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Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by onlyrealcuzzo on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @11:39PM (#33727861)
Could these be viable for shipping containers??

IIUC, 18,000 TEU ships have engines that generate ~60 mW - and use about 66,000 gallons of diesel per day.

That's ~$90M in fuel per year, which could be replaced by ~12 of there reactors.

That's $7.5M per year. If these can be purchased for less than $20M - with an 8-year life-span and $2M for fuel and operation per year - then maybe it could work??

Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by bboygravity on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:17AM (#33728286)
If you do that the ships would go (dangerously ?) fast.

60 MW output from a combustion engine means rougly 3x the mechanical energy output for the same amount of Joules input with an electric engine.

Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by ohgodplsno on Thursday November 24, 2022 @01:51AM (#33728449)
On the plus side, container ship drag races would now be a thing.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by malandrew on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:45AM (#33728740)
Imagine how far they travel when trying to stop. I guess you would have the power to run the engines in reverse at full power too.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by porker on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:54AM (#33728801)
Power isn't the problem; vibration, the stress on the ship's hull, and risk of losing a propellor are the real problems with sustained running in reverse at full power.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by ohgodplsno on Thursday November 24, 2022 @03:05AM (#33728853)
Stop ? Just drift with all your cargo.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by Tuna-Fish on Thursday November 24, 2022 @04:32AM (#33729352)
You'd get surprisingly little additional speed. An old rule of thumb is that if you double the power of a large ship, you get 4 additional knots of speed. Current average laden container ship speed is ~15 knots, down from about 20 knots from back before they cared about fuel costs and emissions. So you'd only get speeds up to what they were before.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by VBprogrammer on Thursday November 24, 2022 @05:27AM (#33729700)
I think the 60MW output is shaft horsepower so it already takes into account the low efficiency of converting fuel oil to movement (so in reality it's burning about 150MW of fuel oil).
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by rurounijones on Thursday November 24, 2022 @03:09AM (#33728876)
It would require changes in regulations around the world. Many ports do not allow nuclear powered vessels to dock. Those regs were written with traditional nuclear power plants in mind but I think there would still have to be a lot of work to get acceptance.
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by jononomo on Thursday November 24, 2022 @08:59AM (#33731331)
Would these reactors take up less physical space than the fuel system they would displace?
Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by onlyrealcuzzo on Thursday November 24, 2022 @03:53PM (#33736111)
Almost certainly. See picture [1]. According to Wikipedia, they're ~87 ft x ~87 ft x ~44 ft = 333k cuft [2]

These reactors are supposed to be a max of 4 containers in size.

So ~12 of them would be ~48 containers = 4x6x2 = ~80 ft x ~60 ft x ~30 ft = 144k cuft.

Though, I doubt you'd want to stack them like that, and I imagine you'd need more than just the reactors to replace the engine.

But more importantly - container ships need space and weight for ~66k gallons of diesel per day - about ~3M gallons total. That's an additional ~401k cuft for diesel, and ~13,500 tons... Each TEU is 22 tons - so you could probably carry an additional 600 TEU (or ~3.5% more).

[1] https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/the-largest-and-most-p...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA9...