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Nuclear fission is far more tractable than fusion, highly proven in marine transport, well-suited to workloads (boiling water -> electical generation -> propulsion), and yet still has proved nonviable not only in commercial shipping (Soviet/Russian icebreakers excepted), but in military transport other than submarines and, for the US and France, aircraft carriers. Even in those use-cases, most militaries with submarine fleets have no nuclear subs, and those which do often have few; only the US, Russia, UK, France, China, and India operate any nuclear submarines. Only the US and France operate nuclear carriers, with the latter operating only one such (China has one under development). The US commissioned several nuclear cruisers, with a total of 9 achieving active status, though the last of these, the USS South Carolina, was decommissioned in July 1999. Even given military (rather than commercial) considerations, the ships were too costly to operate and maintain. There were a total of three non-Soviet commercial nuclear vessels, the American NS Savannah, and two ships launched by Germany (Otto Hahn) and Japan (Mutsu) respectively. Dating from the late 1950s to early 1970s, none proved economically viable, all faced major regulatory hurdles, being excluded from most ports and requiring extensive negotiations where they were permitted to berth at all, and all three were either converted to conventional powerplants or decommissioned entirely well before designed end-of-life. As of 2023 China has designed, but not built, a thorium-based molten salt reactor (MSR) 24000 TEU cargo ship, a new development since I'd last looked at the space. More: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi...> Looking into the matter of nuclear-powered shipping about a decade ago, I was struck by the relative small count (about 80k vessels then, since expanded to about 100k), and the frequency of hull losses, roughly 200 or so per decade. This suggests both scale issues and significant safety concerns, whether for fission-based or fusion-based propulsion, which despite a far smaller radiation footprint still has concerns with fusion reactor radioactive contamination, particularly on heavily-travelled sea lanes which tend to concentrate near population centres and fisheries, and thus significant environmental considerations, likely leading to severe regulatory restrictions. The tendency of shipping standards to be a race-to-the-bottom (figuratively and literally) given various minimal-requirements "flags of convenience" registries makes the probability that a nuclear fleet would have dodgey standards and/or find itself excluded from most ports (and commercially attractive ones most especially) also bodes poorly for prospects likely extending out decades even with unprecedented technological developments in the area. Maritime Fusion strikes me as not only a very long shot but one with pretty limited prospects overall. |