Above: Using nuclear for freight and other shipping could see new operational and commercial models in the shipping industry
Social licence A social licence for nuclear powered shipping is a challenge, says LR, although it points out that two nuclear powered merchant ships have operated in the past. One, NS Savannah, was built by the US government and toured ports in the US and around the world to promote the peaceful use of nuclear power for 10 years between 1962 and 1972. The other, a German nuclear-powered research vessel called Otto Hahn, visited 33 ports in 22 countries during its 10 years of operation from 1969. Both were subject to restrictions or excluded from some ports. A governance framework exists for nuclear ships,
according to the paper. Chapter VIII of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) gives the basic requirements for ships provided with a nuclear power plant, encompassing design, construction, operation, maintenance, surveying, salvage and decommissioning of nuclear reactors on ships, including as a means of propulsion. A Code of Safety for Nuclear Merchant Ships added further guidance but a 1962 Brussels Convention on the Liability of Operators of Nuclear Ships has never entered into force. However, LR says that these documents are based on the reactor technologies and safety frameworks of the 1970s and “are in need of a thorough review”. It completed a gap analysis and says developing regulations for nuclear in shipping will require the close cooperation of the International Maritime Organization and the IAEA. On shore, nuclear facilities are surrounded by Emergency
Planning Zones (EPZs). The PWRs used in naval vessels can have large EPZs when in port, several kilometres wide, which are underwritten by their governments. Clearly this would represent a significant liability for vessel operators, and might extend to a number of ports as ships move from one to another. Nuclear ships are specifically not covered by The Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims 1976 so liability falls to the operator. LR says the SMR model may help in determining a regime around this
issue: “For risks to be underwritten on the commercial insurance market, the EPZ of a nuclear ship needs to be shrunk to the boundary of the vessel, a process which may be enabled by the safety characteristics of certain SMR technologies.” It adds, “There is a broad expectation that safely reducing
the EPZ to the vessel boundary is achievable for SMRs” and it cites a methodology validated by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for NuScale.
Refuelling In conventional shipping, refuelling from fuel bunkers or recharging the batteries of electric vessels is the responsibility of the crew. Refuelling a nuclear reactor will be a specialist operation carried out by trained experts at a specialist facility and the cost profile and process is very different from conventional fuels. LR notes that fuelling a reactor will be high cost (especially compared with a single conventional refuelling) but once fuelled it will last for several years. LR says it will become cost competitive when compared to a ship’s total bunker expenses over long operational periods, but the business model will have to change. It suggests that ship owners and operators will not purchase nuclear fuel as an operational expense. It explains: “Instead, the maritime industry may lease a reactor and its operation and contract for energy output from onboard reactors. The fuel itself can be treated as a capital expense from the outset. In this scenario, the relevant operational cost is the agreed price per Megawatt hour (MWh) of energy on the ship rather than the cost of refuelling the reactor.” For port operators, nuclear vessels will require very little landside infrastructure, unlike existing port fuelling facilities which take the form of pipes, tanks, bunkering barges, cryogenic storage and other facilities. However some ports will probably specialise in providing maintenance services for nuclear vessels.
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