As nuclear is already used on aircraft carriers, and with a major cargo ship not having a large crew including guests so it can be properly scrutinized and managed by engineers, why hasn’t this technology ever carried over for commercial operators?
Similarly for hydrogen, why (or are?) ship builders not trying to build hydrogen powered engines? Seeing the massive size of engines (and fuel) they have, could they make super-sized fuel cells and on-board synthesizing to no longer be reliant on gas?
In: Engineering
In the case of nuclear, the security concerns are too great. What harbour is going to allow a potential dirty bomb floating in on a regular basis? Even if not a deliberate act, have a look at how many accidents happen between ships and then ramp up the severity of everything was nuclear. Then you have the economic…. What shipping company is going to want to pay for the training, certification, regular inspections and salary of having a crew nuclear rated? Finally, what shipping company is going to want to pay to dispose of a nuclear powered ship? What insurance company is going to insure a fleet of nuclear powered ships, knowing the cost of salvage? Hopefully you’re starting to see some of the issues…
As for hydrogen, the simple reality is that hydrogen is not economic, not is it ever likely to be. The cheapest way to make it is through steam reforming of methane, a process that is more carbon intensive than just burning the natural gas directly. Even then the cost is ~5x that of diesel. If you were to use renewably derived hydrogen, the cost would easily be ~10x. Then when you consider that most cargo vessels don’t even shell out for diesel, preferring to burn the much cheaper bunker fuel (effectively tar, a waste product of refining so thick that they need to heat it just to make it flow), hydrogen would be astronomically more expensive making the shipper unviable in the market.
In the real world, neither of these are viable options. The only people who think they are, are the folks who have adopted each respective technology. They then put the cart before the horse by confusing the fact that just because something may be technically possible, that thing then must be the solution.
If you want to know how we’re going to decarbonize shipping, start with the economics and work backwards. The cheapest way to power something that’s not polluting is always going to be to directly electrify it. Container ships are already set up to load and unload shipping containers. The infrastructure to handle a few loaded with batteries that get swapped at every port. Lo, what’s this? It’s already starting to happen in the massive amount of river shipping over in China and in the cruse market over in Europe? Neat. But that won’t get a ship across the ocean you say. True. But considering that a substantial portion of maritime shipping is literally hauling fossil fuels around, a good chunk of that shipping is going away anyway. The remainder will likely be replaced by biofuels. A carbon neutral diesel analogue that’s a drop in replacement for what we do now.
Yes, it’s not as cheap as digging up diesel today, but as soon as the world puts a price on carbon it will be. There’s also not going to be any shortage of the stuff considering how much organic waste we’re generating already that could be put to much better use than just off gassing methane into the atmosphere.
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