Since China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) unveiled its KUN-24AP containership at the Marintec China Expo in Shanghai in early December of 2023, the internet has been abuzz about it. Not jus…

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/

  • Wheaties [she/her]
    ·
    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 [comrade/them]
      ·
      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 [he/him]
      ·
      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.

      • oregoncom [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        Yeah but I'm worried about the radioactive metals themselves bioaccumulating in the surrounding wildlife.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      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 [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        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
          ·
          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 [she/her]
      ·
      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.