Training seafarers to be nuclear physicists: a nuclear take

N/S Savannah

This week, news emerged that a South-Korean shipyard, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE), is positioning itself as a prospective builder of nuclear-powered merchant vessels.

For a nuclear-powered containership, there would be many upsides.

As The Loadstar previously discussed in analysing the KUN-24AP, such a vessel would have an outsize market share advantage, with improved cargo capacity over a conventional ship of the same size; zero-emissions in operation; and a higher speed, increasing the sheer amount of sheer container-carrying work the vessel could do by 50-100% versus a conventional ship.

There is one problem, however. And it has much to do with the 1998 Michael Bay blockbuster movie Armageddon.

“I asked Michael,” mused actor Ben Affleck on the film’s DVD commentary, “why it would be easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts, than it would be to train astronauts to become oil drillers. He told me to shut the fuck up.”

Faced with questions of crewing, the reaction of nuclear shipping’s cheerleaders bears an inordinate similarity to Mr Bay’s. However, crewing is as important a consideration as any, taking turns with fuel as a shipowner’s biggest cost. It has been a while since such a point as ship fuel could be described as ‘cheap’. But each time it is, the maritime industry reliably starts to talk about ship automation.

This seems to be much more difficult than anticipated: Yara Birkeland, touted as the ‘world’s first autonomous vessel’ on its delivery in 2020, has yet to sail without a crew. (A horrid little bridge – an afterthought to the vessel’s otherwise sleek design – stands testament to the seafarer’s continuing importance).

This automated shipping, feverishly oversold by technology companies over the last decade, may be a contributing factor in shipping’s ongoing crew shortage. As in every other case of an industry suffering a recruitment crisis, however, pay is the real issue. Globalisation has led to a buyer’s market for the shipping business, which has become accustomed to chasing the cheapest labour costs around the world, and offering the minimum of training. In fact, the ability to cut training costs is another of the attractions of automation – some OEMs, rather than promising to eliminate seafarer jobs, pledge that their products will enable ‘de-skilling’ (read: de-paying) of crews.

But shipping not only shares the issues seen elsewhere, but has unique ones too. Crews spend a long time away from their loved ones and generally have poor internet access; they may only share a language with one or two of their onboard colleagues and stories of people just like them being left to starve on abandoned vessels do little to attract new talent, either.

How much might such a sector acclimatise to a requirement for teams of highly-qualified nuclear reactor technicians? While the story of N/S Savannah, one of the only nuclear cargo vessels, is full of unfortunate coincidences, it suffered one of its biggest setbacks when its highly trained engineers went on strike, leaving the vessel useless.

Advocates point out that the application of nuclear reactors in a maritime setting is a solved problem and they have been operating at sea for more than half a century at this point, without issue – mostly. But those which have proven successful have been within militaries, which can exert central control over staffing, pay and training. While they may not be immune to workforce concerns, navies are not fiduciarily answerable in quite the same way, and there is less pressure to cut costs and corners.

Nuclear power would offer huge benefits for the shipping industry and, assuming it can be implemented safely, could be an enormous win for the environment, too. But it is a safe assumption that gains made in not having to bunker fuel will be eclipsed by increased crewing costs.

It will be costly, time-consuming and difficult to train seafarers to be nuclear physicists – but it could be even less likely to work the other way around.