Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

gcaptain.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#31

Post by Turskarama »

goodSteveramos wrote: post #22
megaman821 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current trajectory of batteries, it is not looking like the cost of overnight storage is going to break the economics of solar. Seasonal storage is another issue all together. Also, very northern latitudes may be better served by nuclear power.

Grid battery storage would have to fall in cost far more than expected to be practical. Goldman Sachs analysts don’t see costs falling by more than a factor of 2 for the foreseeable future. https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/electric-veh...

This analysis only looks at vehicle batteries, but there are a ton of technologies that aren't suitable for vehicles that _are_ suitable for the grid due to weight concerns and a lot of them have room to become significantly cheaper than lithium.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#32

Post by mike_d »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #29
mike_d wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my point, the United States basically threw in the towel in 1970 despite the director of ORNL calling it the facilities greatest technical achievement. The only reason uranium won out over thorium was because the waste was weapons grade and useful during the cold war. Unlike the US, China has very little in the way of domestic uranium supplies - but incidentally has massive thorium stockpiles from its monazite min…

> The only reason uranium won out over thorium was because the waste was weapons grade and useful during the cold war. This is such a common myth that it inspired me to write a whole thorium myths page to explain how and why it's not true, back in 2014: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth1 Happy to discuss more but I've said a lot on that page.

Absolutely said a lot about the technical and economic justifications, but don't really address the political aspect at all. Remember the that decision was made by the AEC, which at the time was heavily influenced by the Military Liaison Committee. Also forgive me if I don't agree that the people who oversaw unethical human experimentation for 30 years and released radiation over my home town might not have made their decision based on the same sound reasoning you lay out.

If you haven't read it already, Dr. Weinberg's memoir does a good job detailing the politics around the demise of the MSR.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#33

Post by acidburnNSA »

mike_d wrote: post #32
acidburnNSA wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason uranium won out over thorium was because the waste was weapons grade and useful during the cold war. This is such a common myth that it inspired me to write a whole thorium myths page to explain how and why it's not true, back in 2014: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth1 Happy to discuss more but I've said a lot on that page.

Absolutely said a lot about the technical and economic justifications, but don't really address the political aspect at all. Remember the that decision was made by the AEC, which at the time was heavily influenced by the Military Liaison Committee. Also forgive me if I don't agree that the people who oversaw unethical human experimentation for 30 years and released radiation over my home town might not have made thei…

The decision to shut down the Molten Salt Program within the AEC was driven by Milton Shaw, who also and at the same shut down numerous other programs: sodium graphite program (Hallam), organic program (Piqua), superheat BWR (Bonus, Pathfinder), high temperature gas, etc. He shut these down because he wanted all focus to be on the Fast Breeder Reactor (Clinch River). This was all in 1968.

Uranium-fueled commercial reactors never had anything to do with making plutonium for weapons. Plutonium was made by graphite and heavy water moderated reactors at Hanford and Savannah River.

I have read Weinberg! It's my favorite book. It's interesting that at the end he was more excited about the PIUS PWR than the MSR. Here are my reading notes: https://whatisnuclear.com/weinberg.html

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#34

Post by sickofparadox »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30
sickofparadox wrote: post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom.

> Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom To be clear, the NS Savannah was a showpiece. It was part passenger, part freight in a way that made no economic sense but looked fantastic and showed the concept could work. It ultimately failed because it had to bear the brunt of port negotiations. But that's a policy hurdle.

Oh for sure, it was an atom corps show piece to flex their muscles, and probably also to entice ports to allow nuclear powered ships since many did not before it existed.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#36

Post by preisschild »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #15
sickofparadox wrote: post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah Related ship back during the nuclear tech boom.

I recently found and got digitized an amazing documentary about the Savannah: https://whatisnuclear.com/news/2023-07-12-the-nuclear-ship-s... Also, she's currently for sale if you're interested. If they don't find a buyer it'll be scrapped.

The reactor is unfortunately already removed though :(

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#37

Post by eszed »

psunavy03 wrote: post #5

The fact that we as a world economy are not significantly relying on nuclear power at this point is one of the biggest failures of climate change policy, if not the biggest failure ever. Yes, waste is a concern which needs to be managed responsibly. But at worst, the waste would only contaminate a finite area where it is stored. Climate change will affect literally everywhere on Earth. The US Navy has operated reacto…

I entirely agree with your big-picture analysis. However, that

> the US Navy has operated reactors for 70 years with a perfect safety record,

in no way implies that the notoriously fly-by-night shipping industry would achieve similar performance!

Also the largest historical concern about nuclear cargo ships has been proliferation: if a significant quantity of fissionable material is floating about (literally and metaphorically) in private hands, then it would become orders of magnitude easier for malicious non-state actors to get ahold of, with potentially disastrous consequences, on a world-historical scale. Given the instability, corruption, and hostility of various nuclear-armed states in the last couple of decades, that cat may already be out of the bag, and that concern could (and perhaps should) be disregarded. I don't know, and I doubt anyone does. Institutional conservatism in this area is, however, understandable.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#38

Post by eszed »

maxhille wrote: post #14
psunavy03 wrote: post #5

The fact that we as a world economy are not significantly relying on nuclear power at this point is one of the biggest failures of climate change policy, if not the biggest failure ever. Yes, waste is a concern which needs to be managed responsibly. But at worst, the waste would only contaminate a finite area where it is stored. Climate change will affect literally everywhere on Earth. The US Navy has operated reacto…

Nuclear is just not economical enough. Compare eg. to solar, where we installed the equivalent of 413 nuclear power plants just this year: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/11/28/solar-surging-58-in-2...

This thread is about power plants for cargo ships. Your response (while germane in other contexts) is a non-sequitur.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#39

Post by more_corn »

belorn wrote: post #24
psunavy03 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion power is perpetually 50 years away. I'll believe it when I see it before I die.

I will say the same for replacing natural gas in the power grid with green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is a myth invented by the petroleum industry.

Re: Plans for Nuclear-Powered 24,000 TEU Containership Unveiled in China

#40

Post by RecycledEle »

Nuclear civilian ships never took off in the First World due to the cost of dealing with silly regulations.

I suspect China will care very little about our silly regulations.

I hope they make a lot of things work that our C-suite lawyers and MBAs never understood the math on.

Post reply on HN