Not a bad idea! Unfortunately, it probably will take several years if not a decade before the first nuclear powered cargo ship will be built.
"... As of 2023, there is only one active nuclear-powered merchant ship in the world, the Russian-built container-carrying NS Sevmorput. It is tiny compared to most fossil-fuel-powered container ships and has been plagued by breakdowns. ...
In February, a gaggle of organizations based in South Korea, including those behind multiple shipping lines, signed a memorandum of understanding with this in mind. The group aims to develop nuclear-powered merchant ships equipped with small modular reactors. But they won’t say much else about the project. ...
Both the South Korean and Norwegian efforts are considering molten salt reactors. Instead of solid fuel rods, the nuclear fuel in these devices is dissolved into, for example, molten fluoride salts. Such reactors first operated in the 1960s and are nothing new, but technical issues, including corrosion occurring inside the reactors, have hampered their widespread rollout. Despite concerns from some over the viability of this technology, multiple countries are pursuing it. ..."
There is another project afoot, in Norway, called NuProShip (Nuclear Propulsion of Merchant Ships). The team behind it has come up with a short list of six possible reactor designs that could work in a demonstrator vessel ... plan to convert a liquefied natural gas tanker called the Cadiz Knutsen to run on nuclear power.
Credits: Human Progress Weekly Links
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