It makes it clear that Maersk has joined a study being lead by Lloyds Register and Core Power to assess the potential of using 4th generation nuclear reactors on cargo ships.
A couple of demonstration nuclear powered commercial ships have been built in the past (by the US, Japan, & Germany), but they’ve all been too expensive to operate commercially and have all been retired or converted to diesel, mostly due to being too complicated to maintain and repair, and too specialized to benefit from any economies of scale.
The US Navy and France both currently operate nuclear powered aircraft carriers, the US, UK, Russia, France, India, and China all operate nuclear powered submarines, and Russia has a bunch of different nuclear powered military ships and icebreakers so it’s not a radical concept, and I have no idea where the linked article is getting the “only 4 have ever been built” claim.
Lloyds Register has also been running these studies for years, the only real interesting tidbit here is that Maersk is interested and they’re big enough to move the needle singlehandedly, but again they’re just signing up to participate in an early high level assessment of the idea, the assessment could just say ‘nah, not worth it’ and this is just a non story.
This is a trash article.
Here’s the Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/maersk-agrees-study-nuclear-powered-container-shipping-2024-08-15/
It makes it clear that Maersk has joined a study being lead by Lloyds Register and Core Power to assess the potential of using 4th generation nuclear reactors on cargo ships.
A couple of demonstration nuclear powered commercial ships have been built in the past (by the US, Japan, & Germany), but they’ve all been too expensive to operate commercially and have all been retired or converted to diesel, mostly due to being too complicated to maintain and repair, and too specialized to benefit from any economies of scale.
The US Navy and France both currently operate nuclear powered aircraft carriers, the US, UK, Russia, France, India, and China all operate nuclear powered submarines, and Russia has a bunch of different nuclear powered military ships and icebreakers so it’s not a radical concept, and I have no idea where the linked article is getting the “only 4 have ever been built” claim.
Lloyds Register has also been running these studies for years, the only real interesting tidbit here is that Maersk is interested and they’re big enough to move the needle singlehandedly, but again they’re just signing up to participate in an early high level assessment of the idea, the assessment could just say ‘nah, not worth it’ and this is just a non story.