September 5, 2024
George M. Moore
The following is an excerpt from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Late last year, Jiangnan Shipyard, a part of the Chinese government-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), announced that it would create one of the largest cargo container ships ever built, and power the vessel with a thorium reactor.[1] The announcement came amid a flurry of publicity about nuclear-powered commercial shipping that harkens back to the era when nuclear energy was going to provide electrical energy that would be too cheap to meter.
The recent burst of enthusiasm for nuclear-powered ships is largely driven by concerns about climate change and belief in new, supposedly safer nuclear reactor designs that would dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping.
But that enthusiasm ignores nuclear safety and security concerns that make the development of nuclear-powered commercial ships a particularly bad idea in an era of international terrorism and piracy. And that’s not even to mention the cost of insuring them.
A history of failure. Like clothing fashions, ideas for the applications of nuclear energy phase in and out of vogue. After President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech in 1953, nuclear propulsion of commercial ships made initial steps forward. In 1959, the United States launched the nuclear-powered NS Savannah, a passenger/cargo vessel that became known as the “Peace Ship.”[2]
Continue reading at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
