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| NS Savannah at Waterside in Baltimore (June 2008) |
If you have a bit of free time I highly recommend a visit to the online tour of the NS (Nuclear Ship) Savannah. The Historic Naval Ships Association site includes terrific photos that allow a virtual tour similar to the kind you can take at well designed real estate sites.
There is also a pretty good account of the ship’s history, its accomplishments, and the reasons for its early demise. I remain hopeful that the ship can still provide inspiration and illuminate a path forward for commercial nuclear ship propulsion. Just remember – one-of-a-kind ships with unique power plants are generally more expensive than series built ships and cannot easily compete in the market.
The answer for that challenge is to build more, not to build less, especially if the technology has more room for growth than the competition.
Additional reading and viewing
John Walker, founder of Autodesk and a coauthor of AutoCAD took a trip to the North Pole and documented his journey at Nuclear Ninety North. While on the cruise, he was one of the group of twenty that received a guided tour inside the engineering spaces on Russian nuclear icebreaker.
Link is broken, should be
http://www.hnsa.org/savannah/
On the subject, here’s a 1960 wallchart of the Savannah:
http://econtent.unm.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/nuceng
Thank you for pointing out the broken link. I just repaired it.
inside Russia’s nuclear icebreaker http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/eclipse_2008/S006.html
Jerry – thank you for the link. I have added it as additional reading and viewing on the blog post.