Here the KUN-24AP container ship would be a massive departure with its molten salt reactor. Despite this seemingly odd choice, there are a number of reasons for this, including the inherent safety of an MSR, the ability to refuel continuously without shutting down the reactor, and a high burn-up rate, which means very little waste to be filtered out of the molten salt fuel. The roots for the ship’s reactor would appear to be found in China’s TMSR-LF program, with the TMSR-LF1 reactor having received its operating permit earlier in 2023. This is a fast neutron breeder, meaning that it can breed U-233 from thorium (Th-232) via neutron capture, allowing it to primarily run on much cheaper thorium rather than uranium fuel.
An additional benefit is the fuel and waste from such reactors is useless for nuclear weapons.
Another article with interviews: https://gcaptain.com/nuclear-powered-24000-teu-containership-china/
What is your point that you are unwilling to hear safety concerns bc it’s worse right now? That’s why there is a mass extinction. We have to move away and address safety at the same time. If that means removing private companies from shipping, so be it.
Classic “letting perfect be the enemy of good” energy.
Which is an excellent argument for going back to wind powered ships. Who cares if the treats come a bit more slowly?
I’d love some engineers to do that, I think it’d be totally awesome. However, that hasn’t been done and we can only compare proposed solutions to existing ones, not hypothetical ones.
Sailboats are hypothetical?
the best clippers were fractions of the size of the boats now, even if modern materials can make a more efficient one, we’re talking a difference of 1780 tons --> 336000 tons here. to say nothing of how much more labor is involved on a rigged ship
But what if you replaced one boat with more than one boat?
about every cargo ship has a smaller crew than an old clipper. with central planning and a disregard for profit we could multiply the number of sailors in the world by a few x100 times, but there’s no way a capitalist enterprise, or even state-run one that must compete with capitalists will do that.
That fundamentally is the core of the issue though, isn’t it? So long as profit is required we can only do completely batshit things like electric car charging stations in the middle of a 10 hectare surface parking lot and nuclear plants built into every rusty container ship. Stuff that has worked for centuries like trains and sailboats are just too radical and have too many fussy little problems.
so they’ve mounted some sails on the big cargo ships but all they do is reduce fuel use by 20-30%. if it’s even feasible for ships larger than 30% the size of a modern bulk, they gotta be newly built, no retrofitting. rigging does have a bit of automation recently so the question of how much more labor is open, though smaller ships would necessarily mean more labor for the same amount of cargo.
like i endorse it if someone got this going in an mechanized, full-wind power way. it would be dope, but ironically a much larger project than this nuclear boat. which is just changing out the engine that drives the propellor
It’s much better to just reduce shipping volume than dive into the unknown without considering safe guards. Your making dangerous arguments that are following the same reckless ideas that got us here.
Which would require a global revolution to accomplish, vs a solution that reduces real harms right now. I thought communists weren’t supposed to be utopian?
Utopian is thinking that you just hope it all works out and roll forward ignoring risk again.
The thread is absolutely filled with people telling you there is little to fear. Nuclear isn’t profitable, that is why capitalists have brainwashed you into believing it is dangerous. Even with the noted disasters, nuclear has still killed a fraction of the people coal has, per kilowatt hour created. Hell, coal plants are even more radioactive than nuclear ones. And this ship is safer still, because it quite literally can’t catastrophically meltdown, as it is in the FUCKING OCEAN.
Such is true, and yet, it would be safer without the commercialization of shipping. What point do you make? None. Only suggesting that we just blindly accept. Not shipping is the best step today until we understand the risks of a new system. Think beyond tomorrow and go slow. We need not rush, only not be complacent. To rush to gain is the disease of the capitalist.
So wait until the oceans are dead already from global warming and acidification and the grand magical global socialist revolution that is coming “any day I swear guys any day” for the last 150 years to do anything about it?
I don’t think capitalist globalism is good, I don’t think the planet’s resources should be being drained so that the treats keep flowing, but there will be megaships carrying goods globally for the foreseeable future, and this could actually, meaningfully reduce our harm done to the precious earth.