from Hacker News

BWXT and Crowley Developing Nuclear Power Generation Ships

by kaiwen1 on 9/21/23, 11:27 AM with 56 comments

  • by acidburnNSA on 9/21/23, 1:12 PM

    Floating nuclear power plants are very intriguing. You get extremely reliable cooling, decouple from high G earthquake accelerations, and, most importantly, can build in a fully serialized shipyard based manufacturing facility, tackling the major cost issues of nuclear in general.

    The first one the US ran was the MH-1A Sturgis, built out of a converted liberty ship. It powered part of the Panama Canal for a while. [1]

    The big story, which is nearly forgotten, is that Westinghouse and Newport News jointly developed large floating nuclear plants as Offshore Power Systems. They installed the world's largest gantry crane on Blount Island in Jacksonville, FL at their nuclear reactor mass production gigafactory and got an actual manufacturing license from the NRC to build the first 8 units. [2]

    I consider this one of the most promising ways to get nuclear power's ducks in a row, enabling it to mass produce reactors at a pace relevant more relevant for a rapid global energy transition. And starting out with a relief ship is a very appropriate way to kick this off again.

    NPR's Science Friday covered that story back in 2020 [3]

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A

    [2] https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

    [3] https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-powe...

  • by turnsout on 9/21/23, 12:28 PM

    Wonderful typo in the image caption:

      > Crowley's concept is to place nuclear reactors on ships to provide power as a disaster and in remote locations
    Power as a Disaster (PaaD) is such a hardcore business model

  • by gs17 on 9/21/23, 12:57 PM

    I've been playing too much Starfield, I was thinking nuclear-powered generation ships, as in spaceships which travel interstellar distances with multiple generations of people born onboard.

  • by Rustwerks on 9/21/23, 1:15 PM

    What's the feasability of making nuclear powered cargo ship 'trains'? Is it possible to string them together with cables for power?

  • by fghorow on 9/21/23, 3:14 PM

    Am I the only one to think of the Boxing Day tsunami -- ~200,000 dead -- or Fukushima, for that matter?

    There might only be minutes of warning to get one of these away from a shore connection...