A natural gas powered container ship.
 

My son works for General Dynamics Shipbuilding Division and he called me up and asked if I wanted to go to a ship launching. Most of the ships they have helped build are mundane military and commerce vessels. He says this one is right up my alley - the greenest commercial vessel to date.

General Dynamics NASSCO: Ship Ceremony Information

Here is a bit more about the engines from Greencarcongress.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014...24-doosan.html

The ship is to operate in the Gulf leveraging the low cost and clean burning natural gas that is available to the Americas. It is also able to run on standard fuel oils as needed.

I don't know if security will allow me to take any pictures, but I'll try and post up what I can sneak out.

Is that really the world's first LNG container ship? I remember reading an article about this a few years ago, but I thought that there had been a few others that were already sailing by now.

The rendering looks amazing. Pics ( if possible ) would be awesome.

My brother worked on LNG carriers, had huge spherical containers in the hull, early 1970s.

Big deal about a ship collision that never happened, insurance rates skyrocketed and they went straight to the mothball fleet.

Long time ago.

regards
mech

What a shame. FUD goes a long way when it comes to stopping progress. LNG carriers have made quite a comeback in the last few years; I'm glad to see that LNG container ships are gonna be seeing some action.

They say they are doing it for cleaner emissions, lower CO2.
I say BS. They are doing it because oil is only going to get more expensive and natural gas is going to stay stable for the foreseeable future.

And some harbors impose higher fees for "highly-polluting" ships.

Sounds like everybody wins, then.

The only ones who lose are those who cant stand the thought of cheaper, better, faster international commerce.

First always comes with caveats.
 

I believe it is one of the first ships to run largely on NG as it's main fuel. It's fuel capacity is enough to allow it to transit the Gulf. The idea of pilot injected hybrid diesel engines is certainly not new. The intention to run up to 95% of the fuel load on NG for the bulk of the journey is. However, other ships could do the same route on largely NG but are not uniquely tailored to the fuel. Those ships use the NG fuel as "port fuel" to avoid the emission penalties Cripple Rooster pointed out, that many port authorities levy on gross polluting ships. Ocean going ships use the very cheapest of fuel oil - bunker oil. Viscous and sulfur laden, the pollution per hour of these ships can equal the output of thousands of cars and trucks operating for a day. The new line of NG ships that are coming out now and in the future will be optimized for the gas fuel.

A big part of using NG as a fuel is, as Old Mech pointed out, safety. This new ship has numerous technologies that should prevent the ship compartments from turning into fuel/air bombs.

Another feature of these new ships is the inclusion of a small water treatment plant to treat all the bilge and ballast water to mitigate or eliminate the transfer of flora and fauna as well as pollutants.

The uniqueness of these ships is more the inclusion of all these technologies. This may be their claim to a "first".

Very Cool!!!

I worked for years on a bigger, faster, greener, ship then that. Nuclear power is the way to go clean and sustainable on large ships. The cost is only high because of the politics, not the technology.

Nuke? Not sure if it's worth the risks involved...

I agree with both of you, Hersbird and Cripple Rooster.
 

Living in a location where I am no more than a couple miles from several nuclear powered ships at any time (USN attack subs and fleet carriers), I am obviously biased. But, it does bear some discussion.

The United States Navy has had a stellar record to date concerning nuclear power plants but that record comes with the hidden costs of tight security and trained technical teams for operation and maintenance. A private carrier such as TOTE could not absorbed those costs and expect to make a profit. Every ship would need a high security team on board and around every port. Emergency protocol teams would also need to be ready to respond at a moments notice to deal with a nuclear containment breach and "spill". The USN with it's vast resources provides these services and more, world wide. Not even the biggest of shipping corporations has this ability.

However, this is speaking with the current situation as far as nuclear powered ships go. I have spoken of thorium reactors on other threads in the past. I urge you to look up the subject on YouTube and other sources. It is a proven reactor that leverages a fuel source that is bountiful in comparison to uranium by orders of magnitude. A prototype reactor was run for years with only a few operators and in the middle of populated region. Built during the Cold War, it was discarded due to it's inability to support the weapons program ( no useful material such as plutonium is produced ). It is not entirely free of radioactive pollution since traditional isotopes are needed to "fire it up" and get it running, but the level of these materials is minimal in comparison to current reactor designs and the ability to weaponize this material is impossible to exceedingly difficult at best. The danger to the environment and the populace is far less than a coal powered generation plant. The lack of weaponability means security needs are non existent. I have thorium in my possession for industrial and experimental use with no need for a special permit of any kind. And yes, I have a Geiger Counter/Detector that shows clearly that the sun and the concrete my shop is built on have much higher levels of radiation than the several grams of thorium that reside in a standard steel safe.

With all that said, ships are a natural testing platform for nuclear powered motivation due to their size and productivity. However, as Hersbird hinted at, public opinion is heavily polarized against any nuclear power. Politics add another layer of cost and baggage. It would take a special commercial carrier to tackle the problem. I don't see how anyone with profit in mind would even think to try. It is far more profitable to run natural gas ships for the time being until someone else breaks the ground for safe nuclear transports. And Oilpan4 is correct - natural gas is going to be a stable fuel source for the foreseeable future. Our current supplies and extended predictions will see to that. Add in the new studies of abiotic production of methane hydrates in the deep tectonic ocean zones and the trillions of tons of methane waiting to be mined, and natural gas seems like a safe bet for years to come.

Green Car Congress: Researchers find that abiotic methane can charge deepsea Arctic gas hydrates

The future seems bleak to many who view the energy landscape. I beg to differ.

When USS enterprise was in port that alone was 8 nuclear reactors with in 15 miles of me when I lived in Virginia.
The enterprise had a pretty good run.

The savanna looks like a passenger ship built in the late 50s and launched in the early 60s. So the right idea, at the wrong time. I am sure a lot of new passanger ships built about that time had a real short service life.

Perhaps the way to make thorium reactors mainstream is to set up some in a friendly third-world country. They start reaping benefits without mutating and people start reconsidering.

China is building them, and will have to buy thorium reactor technology from them.
Because our government is totally dropping the ball, screwing the pooch, whatever you want to call it with our nuclear program.

Did you know the U.S. is the only major nuclear user (and the largest by production) that does not have a nuclear waste recycling program?

So all the idiots that are afraid of nuclear power have won this round and have gotten their wish of causing raw nuclear waste to pile up by the thousands of tons at temporary storage sties across the country. Instead of properly recycling it. Recycling would reduce the volume at least 90% and cut the dangerous radio activity down from thousands of years to about 40 to 50 years.

I like how these environmental idiots are all about recycling until it comes to recycling spent nuclear fuel.

IMO putting the raw waste in storage and then putting it under ground is the most dangerous, most irresponsible and overall worse plan anyone could have possibly come up with. Whoever came up with plan along with those who allow it to happen should be tarred and feathered.

Then the same people who want nuclear fuel used once and thrown away are the same ones who cry about globull warming wrecking the planet for our grand children. Using nuclear fuel wastefully like this, will cause the U.S. supply to only last about 50 years. If it is recycled it would last 300 to 500 years.

I worked for 11 years as a navy nuke, 2 years in school and 6 years on the USS Carl Vinson finally ending the job as Reactor Laboratories division leading petty officer. So not only has the Navy had a stellar record they have done it with primarily 20-30 year olds working insane hours for barely over minimum wage spending every spare free moment intoxicated. The Navy's reactors have to be built at a much greater cost as they are built for warships designed to take hits an keep fighting which means lots of redundancy and hardening. They have to be started in minutes, and if shutdown restarted in minutes. Civilian power plants can be shutdown and the less refined fuel will "poison" the reaction preventing a restart for hours.
The Savannah was built in a bizarre combination of stylish passenger liner and awkward to load cargo ship. No matter how they powered it it was bound to lose money. Add politics of not allowing it in many ports and put the nail in the coffin. Still it almost made it to profitability when oil prices were at an all time low, just a few years later when oil prices went up it would have been profitable.
There is also a traditional cargo ship built by Russia that has been more successful, the Sevmorput. If they can do it...
The US Navy at last count had 5,400 reactor years of perfect saftey over 130 million miles. In 11 years I received about .5 rem of exposure total and that was mostly doing maintenance in the actual reactor compartment and taking reactor water samples. That is about 1/2 the radiation you get from a single CT scan of the chest or pelvis. Or division also handled all the waste. By far the mass of waste wasn't really contaminated it was just potentially contaminated and needed special handling.

I love nuclear power. It amazing we pretty much solved the energy crisis before it ever happened only to basically give up on it because Hollywood hype and politics.

I can vouch for that.

Agreed.
People would rather listen to idiots then learn about it for them selves.
They hear that 1 nano currie of radiation gets released from some nuclear power operations low level waste and people go crazy.
You should be more worried about eating a banana, standing next to a granite counter top or flying in an air plane than the immeasurably tiny radiation release.

People tend to fear what they can't see or touch, it's natural. Or did you never had fear of the dark when you were a kid? Anyway, in my country, due to an incident that happened about 28 years ago, the Cesium-137 incident in Goiania city, many people are still skeptical about the viability of nuke power in such a 3rd-world country like Brazil.

Wow, I just read up on that incident, I hadn't heard of that before. What a weird situation..

We learned about that but it had nothing to do with nuclear power. I understand what you are saying but if it leads to fear it should have lead to a banning of radioactivity in medical use, something not protested anywhere. Most smoke detectors have a radioactive source inside as well. I think if we thought of nuclear power as a life saving device in the clean environment it provides maybe we could turn the current opnion which links nuclear power to nuclear weapons.

Even though radiation can be used for medical purposes in a safe way at a highly-controlled environment, people still tend to think about Chernobyl or Fukushima.

LNG is at least cleaner than sulfur-laden bunker fuel, but is only a baby step towards clean energy. It's still a fossil fuel and contributing to atmospheric CO2 increase.

As far as nuclear power is concerned, the planet will be paying that piper long after we have extinguished ourselves as a species.

Xist -- Do I mind? Perhaps it's time to change my avatar. ...to 'katflattener'.

Instead of a 3rd world country, perhaps when Silicon Valley ups anchor and goes sea-steading—they would be good candidate.

LNG ships are cool and all, but I'd like to see Natural Gas powered zepplins. Don't you get lift if it's not compressed?

At least a transition from fossil Natural Gas to biologically-sourced methane is technically viable.

A transition from gases to sail (hybrids) is also technically viable.

How?
Once the fuel and waste isotopes are separated by recycling the waste loses 99.9% of its radioactivity after 40 year.

It doesn't seem so easy to power the modern ships with sails. Anyway, instead of some transition to wind power, an integration seems to be more suitable.

Kite Power on Ships Out Performs Sails Five Times Over : TreeHugger

regards
mech

So—the clock is ticking? :eek:

It's Waterworld all over again:

http://i.imgur.com/w6l31.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/w6l31.jpg

The kite thing is pretty cool.
From what I hear they aren't so much using the kite to save a ton of fuel. Its being used to go faster and save some fuel.
Above all its reducing the time and cost of international commerce.

I have been on top of wind turbines, I know all about how strong the wind gets once you get up about 150 feet off the ground. Its a gentile breeze on the ground, then you go up and its gale force, go back down to the ground, gentile breeze again.

So go tell the Ukranians to move back into Chernobyl.

Vindskip - a greener and more cost-effective future for shipping - Ship Technology

http://www.ship-technology.com/uploa...05/large/3.jpg

I see opportunity here for slats and blown flaps as on a STOL aircraft.