The ship that failed to change the world

One thing the article <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> mention is that the Savannah was designed for an earlier age -- like the Bristol Brabazon, a large piston-powered airliner that arrived just in time for the jet age, the Savannah was a traditional break bulk cargo ship (with passenger quarters) that arrived just as the multimodal freight container revolutionized freight shipping (and the passengers who had formerly travelled by sea finally made the transition to cheap-enough jet travel).<p>Savannah was called for by Eisenhower in 1953 but didn&#x27;t enter service until 1962 -- just too late to be an attractive proposition. Multimodal container transport really caught fire between 1955 and 1970 and the Savannah couldn&#x27;t be retrofitted as a container ship (nor would it have been efficient as one: its cargo capacity of 14,000 tons is tiny by modern container freight standards).

<i>Just three other nuclear merchant ships were built - the German oil transporter Otto Hahn; Japan&#x27;s freighter Mutsu; and the Russian ice-breaking container vessel Sevmorput. Like the Savannah, they are no longer in service.</i><p>Umm, so the first nuclear ice-breaker was built by the Soviet Union in the 50s and was in service since 1959, 3 years before Savannah made its maiden voyage. Unlike Savannah, Lenin was in use for 30 years until it was decommissioned in 1989. Also in contrast to Savannah, its success led to 8 more Soviet nuclear ice-breakers built between 1975 and 1990. In fact, the most recent nuclear ice-breaker was built by Russia and entered service in 2007.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nuclear-powered_icebreaker</a>

Cleanup after an accident isn&#x27;t exactly cheap.<p>I was surprised to read that the cost of the Costa Concordia cleanup - involving a refloat - is over $1.5 billion, not including disposal. That&#x27;s for a conventional cruise liner, not nuclear.<p>That ship only cost $570 million new.

There are still some nuclear powered ice breakers in operation. The last one was finished in 2007.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nuclear-powered_icebreaker</a>

Savannah will be open to the public on October 19 [1]. Well worth it if you&#x27;re in the area.<p>[1] <a href="http://portfestbaltimore.com/highlights/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;portfestbaltimore.com&#x2F;highlights&#x2F;</a>

Even the US Navy is backing away from nuclear power. They only build nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. They used to build nuclear powered cruisers.<p>It is more expensive to build, to maintain, to break down at the end, and to train the many crews that will serve over the ship&#x27;s lifetime.<p>Only when you absolutely <i>need</i> a nuclear reactor does it make sense to absorb that expense.

Luckily, this also failed to change the world. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nuclear-powered_aircraft</a>

A nuclear-powered civilian ship could make sense today -- ironically, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) or bigger would be the most economical use -- at sea most of the time, on long trips, and huge.

It would be nice to put them on new oil tankers, but then what would we do with all the excess bunker fuel? Can low quality fuel be used for anything else?<p>Also it would be very bad if one was taken by pirates, much worse than any existing cargo or oil ship.<p>Putting nuclear reactors on airplanes is just asking for trouble. Planes crash and it&#x27;s very difficult to avoid, even a B2 has crashed and it&#x27;s almost 100% computer controlled.

I&#x27;ve always been curious at the strange lack of foresight during the nuclear age of what to do with the waste. It&#x27;s almost South Parkian:<p><pre><code> 1: Fuel a Ship with nuclear power 2: Collect Radioactive waste 3: ??? 4: Profit! </code></pre> As always, I wonder, what was the plan exactly? What did the engineers of yesteryear actually plan to do with the stuff?

Meanwhile, in Russia: <a href="http://barentsobserver.com/en/sections/society/russia-designs-nuclear-train" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;barentsobserver.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;sections&#x2F;society&#x2F;russia-design...</a>

I wonder if the TerraPower or other small scale nuclear startups are thinking about this as a market. It seems a traveling wave reactor would be a good candidate given its fuel usage profile.

One of the guys at my first job at General Dynamics in the 80&#x27;s worked on the nuclear airplane. They all thought it was dumb idea at the time.

seems like this would be the perfect use case for the SSTAR reactors that are being developed at Livermore Lab.

Unless human race invents better non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the Nuclear age won&#x27;t arrive.