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
Nuclear power plants in aircraft carriers and submarines are _very_ expensive and require a lot of people to maintain. Like dozens of sailors to maintain. Very costly. Not to mention that at several times of the lifetime of the vessel you have to rip a hole open in it to refuel the reactor – in a special shipyard, only a few of which exist with the required size, facilities and people.
For military navies the amazingly stupid cost is justified since having a nuclear reactor acheives other more important goals: cruise length and stealth. Being “green” for a cargo ship is a distant secondary requirement to being as cost-efficient as possible.
Also there are safety/security concerns – for one, most naval nuclear reactor designs are still highly classified. If there _was_ a commercial nuclear ship reactor there’s still the safety issue. A naval reactor has so many safeguards and redundant systems (and therefore cost), but again, the navy doesn’t care about cost as much as other things. Commercial shipping is in a race to the bottom in terms of cost. KNow how ships are all registered in Panama or other weird countries? Ship maintenance and safety regulations are governed by the country of registration. Countries like Panama simply have more lax safety regulations. Which is cheaper to adhere to. I can’t imagine the corners that would be cut in a commercial nuclear reactor – and if a 3Mile Island nuclear incident happened in Boston Harbor, a lot of people would be super unhappy about it. Again, the risk of nuclear incident in a naval ship is 1) less likely 2) secondary to other objectives.
Cost effectiveness is the primary reason. But I think a small part of it too is public unease over nuclear anything – either the safety, or the spent fuel/waste. In the 80s shadow of Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island, these concerns were valid. But both of those incidents were easily foreseeable, avoidable, and wouldn’t have happened if proper safety procedures had been followed (in fact you could argue if the procedures hadn’t been followed 3MI would/could have been a lot worse). Since then, commercial nuclear power generation has a stellar safety record. And the fuel/waste issue is a nothingburger – the total sum of all spent nuclear fuel from ALL commercial nuclear reactors that have ever existed is less than the amount of garbage either of New York, Toronto or London send to landfill in a week.
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