also bet that any merchie powered by a nuclear reactor would have some means of defending itself.

    Despite all that, I don't think that it will be viable. The insurance alone would cost more than a years worth of revenue... Good idea to float, but like the nuclear powered plane, it will ever get off the ground... (badum tish).

    1. Ian K
      Grenade

      How large a shaped charge?

      It's *not* my area of expertise, but if you believe the figures on this page:

      http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/bullets2-shaped-charge.htm

      a 150mm diameter cone-shaped charge, weighing about 5kg, can punch a hole 178mm (7 inches) in armour plate. That's already deeper than the lower range of thickness you quoted, and 5kg isn't exactly massive.

      Of course, one narrow hole wouldn't be catastrophic, but even so the "they're so thick they're nigh invulnerable" argument doesn't look sound in itself.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Dirty bomb. Er, no.

    The amount of lead necessary to isolate a nuclear core does not encourage any sort of dirt bomb. Even if it blew up in the port, only the ship would be contaminated in a practical manner. To remove said lead to make it worthwhile would cause the death of said terrorists. The amount of explosive necessary to tear the ship apart and cause a real dirt bomb would be put to better use directly. Catch 22.

    I hope they do try, and die of digestive and skin systems breakdown (followed by extensive bleeding), which are the first ones to go. Horrible deaths from acute radioactive poisoning FTW.

    Submarines are said to use 20% enriched Uranium for propulsion, ground NPPs use 5% at best. CANDU reactors use natural uranium (or something pretty close to it). Not weapons grade, not even close. Which ones will be used? I bet PWRs or the submarine-type ones will be used for ships.

    Are they likely to go unstable? It depends on how they are built. RBMK reactors WERE likely to go unstable, and only if badly mishandled they would blow in your face (Chernobyl was this kind, and all safeties were turned off on purpose, and deliberately). No wonder Russia is shutting all RBMKs reactors down in a near future. PWR reactors are not unstable per se, they tend to safely shutdown in LOCA (LOss of Collant Accident) events. Three MIle Island was of this kind, its core melted in a typical LOCA, it vented some gas (controversial?) and they just had to shut it down, as foretold in by-the-book accident event. But that is ground-based NPPs. Both RBMKS and PWRs are lethal if opened while in operation. RBMKs allow the replacement of each nuclear rod, thus allowing the creation of weapons-grade elements, while PWR reactors simply don't allow opening while in operation. I don't know the submarine types to post a remark about them.

    Exactly because they are so expensive to build, they are not likely to be operated by untrained personnel. The news mentioned just one private enterprise with such capability, and they are not likely to sell it to operators running on semi-literate skeleton crews. I bet anybody with such capability wouldn´t do it either.

    SNAFUS happen, and hard training in combination with an (often) over-engineered machinery leads to safe shutdowns, not catastrophic failures.

    My bet relies on PWR reactors, because they operate on 150bar water pressure. (PWR stands for Pressurized Water Reactor). In case they lose the water, (a LOCA, as I said) the reactor shuts down, but the decay heat can still melt it down. Since 150 bar is the rough equivalent of 1500m depth of water, you just have to scuttle the ship in 1-mile deep waters, in a worst case scenario. Ground NPPs rely on double or quadruple-redundancy machinery, with safety on top of safety, and their Operating Handbooks claim 10e-9 to 10 e-12 chance of a really, really, bad event happening. Certainly that is not going to happen on ships.

    Again, the type of nuclear reactor is the key factor to determine the safety of the ship, along with the necessary enrichment. The navy can use 20% U235 because the ICBMs on board are equipped with 98% Plutonium warheads, which makes the point moot for ballistic submarines.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Atoms for Peace and all that jazz

    My grandad was on the maiden voyage of the NSS Savanah (the worlds first nuclear passanger/cargo ship) and he didnt grow a third head or anything. We do have lying around the house a plaque from the ship which was supposed to be given to a dignitary at one of the ports (New Zealand I think) on that first voyage but they refused it entry. It now justs acts as a door stop....faintly glowing...

    The Savannahh wasnt profitable as one poster has already said, it was half passanger half cargo and not much use as either.

    Whilst nuclear ships sound like a grand plan LNG + Nuclear = big, dirty boom if it all goes wrong, and those LNG ships are big, just pop down to Milford Haven to see one if you dont believe me!

    Just imagine half of wales devastated by nuclear powered LNG...just imagine......

  38. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Boffin

    Dialling down the hysteria a *little*

    1) *Most* US reactors are "Pressurized Water" designs. Their originator was the one on the USN "Nautilus". AFAIK Pressure levels (c200bar with a BP of 315c) have been safely managed on a fairly regular basis for *decades*. High power density was a key design factor. Safety was a secondary concern. In contrast Chernobyl was a *low* power density design.

    2) The latest generation US sub (and presumably their UK/French/Russian?Chinese) competitors have an option to run with "natural" cooling *without* pumps

    3) Very compact reactors use *highly* enriched (or "bomb" grade) uranium to the high 10s of % (93% for example) which can avoid refueling *entirely*.

    4)Conventional reactors are normally enriched to 4%.

    5)Naval reactors are more enriched and can be as high as bomb grade.

    6) The Canadian CANDU design used heavy water to side step the enrichment problem and run with natural Uranium at 0.7%.

    5) Any reactor will breed Plutonium.

    7)Others have pointed out that Plutonium is *highly* toxic. It is also *much* more difficult to make a nuclear bomb with

    8)Rolls Royce is the only UK mfg of seaborne nuclear reactors. They seem to have been based in the historic naval dockyards at Dudley in the West Midlands.*

    9) Modern reactor design favors *passive* measures where the systems remain long term safe

    10)Ship reactors are *relatively* small (10-100s of MW) rather than GW level units of power stations.

    11) Naval submarine reactors seem to be fueled for life designs. Others (certainly the Russian ice breakers) *are* designed to be re-fueled.

    Bottom line. A low enriched uranium (no Pu) with passive safety features which can be re-fueled after several years (with a suitable re-cycling infrastructure to do so) *seems* highly possible.

    Weather the idea can attract enough *cash* for someone (anyone) to build it is another matter.

    *Not strictly true. But the odd fueling accident won't produce any obvious changes in the local population.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    "too cheap to metre" (sic)

    It seems that, having enjoyed this lie for the last fifty years or so, the nuclear lobbyists are now denying that they ever said "electricity too cheap to meter". Well it's a bit late chaps. You're fresh out of credibility. Just like this story.

    Thanks for the "Chernobyl? no emissions?" reminder anyway. It provides an opportunity to point out that, twenty three years on, sheep farmers in Snowdonia still do not have freedom of movement, because of the radiation risk if their sheep get into the food chain.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/29/sheep-farmers-chernobyl-meat-restricted

    Twenty three years? And how far away was Chernobyl from Snowdon?

    Almost makes me wonder if Snowdonia's radiation problems relate to something closer to that part of the world. Maybe something that happened in 1957 in Windscale, maybe something else. Obviously our government and the industry wouldn't lie to us, or hide bad news, would they.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7030536.stm

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      gubberment lies?

      Just look at the number of industry shills that have crawled out of the wood work in this one story alone in a fairly minor website and you can imagine the amount of effort the nuke lobby must be putting in to the rest of the media.

      You've got to hand it to them though, even when it gets reported, I've very rarely seen a leak or accident make it to the front page of a newspaper or mentioned on the telly.

      I'll bet though that there are some beaches in the UK that newspaper editors will NOT let their family near.

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Public ignorance?

        I see the loony greenies have noticed an article on this fairly minor website and begun shepherding their flocks of mindless followers here to make ignorant comments about reactors exploding and people glowing in the dark.

        See what I did there.

        Strangely, some of us who care about the environment are prepared to discuss the facts instead of simply dismissing anything that contradicts our preconceived ideas as the product of a propaganda conspiracy*.

        *note to self: must really stop pretending that it's possible to debate conspiracy theorists.

  40. Farai

    LMFAO

    Is ANYBODY concerned that the precious ice we've been told is breaking too fast because of 'global warming' is now going to have it's breaking INTENTIONALLY ACCELERATED by the works of man..? Anybody? Anybody at all? Fiiiiiiiiiinal offer, no takers? Sold, to the suited and booted man looking for short-term gainzzzzz!!!!

  41. Mips
    Jobs Halo

    Keep out of the Arctic

    With so much information available about the loss of Arctic ice sheets and this causing the acceleration of glacier loss we go into the Arctic at the peril of our future. There are other solutions to the energy crisis (what crisis) so we should develop these before putting more heat into the Arctic environment.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "Ground NPPs rely on double or quadruple-redundancy machinery"

    Do they? Really? In 2010 or thereabouts?

    In the much-delayed vastly-overbudget EPR power station being built at Olkiluoto in Finland, as far as I can see one of the reasons for the delay is that the control system proposed by the supplier does not meet the long-standing and entirely understandable European regulatory policy requirement that reactors have safety shutdown systems which are logically and electrically separate from the operational control systems.

    What kind of supplier knowingly starts building a project with a plan that they know won't meet the regulatory safety requirements? What kind of customer knowingly approves purchase of a plan that they know won't meet the regulatory safety requirements? [One following the so-called "fast track" methodologies, presumably, except here it hasn't turned out all that fast].

    Obviously similar regulatory breaches won't occur in the marine industry, not if RR are supplying the reactor anyway (or so we are told above), but...

    Policy: www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/software.pdf

  43. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Ahem: Before building a ship you better have a word with ...

    Canada, since the navigable, although iced in sea routes, traverse Canada's territorial water.

    Some countries have restrictions on the introduction of nuclear material into their territories.

    1. asdf
      Flame

      dont tread on Canada

      or they will send you a sharply worded letter. Whatever they and Russia can claim all they want but at some point most of the Arctic will be declared international waters (economic resource extraction a different story which will be handled by the courts).

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Nice Thorium Fuel Site

    http://www.thorium.tv

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Much cheapness

    Would this be a bad time to ask about the cost of decommissioning?

  46. FuzzyTheBear
    Welcome

    Respecting the environment.

    Yesterday decision was made in Quebec to have no drilling or activities in the Gulf of St Lawrence all the way out to sea.Reason number one: the fragility of the ecosystem.We just gave up billions in revenue to keep our water ways and beaches clean forever.This is the right type of decision. We , Canadians , feel strongly about the north and keeping the ecosystems free clean and intact.Any kind of activity up there will totally demolish it's pristine state and is not only a crime against ourselves , but against the most fragile ecosystem on the planet.

    Of course there are people willing to sacrifice all this for a little oil. Ignorants that never set foot north of the 45th parallel and never saw what the arctic is and lived there for a while.Here like in everything else , the key is education. When it comes to the oil and gas industry all i need to say is Valdez and Gulf .. imagine the Gulf event in the arctic ? The potential for any accident .. not even involving oil and gas is extreme. The fragility extreme. Worth the risk ? NO. Once we scrap the planet , there's no going back. It's the end, there are no second planets to move to. Time to get the oil out of our lives , not risk any more fragile ecosystems.Time to shut big oil off the most fragile ecosystem in the world. Money is not the only thing that matters.Shipping goods is not important enough to take that kind of risk. Glow in the dark Polar Bears ? not for us thanks. Keep out the arctic period.

  47. Tigra 07

    Kaboom!

    Wouldn't the danger of nuclear materials from the ships being passed around rule this out?

    There was already a spy killed in London with polonium so it could happen on a larger scale with nuclear ships if people start stealing bits of the reactors and sticking them through letterboxes of neighbours

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    @Iranian nuclear reprocessing

    To the folks that have said the Iranian nuclear reprocessing facilities can be used to generate weapons grade uranium: thank you.

    Now you can please perhaps help explain the industry claims that UK reprocessing facilities (which afaik are conceptually the same as the Iranian ones) cannot be used for weapons grade uranium. Please?

    Is there some magic technical difference in the uk that stops weapons grade stuff coming out, or is it just that the nuclear industry on the whole still can't be honest with politicians or public?

    It's not the technology that frightens me. I'm a physicist, I have a clue.

    What frightens me is the fifty years and more of lies, lies, and more lies.

    1. Ian K
      Thumb Down

      Erm...

      Iran's current uranium _enrichment_ facilities start with natural uranium, are based on centrifuges, and could in principle produce the highly enriched uranium needed for a bomb. A bit of a challenge, mind.

      UK _reprocessing_ facilities use chemical processes to separate uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods. Once you have enough plutonium you can, in principle, make a bomb out of it; it's part of the essential nature of the stuff. The uranium, on the other hand won't be coming out of the process enriched (quite the opposite - the fissionable component has just spent several years in a reactor fissioning, after all).

      Not conceptually related things at all. Are you confusing uranium with plutonium, and/or enrichment with reprocessing?

      Also, the only "folks" mentioning "Iranian nuclear reprocessing facilities" was Anonymous Coward (presumably a different one) yesterday evening who seemed to be confused about what "criticality" meant too. I wouldn't count that person's words as a devastating expose that leaves the entire UK nuclear establishment scrambling for a response.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    all for the public good, eh?

    Too much defense&tech industry PR on the REG lately.

    Surely, zero emissions is a joke. And why bother with it anyway, if climate change is a hoax?

  50. John Murgatroyd

    Let

    pirates hijack a nuclear vessel.

    Then we can watch them try to get the fissile material out of it, for a short while.

    And why assume the use of uranium ?

    Further, since the main reason for the use of uranium was so that it could be used for military purposes, why use uranium for civilian purposes anymore ?

    There are more suitable fissile materials:

    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

    "There is another option that receives relatively little attention but has compelling attributes, and that is the use of natural thorium in nuclear reactors. Thorium is fertile and can be converted into a fissile nuclide, uranium-233, inside a reactor core. Uranium-233 has the compelling attribute of being able to produce enough neutrons in thermal-spectrum fission to continue the conversion of thorium to U-233 and then into energy.

    http://energyfromthorium.com/

  51. Magnus_Pym

    Ostriches?

    I know Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand but some people here clearly do. We (earthlings) cannot survive now without power. We cannot provide enough food for the population without fertilizers and farm machinery both of which currently use fossil fuels. No one really knows (due in part to the way OPEC works out quotas) how long the fossil fuel stocks will last.

    The only thing we cannot do is nothing. To stand around slagging off every proposal of alternative power uses is just neo-luddism. I know there are dangers in nuclear power but there are also dangers in fossil fuels. Both of these are almost inconsequential compared to what would happen if we are not read for the beginning of the end of the oil age. renewable energy has its part to play but we need to be building nuclear ships and nuclear power stations as soon as we can just to keep research going in these areas so that we are not caught on the hop when the next oil scare puts prices through the roof.

  52. John Savard

    Solution

    Given the fact that commercial ships are prevented, by current international treaties, from carrying the kind of weapons they need to hold off hijackers like those around Somalia, clearly, however attractive this might be technically, nuclear propulsion for privately-owned commercial vessels that sail through international waters is simply not on.

    However, I do not see that this is an insuperable obstacle to using such vessels to transport liquefied natural gas through the Northwest Passage. Why can't the Japanese heat their homes with natural gas brought to them by the British Navy or the U.S. Navy?

  53. LesC
    FAIL

    Nuke Ships

    A brilliant idea making nuke container ships in the UK with just a few flaws:

    1. Britain doesn't have a merchant fleet to speak of.

    2. Britain doesn't have the means of building merchant vessels anymore all the shipyards have been turned into banks and shoreside housing complexes.

    3. RR may have still have the tech to make domestic reactors but they'll then have to be sent to China, Korea or India (anywhere but here - see 2) to be installed into ships. I can see the Yanks allowing compact nuke tech to go there. Not.

    4. The last nuclear fuelled lighter, the Sevmorput, was going to be turned into a drill ship as using nuke freighters is unprofitable. Vessel is currently mothballed.

    5. Russian nuclear icebreakers can't work in warmer water with Canadian conventional icebreaking ships struggling - there's going to be similar troubles with nuke freighters.

    6. Nuclear Powered LNG ships. What could possibly go wrong with several hundred thousand gallons of explosive at all concentrations methane or whatever gas and a nuclear reactor? The explosive power of all that gas would easily crack containment.

    7. Green Of The Earth would love this one. There's enough here to keep the treehuggers in chainings to railings for life.

    8. Wouldn't these things have to be armed to the teeth to repel whichever Pirate / Terrorist Group is this months flavour?

  54. Glen Turner 666

    Commercial shipping can't even manage fossil fuels responsibly

    You have seen a commercial ship, right? The one's we get here in Australia are at the limit of seaworthiness, with a crew that is often as good as press ganged from some poor Asian country. If the government steps in and condemns the vessel as unseaworthy the owners are as likely as not to abandon the ship and crew. The last government report was titled "Ships of Shame".

    You really think leaving these owners and crew in charge of a nuclear reactor is a good idea.

    And what about end-of-life issues. One third of ships sink. The others are broken in poor countries with no attention to safety.

    The blunt truth is that commercial shipping is too irresponsible to be let anywhere near nuclear power.

  55. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ian K: 00:07 re enrichment

    Hi Ian, thanks for that. Same AC here as in both posts. Now, in reverse order:

    1) Enrichment

    You're quite right, I said reprocessing when I should have said enrichment. Apologies. Subject to that correction the same question applies; if Iran's enrichment is cause for concern because it has dual use civil/military potential, what's different between the UK's *enrichment* plants (URENCO allegedly can't do military?) and Iran's (which allegedly can)?

    2) Criticality

    The reference to criticality was merely meant to illustrate that criticality isn't necessary for a dirty bomb or similarly effective terrorist threat; all you need is to be as effective as (say) envelopes with white powder in them, I'm not sure that was clear. Obviously the military need criticality, and it looks good in the movies.

    Thanks again.

    1. Fireice
      FAIL

      Back to school....

      Please, to post something intelligent in this topic you need at least a basic understanding of nuclear physics. Enriched uranuim (or any uranium isotope at all) would be the wost material to make a drity bomb apart from lead.

      You are still confused about criticality as well. Criticality simply means that enough neutrons cause fission events to sustain the reaction. Any working reactor stack is critical. A bomb is super-critical because it doesn't need thermal neutrons (more complicated stuff).

  56. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Back to school: you're confusing technology and terrorism

    I did do nuclear physics thank you. I have to wonder whether your definition of "dirty bomb" matches the industry standard one - standard explosives mixed with nasty radioactive stuff for maximum political (not physical) effect. Just the kind of thing someone could make from the fuel for the reactors in this picture, if (big IF) someone had access (before it goes into the reactor itself. for example... or does it miraculously just appear there). I don't remember where lead comes into this picture, can you remind readers please??

    I'm quite happy with my understanding of criticality, thank you, and in this case I am happy to agree with your interpretation too.

    I also know that science and the general public are, for whatever reason, usually a bad combination. As are industry insiders and the general public.

  57. AgeingBabyBoomer

    Great idea

    And twenty to thirty years later when said ship is beached in a third world country to be broken by hand by illiterates working for less than a dollar a day, there will be no problem at all tracking and controlling the spent nuclear fuels - none at all.

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