BWXT and Crowley Developing Nuclear Power Generation Ships

https://maritime-executive.com/article/crowley-partners-with-bwxt-to-develop-nuclear-power-generation-vessels

by kaiwen1 • 3 years ago

66 56 3 years ago

turnsout2• 3 years ago

Wonderful typo in the image caption:

  > Crowley's concept is to place nuclear reactors on ships to provide power as a disaster and in remote locations

Power as a Disaster (PaaD) is such a hardcore business model

rbanffy• 3 years ago

And a perfect fit for nuclear.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

When disasters are part of your business model, doesn't that create some supervillain-tier incentives?

turnsout2• 3 years ago

Supervillains are some of our best enterprise customers!

gs17• 3 years ago

I've been playing too much Starfield, I was thinking nuclear-powered generation ships, as in spaceships which travel interstellar distances with multiple generations of people born onboard.

MengerSponge• 3 years ago

I parsed it the same way. "Generating" would probably be more clear than "Generation"

To be clear: I support both nuclear power generating ships and most types of generation ships.

acidburnNSA5• 3 years ago

Floating nuclear power plants are very intriguing. You get extremely reliable cooling, decouple from high G earthquake accelerations, and, most importantly, can build in a fully serialized shipyard based manufacturing facility, tackling the major cost issues of nuclear in general.

The first one the US ran was the MH-1A Sturgis, built out of a converted liberty ship. It powered part of the Panama Canal for a while. [1]

The big story, which is nearly forgotten, is that Westinghouse and Newport News jointly developed large floating nuclear plants as Offshore Power Systems. They installed the world's largest gantry crane on Blount Island in Jacksonville, FL at their nuclear reactor mass production gigafactory and got an actual manufacturing license from the NRC to build the first 8 units. [2]

I consider this one of the most promising ways to get nuclear power's ducks in a row, enabling it to mass produce reactors at a pace relevant more relevant for a rapid global energy transition. And starting out with a relief ship is a very appropriate way to kick this off again.

NPR's Science Friday covered that story back in 2020 [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A

[2] https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

[3] https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-powe...

newsclues• 3 years ago

As a ship designed for disaster recovery they are very interesting, as they can provide power, clean water, food, medical care and basic services for a city, and they can travel rapidly, but only access costal cities.

acidburnNSA5• 3 years ago

Exactly. This happens with nuclear-powered military vessels sometimes, like in Haiti 2010 where the USS Carl Vinson rolled up and desalinated 150,000 gallons of seawater per day.[1]

[1] https://www.dvidshub.net/image/252518/soldiers-bring-fresh-c...

One of the great benefits of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is that we were able to proceed at 30 knots for two full days to arrive on station,” said Carl Vinson Commanding Officer, Capt. Bruce H. Lindsey. “Our flexibility, speed and sustainability enable us to immediately begin the relief efforts.” — MC1 Jason Thompson, militarynews.com, Jan 21, 2010 [2]

[2] https://www.militarynews.com/norfolk-navy-flagship/oceana/ne...

picadores• 3 years ago

40 % of humanity.. https://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodolo... Not to bad..

jabl• 3 years ago

While I agree there are some very positive aspects to floating nuclear power plants, I'm somewhat skeptic about some of these plans that use molten salt reactors. A thin-skinned reactor filled with a water-soluble fuel sounds like a potentially nasty accident scenario. At least with a traditional LWR the seawater (hopefully!) has to corrode through some pretty thick metal before it reaches the fuel elements, and even then the fuel is in a relatively inert state (oxide).

acidburnNSA5• 3 years ago

Fully agree. LWRs are perfect for floating. Going to some untested/underdeveloped reactor for especially the first one is really dumb. My favorite meme is the Anakin/Padme one where Anakin says he's going to build reactors on ships and Padme asks: "PWRs right?"

kaiwen1• 3 years ago

The reactors will be high temp gas cooled reactors, not molten salt, and use TRISO, which is much safer. [1]

[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/new-triso-nuclear-mini-r...

mcpackieh6• 3 years ago

It's also possible to repossess a floating power plant, perhaps making it easier for these projects to be financed.

acidburnNSA5• 3 years ago

Yes, that's another advantage. If the locale decides they don't want you, or if your PPA expires and you can get a better rate elsewhere, hoist anchor and head on over.

theptip4• 3 years ago

I think the objective benefits of this approach look promising, but my concern is that nuclear isn’t held back by being objectively worse, it’s held back by psychological trauma from the Cold War and general scariness of nuclear in the eyes of the lay public. By that metric, this is worse! “What if it melts down? Then you will pollute our oceans and create mutant fish and make the whole planet uninhabitable!”

The public seems really bad at understanding dilution of small amounts of nuclear discharge for example; see Fukushima.

dale_glass8• 3 years ago

It is being held back by being objectively worse, that is, expensive and slow to build.

If it made money, it could be used to overcome the political problems. Just look at oil. Huge ecological disasters and it still keeps on chugging because it makes lots of $$$ for lots of people.

TylerE2• 3 years ago

Interesting, I hadn't heard of those. I know a few countries (including the US) tried nuclear-powered civilian ships and they were...not successes. The problem is the viable lifetime of a sea-going hull is very limited, perhaps 25-30 years at the outside.

Decommissioning nuclear ships is a BIG problem. Salt is a formidable enemy.

There are plans to convert the US attempt (NS Savannah) into a museum ship, but they can't even start on it yet because the hull is still, almost 50 years after the reactor was removed (1976) too radioactive.

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

Hulls can last a lot longer than 30 years if the hull is maintained. If you keep steel painted, it can last a long time.

ridgeguy• 3 years ago

They would be decoupled from immediate earthquake effects, but not from subsequent tsunamis.

Had there been such a ship moored off the Tohoku region of Japan in 2011, there would have been less than an hour to mitigate damage. Not even enough time to put to sea, let alone shut the reactor down. That might well be as if one of the Fukushima reactors had been uprooted and carried inland.

p1mrx5• 3 years ago

"Survive the worst-case tsunami" is an engineering problem with possible solutions. If they can convincingly solve this problem, they'll have a much easier time finding customers.

Rustwerks• 3 years ago

What's the feasability of making nuclear powered cargo ship 'trains'? Is it possible to string them together with cables for power?

acidburnNSA5• 3 years ago

Not sure about trains, but large ocean-faring nuclear-powered tugboats have been considered to move container ship sized barges most of the way and then let battery or fossil powered tugs bring em the final mile into port.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1963...

throwuwu• 3 years ago

Yo dawg we heard you like containers so we turned your container ship into a container!

pydry2• 3 years ago

Theres exactly one nuclear powered cargo ship in existence the Sevmorput.

There used to be 4. The reason there arent more is because like all things nuclear it just costs too much.

tbihl• 3 years ago

The cost of labor is too low, and the prevalence of pirates too high, to justify this idea. You're also talking about serious intermodal requirements to handle these things when they get to the interface between open ocean and restricted waters, because safe navigation is a near impossibility with the tug configuration you're proposing, especially once navigational constraints (e.g. land or shoal water) come into the picture. A large merchant vessel takes several miles to stop on its own, before you consider any towing configuration. If you've never operated around them, you probably don't have the instinct that you can be in serious danger of a collision while still several miles away from another vessel, but what you're proposing is scary.

Even without the navigational problems, you're necessitating armed guards by having these ships operate internationally, because these ships would be huge pirate targets on a much more severe level than the scrap metal and parts theft that is present throughout the world. That gets... tricky, legally (see https://www.swedishclub.com/upload/Loss_Prev_Docs/Piracy/PIR...)

Also, cargo ships are already enormous. Trains pale in comparison. We don't need these headaches. Oceangoing shipping is miraculously cheap already.

Edit: I'll also point out that, regarding the sibling comment's link, oceangoing shipping was a much smaller club in 1963, so the navigational challenges would not have seemed so daunting. Containerized shipping didn't even exist until the mid-50s, and AIS and radar let us safely pack way more vessels into small spaces than they could have suspected.

bewo001• 3 years ago

Pirates and the habit of shipowners to hide responsibilities in a maze of sub contractors, charterers, and flags of convenience.

The the maritime industry's track record of preventing oil spills is pretty bad. Do we really want those people to routinely operate nuclear reactors?

This industry has an issue with faked crew certificates (https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/fake-certificates-conti...) "An EU-sponsored pilot project, branded ‘GetQuality’, revealed that “nearly every tenth seafarer worldwide” has experienced fraudulent certificates"

Insurance is already a tricky issue for land-based nuclear power plants. Who would insure a nuclear-powered ship? This was a major issue for the German nuclear cargo ship Otto Hahn.

mcpackieh6• 3 years ago

The feasibility of convincing enough countries/port authorities to permit you park a nuclear reactor in their port is fairly low. If something goes wrong, they'll be the ones that have to clean up the mess after your shipping corp declares bankruptcy or otherwise skips out on the cleanup bill.

kjkjadksj2• 3 years ago

They don’t mind doing it when the ship is signed for the US navy though

fghorow• 3 years ago

Am I the only one to think of the Boxing Day tsunami -- ~200,000 dead -- or Fukushima, for that matter?

There might only be minutes of warning to get one of these away from a shore connection...

kjkjadksj2• 3 years ago

These would probably be put behind a breakwater

theptip4• 3 years ago

Tsunamis are a shallow water phenomenon. If you are in deep water it’s not going to affect you. So a floating reactor would have been much preferable in Fukushima.

Also, a floating reactor (at least, traditional water-cooled design) can’t get into a runaway meltdown; worst case the core drops into the ocean with infinite cooling potential. Again this probably reduces the potential for radioactive discharge.

AtlasBarfed2• 3 years ago

If some maritime modern pro-nuclear regulatory framework can get adopted for decarbonization of transport, then it would be good for nuclear.

Yeah, not going to back any design that isn't fundamentally meltdown-proof.

Probably one of the reasons why molten salt is referenced. Also because it seems more scalable, the liquid nature of the fuel means you could de-fuel it at a port more easily. But I could see pebble bed type stuff being worthwhile too.

It honestly makes logistics and waste transport a lot more interesting. A power plant comes with a ship to transport it as a minor portion of the overall cost. It forces the plant design to be fundamentally portable and modular even if it gets placed terrestrially.

Portability should make nuclear viable for lots of industry-specific use cases that nuclear

But LCOE on current nuclear is 6x more than wind and solar. As stated, it would need some regulatory freedom / clean slate, a sweet spot engineering design, and we could probably get to 2-3x (current price) of wind/solar and get to a palatable cost for decarbonization.

mcpackieh6• 3 years ago

Tsunamis shouldn't be an issue for ships, but if the floating power plant is in a busy port you do have a risk of a Halifax, Texas City or Beirut scenario. Lots of fertilizer and sometimes explosives move through ports and a powerful blast could severely damage or even sink the power plant. It doesn't happen terribly often, but it does happen sometimes.

BWXT and Crowley Developing Nuclear Power Generation Ships

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