I too have been known to get the powerships after a few nights of blackouts.
Russia and China have NUCLEAR ones in service
Great! There’s plenty of precedent for floating nuclear reactors. Just look at any modern aircraft carrier or navy submarine. The US Navy operates hundreds of nuclear reactors at sea with a perfect safety record.
There’s gotta be a way for the navy to commercialize reactor ships and use them for freight. Even if it means a crew of navy engineers on each freighter. I’d take the remote possibility of a nuclear incident in the middle of the Pacific, or even a dirty-bomb or two. Either one is going to cause less destruction than bunker fuel.
This would have been a great idea on paper, but unfortunately it’s not really possible in practice, because unlike the Chinese and Russian civilian nuclear power ships, nuclear powered military vessels typically have weapon grade reactor fuel. Military vessels use nuclear power not just to give them infinite range, but to also give them the kind of sustained top speed that is significantly higher than what’s typically feasible with conventional power plants (especially so for submarines, which have to push through water, and aircraft carriers, which are really massive). So military vessels use weapon grade reactor fuel that have much higher uranium concentration to achieve the kind of power density that allows them to have such tremendously high sustained performance.
And just think about the kind of regulatory and legal nightmares if anyone even thinks about trying to incorporate a power plant running on weapon grade nuclear fuel, into a civilian power grid LMAO.
Or a practical example, many countries who don’t have their own nuclear arsenal (which is like the majority of countries by number), do not even legally allow a nuclear powered military vessel of any kind to sail within certain hundreds of nautical miles to their boarder, not even for peacetime refitting and provisioning, because of nuclear proliferation concerns and such.
And in addition to that, because of the inherent risks involved in a military vessel running on weapons grade fuel, military ships have their reactors designed so that they require continuous control and operation from human operators, so that in the case when their human operators have become non-functional, as one could always expect in a terrible artificial disaster that is called warfare, these reactors would guarentee to shut down themselves automatically and safely, so they don’t have a chance to just randomly turn into unreachable nuclear disasters in deep ocean. Because of this, their operational cost is much much higher than a commercial nuclear power plant that’s designed to keep running, for the same amount of power they can generate, and that’s not even counting the significantly more expensive refueling cost from higher concentration fuel yet.
If Russia and China can make civilian nuclear vessels a thing, there’s gotta be something that can be done to make a safe civilian nuclear cargo ship. Or some other very dense green fuel, or Hydrogen. That’s probably the only place on earth that hydrogen makes sense.
How did our navy manage to overcomplicate a dead-mans switch so much to make a nuclear ship significantly more complicated to operate than reactor power?
Huh? Nothing is stopping you from making a powerplant-on-a-ship, as long as you keep the civilian stuff and the military stuff separate, as they should be. A civilian nuclear powered power ship is a civilian power ship built with a civilian commercial nuclear reactor running on commercial grade reactor fuel available to everybody, a military nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier is a military vessel running on weapon grade nuclear fuel because the military need maximal possible energy density for combat capabilities.
I was explaining why it’s a bad idea to try to use a military vessel as a civilian power ship, but nothing is stopping you from building a ship that’s designed specifically for a nuclear powered civilian power ship from ground up, as China and Russia have both demonstrated already with success.
Most other country just haven’t done this for civil applications because they haven’t had a need for something like this that’s strong enough to justify the extremely high initial upfront cost of a civilian nuclear power ship. Russia has a really big need for this because of the massive economic value of the sea path around the north pole, that tend to get frozen half the year, where there’s no infrustructure to provide power otherwise, and their nuclear power ship doubles as a nuclear icebreaker. And China on the other hand have really big state-subsidized companies who are already heavily invested in building their own commercial nuclear products so it’s kind of like a natural extension to their product line.
Absolutely! Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest options, and it’s a superior option for a floating power station.
If it has a meltdown and you sink it it would be pretty safe as long as you’re not right in the coast right? Water blocks radiation and forces from an explosion pretty well
That’s interesting! There also exists a similar thing for 18 wheelers
Old diesel locomotives have been repurposed similarly, since they’re literally a 3000hp generator and fuel tank on wheels.
I heard this can almost power a selfhosted AI
One step closer to the AI spacecraft and habitats in Iain M. Bank’s Culture novels.
One more step, only a googolplex to go.
This has been done before,in the 1920s the USS Lexington, an electromotive aircraft carrier, was hooked up to Seattle to provide power when a hydro plant went dry in a drought.
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Oh great, this terrible idea is actually going into works
It’s often a disaster recovery type of thing.
That makes sense. In an earlier climate conference some oil billionaires had a similar idea, but instead to create artificial scarcity and drive energy prices up by moving the power plant to the highest bidder
Wait until you hear about Floating nuclear power plants.
We already have floating nuclear power plants and we’ve never had an issue with one (in the US at least). Look at any modern aircraft carrier or naval submarine. Many of them are able to be connected to shore and power nearby buildings in emergencies.
The article on Nimitz class carriers is a great Wikipedia rabbit hole to dive into.
Floating nuclear power plants would be safer in disasters than ones on land if anything. We literally use water to block the radiation since it’s so effective at it.
I remember watching a youtube video about what i think was a large land train built by Russia that was a portable nuclear power station.
That is awesome
This was an excellent read, thank you for linking that Wikipedia article. I never knew about these and they are cool af
Some countries depend on them, Dominican republic for example. According to the locals it’s been reliable except during hurricanes, but that’s an extreme.
Isn’t that a rather inefficient solution?
Seems like it was what they could afford. It puts the plant right near the core of the city where it’s most needed, and right next to the fuel transfer station for the whole island makes logistics yet simpler.
Why it’s floating vs on land, I truly don’t know. I expect it’s because the city was already historical and built up (the DR being Columbus’ first landing place in the Americas).
Oh cool
It’s supposed to be an emergency solution.
However, megawatts of power generation isn’t exactly something that can be thrown together in a couple weeks. It can take months to stabilize a grid to the pint the ship can disengage.
Edit: mega, not kilo. I was thinking too small.
I think you’re looking for megawatts
Yep, I did mean that. Thanks!
