there would have to be some serious standards before putting a nuke plant aboard “general shipping” or similar applications. good gawd!, some of the crew i’ve worked with there is NO WAY you’d want them running a nuke. and we all know of the “needs a little work” krap aboard any ship. jeez. … and the ship owner? on a budget?,
how about turn over, you’d want someone to stay aboard for half their life would’t you?
nuh uh!!! … leave it to the navy with 8 times the crew it takes to run it.
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Modular reactors are different than any other reactor previously used for ship propulsion.
The biggest problem I see is having enough reserve power to maneuver effectively in a storm if the thing bricks. Otherwise it’s just a box that either puts out power or doesn’t.
Could that be solved with an auxiliary oil-fired steam plant? Sevmorput has that while Taymyr and Vaygach completed sea trials prior to reactor installation with temporary boilers sitting on the helipad.
one never knows when they’ll need power and i’d say waiting for aux boilers to get up enough steam to turn a screw isn’t going to work
No, you’d have electric drive and back up generators. Question is the sizing. How much power do you need? What if a backup generator goes down too? At a certain point it isn’t cost effective.
You mean just like every other single screw ship in the world?
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I don’t think you have to worry that a ship powered by MSR will be manned by engineers like todays. If any at all they will be there to keep the hotel service equipment working.
Most likely the ships will eventually be unmanned, thus no need for hotel service.
Any maintenance required on aux. equipment will be done in port by shore personnel, or at shipyard visits.
Here is a bit of background on stationary Thorium MSRs:
https://www.thmsr.com/en/overview/
For use on ships they will be the modular MSR small, self-contained, sealed and tamper proof. If anybody should try to get access the reactor will shut down automatically.
No. Modular reactors are not accessible for repairs and by design brick even for relatively minor fixable problems. If you’ve ever made a small repair to a single screw powerplant to avoid a major one later you can see where this can be an issue.
Once the design is mature this will be less of a problem but the initial rollout is going to have some bricks.
More designes, but still no firm orders:
Nobody is going to steal one to power their village. A few martyrs will be happy to plasma cut one open to get at the nasty bits for use in a dirty bomb.
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Not to power trading ships but stationary floating nuclear power plant:
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Nothing new here. Molten salt reactors are being flogged by several groups, including people who have built and maintaned some great marine equipment.
Samsung Heavy Industries have some experience in shipbuilding and KHNP is not new to Nuclear Power Plants, Seaborg may be the “new boy on the block” here, but they appear to have some powerful backing.
I don’t know enough about the subject to judge if there are any major difference between the proposed reactors from ThorCon and Seaborg, except that Seaborg use spent fuel from existing plants as part of the process.
In any case, none has yet built any floating nuclear power plant based on MSR technology.
(The Russian one that is in operation in the Arctic is based on “traditional” reactor technology)
Got curious. Found this video with more details about the ThorCon project:
ThorCon’s Thorium Converter Reactor - Lars Jorgensen in Bali - Bing video
A step further forward from a barge mounted Thorium fueled MSR for inshore use is Ulstein’s Thor and SIF concepts (Mentioned here before, I believe):
PS> Doesn’t say if this has anything to do with ThorCon, or Seaborg, though.