Kärnfull Next reposted this
How do we decarbonize the maritime sector and what would this mean for the Nordic region in terms of extra power production? We recently conducted some back-of-the-envelope calculations to provide a clearer picture of what we might face: 🚢 Assuming an average-sized maritime vessel (cargo, tanker, ferry, etc.) would need about 200 metric tonnes of methanol per day and spends 75% of its time at sea, that translates to approximately 55 kilo tonnes per year per vessel. 🔋 So, what does this mean for power production? Utilizing a generic 300MW small modular reactor (SMR) and commercial hydrogen and methanol production facilities, provided by the likes of Topsoe, we would need about 60MW of nuclear capacity solely for methanol production for one vessel. 📊 To put this into perspective, if we consider that roughly 400 of these vessels operates in the Nordics, we would require over 75 SMRs (23GW) dedicated just to this purpose. 🚢 Or as another example, A.P. Moller - Maersk operates approximately 700 vessels, meaning they would need close to 50GW of nuclear capacity alone. This is just one scenario in an ever-growing list of examples showing that if we aim to decarbonize in this way, we must leverage every single tool at our disposal. We can't just paint the walls, we also need to lay the foundation. Luckily, there is one such company, Kärnfull Next, who aims to do precisely that. Bringing innovation within financial modelling and project delivery to scale-up nuclear beyond what could be done by purely demanding our utilities to do so. Also, we want to mention, we are energy and derivatives experts and not maritime operations experts. So, please feel free to reach out regarding some of our assumptions in this sector or just want to discuss future possibilities.
Ed Pheil
4w
SMRs for 35GWe or 50GWe is simply ludicrous economics, you would use as large as you could get for economies of scale. Fuel production is not limited to 1-2GWe max due to probability of loss on a grid and need to replace the capacity.
Tobias M.
2w
Your assumed average daily fuel consumption is too high and utilisation is too low. But even with half the consumption it is massive challenge. More nuclear, either upstream to produce e-fuels or nuclear propulsion, will be required to decarbonise global shipping.
Great to be working with NEMO- Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization and Lloyd's Register on making sure that nuclear security and safeguards are considered from the very start of this.
Very interesting perspective!
General, Electrical, Mechanical, & Utilities Contractor & SAAS Domain Expert
4wMaersk is going nuclear for shipping. The Russians have already gone nuclear for shipping. Methane & Hydrogen with the sheer cubic volume needed to perform and (other liquid fuels) will not win this race vs nuclear. Love this post sir!!! 🫶😎🤯🙌😇🙏👏👏👏