Nuclear cruise ships.

[wraithe]

LOL, of course how many of you know anything about the GE HTRE-3 aircraft engine. Maybe some of the airplane nuts might know a little about it. Hint, some of the Navy nukes should remember reading about it. If no one chimes in after while, I'll fill in the blanks.

 

No one chimed in overnight, so I'll spill the beans. HTRE-3 was the final version of the nuclear powered jet engine. The engine actually could run on jet fuel or nuclear heated air, and they ran it for quite a few hours although it never actually powered an aircraft. Some get that confused because the NB-36 flew with a nuclear reactor onboard. This was a modified B-36 bomber with a nuke power plant onboard that flew to test/prove that you could actually lift a shielded nuke plant. They abondoned the nuclear jet engine after it became apparent that the ICBM was going to make bombers at least a second tier vehicle in the MAD scenario, and another of those accident/learning experience things where the HTRE-3 plant spewed fission products over a fairly large area when it melted its fuel due to a design deficiency.

 

Is that means I have to wear this funny underwear for life ? G suit will do , and I am getting to the age that Depends start looking good to me.

Flow Mirages and F4 from 66 to 74, came to the US to talk to pilots about SAM 2,6,and 3's, flown for EL-AL till 95 then retired to Florida (were else).

The thing that bother me is that our gov and privete capital is rushing to help "poor" Russia, wile they have money to develop a very good SAM missiles to sell to Iran and Syria.

 

Bet you could tell some good stories over a couple adult beverages. It is funny that the Russians don't have the money to clean up their own weapons/environmental problems, but they have the money to develop new weapons and reactors for Iran, but lets don't have facts get in the way of things:D when politicians are spending our money.

[jetskier]

A TLD monitors a person's exposure to radiation - specifically gamma, beta, and neutron - none of which gets in your body or stays there.

 

Actually you could get an ingestion via airborne or surface contamination. This would of course get in your body. It is the contamination (source) which gets in your body. I understand your point that the specific radiation emitted does not get in your body or stays there as it passes through the tissue (unless the source happens to be ingested).

 

In the US Nuclear industry, a lot depends on the reactor's design. A PWR is much cleaner radiation wise than a BWR plant. The other radiation not mentioned is Alpha, easily shielded but very bad if ingested as you could receive an acute dose. A TLD cannot monitor it as it cannot pass through the plastic window on the badge.

 

I always liked the analogy of using a cow patty to explain it. The cow patty is the source of the radiation. The smell is the radiation being emitted. If you step in it and tracked it around, what you track around is unwanted contamination.

 

There are several ways to reduce your dose, time; distance; and shielding. The Federal govt has stipulated the dose that a worker can recieve in a one year period. Most nuclear plants have an administrative policy that is more conservative but have policies in place if it has to be exceeded.

 

Dave

[Hypo]

If the GE engine that you are referring to is the nuke one, the pictures of the prototype that I saw were about 3 stories tall. That would have been some big @#$@ airplane.

 

Hypo

[wraithe]

If the GE engine that you are referring to is the nuke one, the pictures of the prototype that I saw were about 3 stories tall. That would have been some big @#$@ airplane.

 

Hypo

 

It is the nuke one, and it was big, HTRE-1 was built on a rail car, HTRE-2 was smaller and HTRE-3 smaller still, but massive none the less. They were planning on building an airplane with multiple crews onboard, that could potentially stay airborne for months. Take off on jet fuel, start the reactor and transfer power to the reactor and then remain aloft as long as possible, so the airplane would have been huge.

[tcsmithh]

So I have a question if we are talking about renewable resources, what about hydrogen. There are currently small boats that have fuel cells that power electric motors. If I read right the us navy is designing prototypes for use. Once the we can produce hydrogen effectively wouldn’t that be a good alternative to fossil fuels?

 

Oh yes, and I would sail on a nuke with my family (and I was in the army :))

[vaccardi]

How do you make reasonable amounts of usable hydrogen without using resources in any significant quantity? The easiest way is nuclear generated electricity. There are no Hydrogen wells :)

 

Also, the transportation of Hydrogen on board (even liquefied) would probably be a higher risk than a nuclear plant.

[wraithe]

So I have a question if we are talking about renewable resources, what about hydrogen. There are currently small boats that have fuel cells that power electric motors. If I read right the us navy is designing prototypes for use. Once the we can produce hydrogen effectively wouldn’t that be a good alternative to fossil fuels?

 

Oh yes, and I would sail on a nuke with my family (and I was in the army :))

 

Hydrogen has potential, producing H2 is easy, electrolysis from whatever power source makes massive amounts from water. The trick is storage, as discussed before in this thread, it'd take a trainful of H2 to equal the energy in one trailer load of diesel, and it has a habit of seeping through metals between the molecules, yes it is that small, it will migrate through the metal and either dissipate or worse yet, embrittle the metal and make it weak. The potential is there, but there's a lot of work to be done before it's useful.

[vaccardi]

OK, for you guys that really know... What about a technology similar to Pebble Bed Modular Reactor. I know it would be a major design cost, but if done properly, it should be safer, smaller and cheaper than the technologies used right now.

 

What do you guys think???

[rolloman]

 

I was not trying to be a wise guy, just trying to keep things factually correct. Trust me, I am not stuck on myself.

 

Ok how did this happen? I am getting quoted for quotes I didn't write???

[johnjen]

1) There have been two US nukes lost at sea, Thresher and Scorpion, neither due to the nuclear power plant, I'm not quibbling here, Thresher probably had an engine room problem, but it wasn't the nuke plant that caused her loss. That said, they are both regularly checked for radiation or fission product leakage, and nothing has ever been recorded about either ship leaking anything nuclear.

 

2) Power plants are designed for the life they are going to see. Older naval nuke plants were designed to be refueled since the plants couldn't last that long. Now, due to technological progress, the power plants last longer and the ships useful life isn't as long, so the plant is designed to go for the life of the ship, and never be refueled. It wouldn't be hard to design a power plant that would only last for 12 years with an expected useful life of 10 if that's what the customer wanted. Advantage: the reactor would be smaller.

 

3) Kennedy was an oil fired carrier, not nuclear, and wasn't a Nimitz class ship, we have not decommed a nuclear aircraft carrier, Enterprise is the first and is still steaming. We have decommed many submarines, cruisers, and prototypes. If we weren't so silly about one use fuel process, we could do like the French (and Germans) and reclaim good fuel from spent fuel rods and make the remaining waste much smaller by volumer and radioactive for a much shorter time. Thanks to Jimmy Carter, our only nuclear trained president, we don't have breeder reactors or fuel reclamation, or the SST, or a lot of other things, and he still won't shut up. Oops, sorry for the rant.

 

4) FWIW, the radiation dose that I received while operating power plants is probably significantly less than what the average person receives from natural objects. Cigarettes for instance, smoking a pack a day gives 5 Rem alpha radiation directly to the lungs over the couse of a year. Many rocks are natural radiation emitters, so living on a rocky mountain top may be beautiful, but fill your basement with radon, and leave traces of radioactive materials and gas in that spring you drink out of on the mountain trail. Would that stop me from living on a mountain, or drinking from the stream, not a chance, but I'd check for radon and mitigate it if I found it, I wouldn't make the steam my only source of water until I tested it. Don't let a little knowledge be dangerous, learn as much as you can and nuke power isn't scary at all.

 

Wraithe, wondering if you ever read the book called "Blind Man's Bluff" where there is some discussion on both Thresher and Scorpion losses. Thresher was believed to have been lost due to a stuck valve (non-reactor accident) and Scorpion may have been lost due to either a collision at sea or from an actual torpedo attack by a Soviet submarine.

 

For anyone wanting to have a good read, Blind Man's Bluff is outstanding.

 

Further, regarding Kennedy not being nuclear, she was in fact outfitted for nuclear power, but during her construction, it was decided to make her conventional instead due to budgetary restraints. I believe this partially explains her unusual stack location and design, somewhat a last minute design change done to compensate her sudden change in propulsion. The mainspace even looks different than a conventional one.

 

While Wraithe is affectionately known as a "bubblehead" to Sailors like myself (I am considered part of the "target" navy by Wraithe, and god knows what other names), I can tell we both enjoy this topic very much. There was a time I wanted to be a Submariner but I didn't score good enough on the NFQT (I wanted to become a nuclear Machinst's Mate) but instead became a Radioman and then onto being an Information Systems Tech.

 

Jimmy Carter, LOL. Heh, don't get ME started on THAT, Wraithe! We both feel the same way!

 

But on to topic - as for cruise ships going nuclear, there's too much public pressure to ever allow it to happen thanks to the nuclear accidents we've had here in the US (Idaho Falls, Enrico Fermi outside of Detroit, Three Mile Island) and who knows how many more.

 

I wished I could have sailed onboard the NS Savannah because I visited this ship when she was in Charleston SC.

[wraithe]

Wraithe, wondering if you ever read the book called "Blind Man's Bluff" where there is some discussion on both Thresher and Scorpion losses. Thresher was believed to have been lost due to a stuck valve (non-reactor accident) and Scorpion may have been lost due to either a collision at sea or from an actual torpedo attack by a Soviet submarine.

 

For anyone wanting to have a good read, Blind Man's Bluff is outstanding.

 

While Wraithe is affectionately known as a "bubblehead" to Sailors like myself (I am considered part of the "target" navy by Wraithe, and god knows what other names), I can tell we both enjoy this topic very much. There was a time I wanted to be a Submariner but I didn't score good enough on the NFQT (I wanted to become a nuclear Machinst's Mate) but instead became a Radioman and then onto being an Information Systems Tech.

 

Jimmy Carter, LOL. Heh, don't get ME started on THAT, Wraithe! We both feel the same way!

 

But on to topic - as for cruise ships going nuclear, there's too much public pressure to ever allow it to happen thanks to the nuclear accidents we've had here in the US (Idaho Falls, Enrico Fermi outside of Detroit, Three Mile Island) and who knows how many more.

 

I wished I could have sailed onboard the NS Savannah because I visited this ship when she was in Charleston SC.

 

 

There are many rumors about why the Thresher and Scorpion were lost, any or all could be true. Again, we learned a lot from the loss of the Thresher, the SubSafe program was born of that incident and the loss of life. Haven't read "Blind Man's Bluff" yet, but it's on my short list, have read "The Thresher Disaster" and it was pretty informative as well.

 

I have the t-shirt!! I've got a t-shirt that I wear fairly often, on the front, surfaced boomer and the words "There are two kinds of ships, submarines" and on the back an aircraft carrier in periscope crosshairs with the word "and targets". LOL. I was a Reactor Operator, and before it was over with qualified all the way through EOOW and EDO at MTS in Charleston, teaching O-gangers how to stand watch. That was one of the most rewarding jobs I had while in the Navy. We towed the MTS up to Norfolk Naval in 2001 and I stood EDO for a drydocking refurb period, that was actually a lot of fun as well. Challenging, but fun at the same time.

 

Yep, best to probably just leave the Carter subject alone. I agree that we won't see nuke cruise ships anytime soon, but there may come a day. Who knows, maybe someday there will be some sort of direct conversion from nuke heat to electricity, they're doing that with satellites now, blanketing a "nuke waste" pile (for lack of a better word) with a thermocouple blanket that uses the heat from decay to directly generate electicity for the satellite when solar energy isn't useful. They're only generating a couple watts for now, so it's not useful for large loads, but who knows what may come.

[xpcdoojk]

Read "Blind Man's Bluff" several years ago. I would consider it must reading for anyone trying to understand the cold war, and the incredible ingenuity of the submarine stars of that war. It is an amazing read! I will let you veterans tell me how accurate it is, but accurate or not the stories it contains are absolutely fascinating.

 

jc

[jetskier]

Wraithe,

What was the length of time between refueling for a naval vessel? At the nuclear plants we were on an 18 month window between refueling where 1/3rd of the core was changed. The rest of the bundles were reshuffled and the new fuel added. Of course, we were mostly at 100% power for the majority of the 18 months. We had gotten refueling outages down to around 22 days.

 

I cannot see that turnaround time for a ship as we had all of our equipment in place to do the transfer. The biggest being the shielding for the spent fuel.

Dave

[CGTNORMANDIE]

How do you make reasonable amounts of usable hydrogen without using resources in any significant quantity? The easiest way is nuclear generated electricity. There are no Hydrogen wells :)

 

Also, the transportation of Hydrogen on board (even liquefied) would probably be a higher risk than a nuclear plant.

 

I think the potential for liquid hydrogen is great. Liquid hydrogen can be stored at extremely low temperatures and it has a vast amount of power for such a small amount of space...think of it as supercondensed hydrogen. We can have limitless supplies of it made from electricity generated from steam turbines that can run off the super heat from the earths' core. This is currently being done in Iceland and the technology is getting better with time. As Wraithe says...all you need is electricity and water.

 

ROSS

[spookwife]

DH was once stationed aboard USS South Carolina, a Nuke cruiser. He was an FC that had to do maintanece on one piece of equipment that was in the engineroom, so he was issued a radiation badge. His numbers always skewed the total, because he received more radiation from being top side and stading in the sun all day that the guys who worked the plant.

 

 

Japan has I believe the largest number of nucelar power plants per capita in the country. Their last accident was in 2004 and killed four, but no radioactive material was involved. the last one before that was in 1999, and involved improper procedures.. human error.

[wraithe]

Wraithe,

What was the length of time between refueling for a naval vessel? At the nuclear plants we were on an 18 month window between refueling where 1/3rd of the core was changed. The rest of the bundles were reshuffled and the new fuel added. Of course, we were mostly at 100% power for the majority of the 18 months. We had gotten refueling outages down to around 22 days.

 

I cannot see that turnaround time for a ship as we had all of our equipment in place to do the transfer. The biggest being the shielding for the spent fuel.

Dave

 

Last I heard, they're working towards getting 20 years out of a core before refueling. Now, on the new plants, they're actually working toward having the core last the life of the ship. Refueling overhauls take 12 to 18 months, depending on what all else they do to the rest of the ship. Refueling is a big deal since it requires hull cuts, and other major work. I almost took a job with a company that does the inspections required since the Davis Besse debacle, decided not to take it at the time since I didn't want to travel, but I'm rethinking that now. Never know what I might decide to do.

[vaccardi]

Ross,

 

In fact geothermal is being used in the US. There are limitations. It is not necessarily totally reunable and is not always easily accessible (needs that lava/ other heat transfer mechanism be available to make up used energy.)

 

The conversion is not as efficient as other technologies (because of unpredictability in the supply from the earth, it is tough to optimize the conversion.) And there are other concerns (ie, is drilling acceptable, or will it affect seismic activity.)

 

As for storage, there are other methods being considered that might not require the level of cooling you are talking about (cooling and maintaining at those levels is a big energy hog.) The most promising is basically the equivalent of a metallurgical sponge inside a tank that gets the H atoms to lie down (in layman's terms.)

 

Wraithe,

It is unlikely that the technology being used on satellites will ever be scalable. The surface are needed to generate enough power from the thermocouples is just astounding. Unless a new conversion method is found, the current technology is the most promising. Which get me back to PBMR. It would be shipped as a unit smaller that an existing Diesel, although heavier. It could be mounted low in the vessel, and configure well the the required form factor, and be easily shielded. And, because of its design, would be in place for the life of the vessel (about 20 years) without refueling. While the technology is being used in S Africa and is having some problems, it shows potential.

 

For all,

 

The real solution to mobile engines like cars in the short term is coal gasification. This technology was developed by the Germans during WW II and has the advantage of using a resource we do have, COAL. An if done properly would produce usable gasoline at the equivalent of $45/ barrel +/- a few.

 

This would work for highly refined end product vehicles (cars, airplanes,) but is probably too expensive for ships.

 

Thanks to all for the stimulating conversation.

[vaccardi]

I always take wikipedia with a grain of salt, but here is a pretty decent article on PBMR:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

[wraithe]

I always take wikipedia with a grain of salt, but here is a pretty decent article on PBMR:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

 

 

Very good article, reminded me that somewhere around here I have a Pop Sci or Pop Mech that has an article on PBMR's, have to try and find it and reread it. The May 2004 PM also has a good article on a quantum nucleonic reactor, interesting stuff, but pie in the sky at the moment. All theory, no operation. I agree with you as well about the thermocouple problems, for low energy systems, it's useful, but for anything else, would require way too much space with current tech.

[Andy99]

To answer your question... Yes I would be willing to cruise on a ship that runs on nuclear power if they ever came out with one...

[johnjen]

There are many rumors about why the Thresher and Scorpion were lost, any or all could be true. Again, we learned a lot from the loss of the Thresher, the SubSafe program was born of that incident and the loss of life. Haven't read "Blind Man's Bluff" yet, but it's on my short list, have read "The Thresher Disaster" and it was pretty informative as well.

 

I have the t-shirt!! I've got a t-shirt that I wear fairly often, on the front, surfaced boomer and the words "There are two kinds of ships, submarines" and on the back an aircraft carrier in periscope crosshairs with the word "and targets". LOL. I was a Reactor Operator, and before it was over with qualified all the way through EOOW and EDO at MTS in Charleston, teaching O-gangers how to stand watch. That was one of the most rewarding jobs I had while in the Navy. We towed the MTS up to Norfolk Naval in 2001 and I stood EDO for a drydocking refurb period, that was actually a lot of fun as well. Challenging, but fun at the same time.

 

Yep, best to probably just leave the Carter subject alone. I agree that we won't see nuke cruise ships anytime soon, but there may come a day. Who knows, maybe someday there will be some sort of direct conversion from nuke heat to electricity, they're doing that with satellites now, blanketing a "nuke waste" pile (for lack of a better word) with a thermocouple blanket that uses the heat from decay to directly generate electicity for the satellite when solar energy isn't useful. They're only generating a couple watts for now, so it's not useful for large loads, but who knows what may come.

 

Another good book, Wraithe, especially for all of the people who've been asking you questions here, is Rig Ship for Ultra Quiet and was written by Andy Karam. I read this one during last year's cruise, it is a very informative look at life onboard a sub and discusses a lot of questions and points raised here about nuclear power. Andy was an ELT-type nuke and worked in the lab onboard his boat. He tells it like it really is. I am an avid reader and reading about submarines, esp. about the Soviet boats. Another good one is K-19, which not only tells the story about the nuke accident, but also tells about some of the other Soviet sub accidents, most notably the Komsomolets, that stricken Alfa-class sub that had major problems.

 

My fascination with nuclear power goes back to when I had to do a research paper in my AP English class. I visited the Enrico Fermi II reactor outside of Detroit before she went online and managed to see the yet to be installed reactor vessel, steam generators, and even went inside one of the cooling towers. Looking back I sometimes wished I had passed that darn NFQT and had become a nuke! But at least I got to do whatever I wanted, besides be a nuke, so I opted to be a Radioman!

[johnjen]

Read "Blind Man's Bluff" several years ago. I would consider it must reading for anyone trying to understand the cold war, and the incredible ingenuity of the submarine stars of that war. It is an amazing read! I will let you veterans tell me how accurate it is, but accurate or not the stories it contains are absolutely fascinating.

 

jc

 

I will admit - the book is VERY accurate indeed! some of the things I've read in Blind Man's Bluff actually surprised me, because I remember some topics discussed in that book one time being classified, especially when discussions about LOFAR come into question, and the listening devices (hydrophones) and "lovepoints" are mentioned. This is how we used to listen to subs coming through the Greenland/UK gap. We had (still have) undersea cables set as early warning listening devices, waiting to see what class of submarine comes down from the north, waiting for cavitation signatures, PSR's, TSR's, etc.

 

Another interesting topic from that book was the antics of the older Seawolf, and how she would sneak into Soviet waters, set a listening device over an undersea phone line (it was hauled out over the lines by divers), and they'd listen to unencrypted discussions from the Russians. Pretty daring for the time! Blind Man's Bluff is a must-read; it's like reading a spy novel.

[wraithe]

My fascination with nuclear power goes back to when I had to do a research paper in my AP English class. I visited the Enrico Fermi II reactor outside of Detroit before she went online and managed to see the yet to be installed reactor vessel, steam generators, and even went inside one of the cooling towers. Looking back I sometimes wished I had passed that darn NFQT and had become a nuke! But at least I got to do whatever I wanted, besides be a nuke, so I opted to be a Radioman!

 

Believe it or not, I wrote a paper for Comp back in '77 when I was in HS on fusion power. It was actually fun to do the research on that one.

 

A funny, but good book on submarines, is "The Complete Idiots Guide to Submarines". It's got a lot of good information in it, and the tongue in cheek approach to explaining the information.

 

Another interesting topic from that book was the antics of the older Seawolf, and how she would sneak into Soviet waters, set a listening device over an undersea phone line (it was hauled out over the lines by divers), and they'd listen to unencrypted discussions from the Russians. Pretty daring for the time! Blind Man's Bluff is a must-read; it's like reading a spy novel.

 

My Section Chief in Nuke Power School was an original Seawolf sailor, he showed us his NAM (Navy Achievement Medal) writeup, went through the normal preamble, got to the part where it says for "service set forth in the following" and it just said "Classified". According to him, they were in one of those situations like you mention above, and had an electronic failure that he fixed so they could get back underway. It was interesting to hear the story, no doubt about it.

[TPKeller]

Johnjen, did you move, or did you just change your location to be closer to home? :) Man I sure wish I lived closer to the Cheese Shop!

 

This goes back to a prior era, but one of my favorite books of all time is Clear the Bridge by Richard H. O'Kane. He was one of the finest submariners we've ever had. Fascinating book, and to this day I am always a little sad on October 24th each year...

 

Theron

[johnjen]

Johnjen, did you move, or did you just change your location to be closer to home? :) Man I sure wish I lived closer to the Cheese Shop!

 

This goes back to a prior era, but one of my favorite books of all time is Clear the Bridge by Richard H. O'Kane. He was one of the finest submariners we've ever had. Fascinating book, and to this day I am always a little sad on October 24th each year...

 

Theron

 

Funny thing, we used to live on the Dahlgren naval base when I was a CMS custodian. It's near Fredericksburg....that place has CHANGED since 1992!

 

We used to live in Stuarts Draft where the Cheese Shop is located. We moved over to Fishersville because it was closer to shopping and it was time for a bigger house. We're now between Waynesboro and Staunton just off of Rt. 250.

 

Thanks for the link....I am checking it out now.