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...
The public seems really bad at understanding dilution of small amounts of nuclear discharge for example; see Fukushima.
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.
[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/new-triso-nuclear-mini-r...
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.
[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...
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.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1963...
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.
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.
There might only be minutes of warning to get one of these away from a shore connection...
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.
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.
> Crowley's concept is to place nuclear reactors on ships to provide power as a disaster and in remote locations
To be clear: I support both nuclear power generating ships and most types of generation ships.