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
Nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways of generating power we’ve yet come up with. There have been a few civil nuclear powered ships, they’ve all been impossibly stupidly expensive to run. Russia still runs a bunch of nuclear powered ice-breakers, because ocean-going ice-breakers just genuinely need so much power and for such extended amounts of time that it makes sense in that application. But it’s genuinely the only application it’s ever worked out for in the civil space.
Even in the military space, the US gave up on running nuclear cruisers and destroyers after the cold war, once again because they cost a fortune to run. Russia only operated one class of nuclear-powered surface warship. China, Britain, and India all have nuclear submarines, yet choose to run conventionally powered carriers.
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