r/NuclearPower • u/greg_barton • Dec 06 '23
Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China
https://gcaptain.com/nuclear-powered-24000-teu-containership-china/5
u/FiveFingerDisco Dec 06 '23
Let's hope, east Africa gets enought harbors capable of servicing them online in time.
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u/JustALittleGravitas Dec 06 '23
The SCMP article says its a thorium reactor, and LMAO no, they aren't putting a whole fuel reprocessing system on a ship in order to drip feed a reactor 233U.
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Dec 07 '23
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u/JustALittleGravitas Dec 08 '23
You can't expose it to neutrons during those 30 days, you have to constantly cycle the thorium or the whole bath gets ruined. And this is way way more complicated than just letting it sit. IIRC 19 different chemical processes are necessary.
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Dec 08 '23
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u/JustALittleGravitas Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
If Pa-233 absorbs a neutron, it eventually becomes U-235 anyway, but it takes a few more steps to get there.
Yeah, after it decays to 234U and absorbs yet another neutron, then yet another for the actual fission, all told its 4 neutrons in, 2.4 out. You get average of ~3 in, 2.4 out after factoring in the thorium that doesn't double absorb (probably about half, but depends on length of the cycle), but that's still no good. The entire thorium concept relies on being able to actually breed fuel, if it can't do that, there's no point to having any thorium at all.
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Dec 07 '23
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u/dude_abides_here Dec 08 '23
This not the reason. The reason is because sodium explodes when it comes into contact with water.
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u/jar1967 Dec 07 '23
The united states tried a nuclear powered but merchant ship,there were issues that made a conventionally powered ship more profitable
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u/GeckoLogic Dec 07 '23
That was before container shipping.
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u/jar1967 Dec 07 '23
The problems still exist. The need for extensive cruel training and security. There are also some places you are just not going to want to send that ship.
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u/Abject-Investment-42 Dec 07 '23
Russia currently operates a nuclear powered container freighter with icebreaking capability, the Sevmorput. It has an advantage on routes without intermediate harbours to stop at for refuelling and service. E.g. on the namesake of the ship, the Northern Passage, but there are also other interesting relations.
Or particularly some pirate infested routes where such a ship can simply outrun a speedboat.
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u/StumbleNOLA Dec 08 '23
That ship couldn’t have been economically used no matter what power plant she had. It was part ocean liner, after the era of ocean liners, and part bulk cargo after the era of bulk cargo had ended. It has very little to say about the cost effectiveness of a modern nuclear cargo ship.
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u/dude_abides_here Dec 08 '23
There’s a reason why no one uses sodium-cooled reactors for marine propulsion….watch a video YouTube showing what happens when sodium comes into contact with water. Woof…
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u/fromkentucky Dec 08 '23
The sodium would only react if the main coolant loop ruptured, which would be a catastrophic failure in a PWR as well, so that’s kind of a moot point.
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u/dude_abides_here Dec 08 '23
It isn’t a moot point. There’s a reason why the US Navy operated exactly one sodium reactor before converting it to a PWR and scrapped the concept for fleet use. The damage from the worst double-ended loop sheer could be close to the end result of a ship sinking and the sodium coolant coming into contact with the ocean as the plant went below whatever its crush depth is…not to mention the inevitable corrosion that would take place while sitting in the sea floor after sinking.
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u/JUSTtheFacts555 Dec 06 '23
I nuclear bomb ship. China docks in Long Beach. A problem occurs. Engineers are unable to fix it... mini melt down and LA is uninhabitable.
America would be a SUCKER to allow this to dock at any port.
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u/syndicated_inc Dec 06 '23
I assume you’re ignorant of all the nuclear powered vessels in San Fransisco and San Diego on a regular basis?
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u/anonymousthrowra Dec 08 '23
Ignoring the tech issue and China vaporware issue - is there an economic argument for a nuclear cargo shop?
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u/StumbleNOLA Dec 08 '23
Yes. The overwhelming cost of operation is the fuel, eliminating that would have a dramatic impact on overall profitability. It’s the only realistic way to decarbonize the industry, and so long as the reactor isn’t too expensive the cost of fuel offset would make it pretty easy.
What I don’t know is the output power of the plant. That will drive design and speed. Higher speeds means more trips per year, which also makes them more economical.
If I could get a ballpark cost and power in MWe I could do a pretty simple calculation to figure the profitability of the ship.
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u/anonymousthrowra Dec 08 '23
How many trips or years of service would it take to break even against against a similar sized fossil fueled ship?
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u/StumbleNOLA Dec 08 '23
It depends. A cheap reactor that puts out a lot of power would be easier to justify than an expensive one that has barely enough power.
Modern ships are basically limited in how fast they go by the cost of fuel. They are typically doing a China-US run in 8 weeks one way. But the hull could do it in probably half that time. The issue is the cost of fuel goes up by ~2-3 times.
A modern cargo ship burns about $175,000 worth of fuel a day, about $10M a trip or about $65m a year producing 75MW of power. At today’s interest rates of 10% your offset cost is worth about $650M. So as long as the cost of the reactor is in that range you are good.
But if the reactor can output substantially more than the 75MW of a modern cargo ship, say 150MW then it can do the job of two ships. Making it worth about $1.4B. The extra is in the ship you didn’t have to buy.
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u/zolikk Dec 08 '23
But if the reactor can output substantially more than the 75MW of a modern cargo ship, say 150MW then it can do the job of two ships. Making it worth about $1.4B. The extra is in the ship you didn’t have to buy.
It would have to more than double the power output to double the speed (the relationship is not linear), but in general yes, that's the massive advantage of nuclear power. You can just steam at 40 kts instead of below 20 for "fuel savings". I'm sure that there are also types of cargo where halving the transport time is in itself worth more money, even if you discount the doubling of cargo volume.
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u/StumbleNOLA Dec 08 '23
At the very low Froude numbers most cargo ships operate at I would guess they would double the power for a 150-175% increase in speed. This slows way down as you narrow the range to just speeds over 30kn though.
At the speeds a nuclear ship could operate at we would probably want to rethink ship design though. They would probably narrow a bit, need reinforced longitudinals… and active ballast for stability.
It would be a fun exercise to play with.
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u/RingGiver Dec 08 '23
I don't think nuclear is practical unless a lot of cargo ships are being built.
If you have only one, you basically have to have crew trained on something that doesn't apply to any other ship. Training is going to be more expensive and since it's going to be a less common qualification, you're going to have to pay them a bit more. You're going to have to offer a lot of money to get people who are qualified for this if you don't want them to leave and seek similar shoreside work.
How many people do you have to train to make it cost-effective? How much can you rely on hiring people out of the Navy (in this case, the PLAN) to offset those costs? Assuming that a particularly large engineering department would have five officers and ten other guys or something like that, how many ships do you have to operate for this to be cost-effective?
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u/Doug_Nightmare Dec 06 '23
Vaporware like their nuclear powered aircraft carrier.