I Heard that the 10 largest cargoships produce that Same amount of pollution then all cars combined.
Why are there no nuclear powered cargo ships?
In: 35
Because bunker-fuel is super-cheap.
You need to buy gasoline, right? Can’t get to work without it? It is a NECESSITY. So you’re gonna buy it no matter what, really. (it’d take a lot to change that). So gasoline is the most expensive product made out of crude oil. But EVERYTHING ELSE that gets made out of crude oil is going to be cheap. And it MUST be made because we must produce gasoline. It’s a package deal, if you want a gallon of gasoline, you pour in x amount of crude oil and get some fraction out as gasoline and some fraction as bunker-fuel, plastic, asphault, kerosene (which is jet-fuel and RP-1 rocket fuel).
Bunker fuel is terrible, and not even diesel engines can take it. Impurities, viscous, needs pre-heating. It’s not even good for boilers. It’s also hellishly polluting, worse than other fuels. But cargo ships are huge and are made to take it.
We will have bunker-fuel burning cargo ships until it is cheaper to switch to alternatives. The international nature of their business means it’d be a nightmare to try and regulate. It will not be cheaper until we pivot away from such drastic gasoline dependence. When we say electric cars are good for the environment, in part, this is what we’re talking about.
(But they’d probably work more with sail-power than nuclear. It’s just really expensive to run a nuclear power plant if you’re not subsidized by the military.)
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