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China’s Nuclear-Powered Containership: A Fluke Or The Future Of Shipping? (hackaday.com)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by WayeeCool@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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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/

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[-] Wheaties@hexbear.net 46 points 11 months ago

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.

Molten Salt Reactors are so cool. It's wild how little they're talked about, given how much of a game changer they seem to be -- basically every mine on the planet is carting out tonnes of thorium. The last time I heard about this, it was still just a theoretical design. But now it's proven and they're putting it on ships? Fuck yeah!

[-] Wheaties@hexbear.net 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Naturally, there is a lot of concern when it comes to anything involving ‘nuclear power’. Yet many decades of nuclear propulsion have shown the biggest risk to be the resistance against nuclear marine propulsion, with a range of commercial vessels (Mutsu, Otto Hahn, Savannah) finding themselves decommissioned or converted to diesel propulsion not due to accidents, but rather due to harbors refusing access on ground of the propulsion, eventually leaving the Sevmorput [Russian nuclear powered cargo ship] as the sole survivor of this generation outside of vessels operated by the world’s naval forces. These same naval forces have left a number of sunken nuclear-powered submarines scattered on the ocean floor, incidentally with no ill effects.

that seems... convenient. how do they know?

edit; and what's with the coloured words, i was using the backtick (`) to highlight

[-] WayeeCool@hexbear.net 31 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

that seems... convenient. how do they know?

Because there has been over 50 years of extensive research?

https://www.iaea.org/resources/databases/marine-radioactivity-information-system-maris

We actually take samples and monitor those sunken reactors: https://www.hi.no/en/hi/news/2019/july/researchers-discovered-leak-from-komsomolets.

[-] DefinitelyNotAPhone@hexbear.net 25 points 11 months ago

Water is a fantastic way of insulating radiation. Nuclear plants store used fuel rods in a pool that's only 20-30 feet deep, and you could theoretically swim to within a few feet of the highly radioactive rods without issue.

A melted down nuclear reactor at the bottom of the ocean has zero ecological impact. It's bizarre to consider, but it's been backed up by extensive research.

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[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 20 points 11 months ago

that seems... convenient. how do they know?

The primary issue with land-based reactors is cooling to prevent it from reacting uncontrollably. If you're sinking something to the bottom of the ocean there is no cooling problem.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 15 points 11 months ago

Land reactors pretty much need to be on rivers, and from what i understand severe droughts forceshutdowns in europe a year or two ago.

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 11 months ago

This year too. Kakhovka dam bombing lowered the river level so much the Zaporozhia power plant would need to be shut down because of that, but it was already shut down by then because danger of AFU attacks. Also the drought in France caused several nuclear power plants to lower the output.

[-] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 8 points 11 months ago

edit; and what's with the coloured words, i was using the backtick (`) to highlight

That's the code highlight markup, which probably has some basic syntax filtering to pick out common keywords. Floor is a common math function, number could conceivably be a value used for a check in some languages, but I'm not sure why "on," "no," "left," or "a" are highlighted and can only guess those are meaningful words in some languages.

Just to see what else it picks up:

That's the code highlight markup, which probably has some basic syntax filtering to pick out common keywords. Floor is a common math function, number could conceivably be a value used for a check in some languages, but I'm not sure why "on," "no," "left," or "a" are highlighted and can only guess those are meaningful words in some languages.

left a number left a number a number left a on no floor a number

This just raises more questions than it answered. Like I can kind of see it doing some kind of heuristic to guess what's a function or variable name, but it's not clear what looks like what to it. I guess that's the issue with using it on normal text instead of just for code, where I'm assuming it highlights things rather more sensibly.

[-] Trudge@lemmygrad.ml 45 points 11 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 36 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't think these kinds of reactors are capable of producing huge safety concerns. MSR tanks are designed to deliberately flood themselves if they ever operate above a certain temperature.

And since it's on a boat, if these safety features ever fail there is one option available that you do not have on land to prevent it from reacting uncontrollably, sink it. I can't see any scenario where you wouldn't be able to cool it down because of the unique access to water that exists. It's only on land where your piping and other things can become irreparably damaged preventing you from getting the necessary cooling into the reactor.

If things get really bad in some way we couldn't possibly predict any explosion on the ship will sink it anyway.

[-] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That still all depends on responsible people properly maintaining failsafes and being willing to scuttle the ship if necessary. Corporations cannot be trusted to do any of that.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 22 points 11 months ago

I don't think you need to rely on people to scuttle, if things get bad enough it will sink itself because it will melt a hole straight through the ship.

[-] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 10 points 11 months ago

Potentially melting down in the middle of a shallow city harbour as an overworked skeleton crew is worried about their families back home getting evicted for not paying the rent all while the parent company does more layoffs and posts record profits in their quarterly reports.

[-] CatoPosting@hexbear.net 18 points 11 months ago

As opposed to the mass extinctions caused by global warming going on right now??

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[-] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

The question kind of is what's the other options. The organizational and economic pressure still applies to ICE ships. Not sure I'd be much happier about a normal tanker dumping a few thousand liters of crude oil on the coast.

[-] WayeeCool@hexbear.net 21 points 11 months ago

That was a problem with the reactor designs of the 1950s to 1990s. Over the past half century a lot of smart people have put a lot of thought into idiot proofing nuclear reactors to prevent another three mile, chernobyl, or fukushima. Reactor designers no longer make optimistic assumptions about the operator and assume they are a shortsighted idiot that cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

In modern reactors temperature coefficients tuned to automatically prevent meltdowns is something regulators care a lot about when approving designs. Rather than focusing on building safety mechanisms that the operator can trigger (ie control rods), a natural safety mechanism is built into the formulation of the fuel so if it gets too hot it is no longer capable of nuclear fission.

This is especially the case in small modular reactor (smr) designs meant to be used in commercial applications where no one actually trusts the operator to be responsible. The fuel is formulated to sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for the reactor automatically SCRAMing even if the operator does everything in their power to keep it running.

There is also a push for SMRs to use things like the thorium fuel cycle because it makes the reactor pointless for terrorists or other bad actors to target. The thorium fuel isn't useful for radiological attacks or bomb making, the only reason it even works as a fuel is because it can produce small amounts of uranium that are immediately reacted upon forming. This was the entire reason governments ignored these fuel cycles for decades, they didn't create waste that could be used for weapons making. As a result terrorists are better off getting a shovel and collecting natural uranium off the side of highways in the deserts of North Africa or North America.

https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/resources/news-room/feature-articles/positive-void-coefficient-of-reactivity-CANDUs.cfm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_temperature_coefficient_of_reactivity

[-] the_itsb@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

Reactor designers no longer make optimistic assumptions about the operator and assume they are a shortsighted idiot that cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

When will this human-centered design philosophy spread to other disciplines?

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[-] anaesidemus@hexbear.net 13 points 11 months ago

shortsighted idiot that cannot be trusted to do the right thing

blob-no-thoughts am I a nuclear power plant operator???

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[-] kristina@hexbear.net 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

molten salt reactors are a different beast altogether, its a very safe design and the fuel used is pretty much everywhere. The fuel is a really big bonus, recall an interview where a nuclear scientist asked a mining outfit how much thorium they threw away in a normal dig and the amount was enough to power America for an entire year if we made use of it. And that's just some random dig

[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 41 points 11 months ago

lets-fucking-go I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NUCLEAR GOOD VIDEO BY ME

XI DECARBONIZE THE SEAS

[-] machiabelly@hexbear.net 10 points 11 months ago

your video now has 9 likes cat-trans

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[-] oregoncom@hexbear.net 41 points 11 months ago

Typical of bazinga brains to mald in the comments about any Chinese advancement.

[-] WayeeCool@hexbear.net 40 points 11 months ago

Yeah. Annoying because nuclear powered container ships are the only realistic way to decarbonize transoceanic shipping. When you do the math, the biofuel and e-fuel plans western shipping firms have all presented are obviously not feasible. There isn't enough farmland on earth to produce enough feedstock for the required amount of biofuel and with e-fuels the economics don't work out due to how much electricity is needed per liter of fuel synthesized.

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 19 points 11 months ago

I still want to see gigantic windjammers.

[-] Infamousblt@hexbear.net 19 points 11 months ago

Got some of them in this thread too, the typical ignorant NUCULURR BAD folks who know literally nothing about power generation at all

[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 7 points 11 months ago

Where are you finding the comments?

[-] oregoncom@hexbear.net 16 points 11 months ago

just scroll down. Hackaday in particular has been the way it is for a really long time.

[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 11 points 11 months ago

Oh I only clicked the link OP provided in the comments, I see now

[-] Des@hexbear.net 38 points 11 months ago

safer then potentially dumping a zillion gallons of the dirtiest bunker fuel into the ocean when something goes wrong

[-] zifnab25@hexbear.net 35 points 11 months ago

I'd say this is a real shot across the bow for Australia, as it signals decoupling from the coal economy.

[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 30 points 11 months ago

Incidentally, Australia has huge reserves of uranium, so a nuclear economy would rely on them as well. Unless you're using breeder reactors and/or thorium reactors. some-controversy

[-] Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 11 months ago

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.

Australia isn't looking so happy.

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[-] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 28 points 11 months ago

But modern container ships don't burn coal, they burn bunker fuel which is an oil product?

Australia's days are numbered either way with China moving towards renewables an nuclear at speed but I just don't see the connection here.

[-] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 11 months ago

Noo! Maybe if we just insult them a couple more times, insinuate they are inhuman oriental savages who should be grateful that our blessed white nation is willing to give them our wonderful coal, they'll change their minds.