Nuclear Civil Vessels

Grey Havoc

Grey Havoc

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To start this thread off, here's a recent article on Nuclear Merchant Ships (part of a series on the peaceful uses of Nuclear power). Includes information on the only four such ships to have been built so far: NS Savannah, USA; Mutsu, Japan; Sevmorput, Russia; and the Otto Hahn, Germany. Also discusses the future possibilities of such vessels.

The bottomline is that the current research into the viability of nuclear merchant ships is considering the technical feasibility, public attitudes, commercial prospects and regulatory requirements and while it may not result in immediate developments, there is a certain amount of optimism that a nuclear powered merchant ship might be considered feasible.
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Small nuclear reactors could power "cleaner" ships

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29 March 2011 by John Webb, London Press Service

Environment & Energy » Energy

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129014.leadimage


Image by Babcock Marine; UK proposes the use of small nuclear reactors to power surface vessels such as gas tankers to minimise CO2 emissions.​


Small nuclear reactors could power "cleaner" ships. Consortia of organisations are looking at the feasibility of nuclear propulsion for commercial tankers.

Shipping and power industry experts are joining forces to explore the potential of small modular nuclear reactors to drive future generations of commercial tankers - to help make the seas cleaner.

Together - the group from the UK, the US and Greece - will probe the practical maritime applications for nuclear propulsion that they believe is technically feasible and has the potential to drastically reduce the CO2 emissions caused by commercial shipping.

The consortium is led by Lloyd’s Register of London, UK ship-design consultancy BMT Nigel Gee, the US Hyperion Power Generation group and Greek ship operator Enterprises Shipping & Trading.

Richard Sadler, chief executive officer of Lloyd’s Register, which is one of the world’s largest ship classification societies, said: “This is a very exciting project. We believe that as society recognises the limited choices available in the low-carbon, oil-scarce economy - and as land-based nuclear plants become common place - we will see nuclear ships on specific trade routes sooner than many people currently anticipate.”

BMT’s sector transport director, Dr Phil Thompson, added: “Nuclear propulsion offers the opportunity for an emissions-free alternative to fossil fuel, while delivering ancillary benefits and security to the maritime industry.

“We look forward to using our wide range of maritime skills and expertise to identify the through-life implications, risks and potential for developing and using small modular reactors in the civilian maritime environment and to provide a framework for its safe and reliable introduction and utilisation.”

The consortium believes that such small modular reactors (SMRs) would ideally have a thermal power output of 68 megawatt (MW) or more and the potential to be used as a plug-in nuclear “battery.”

It is expected the research will centre on a sealed nuclear reactor that is small in both size and output to heat pressurised water and generate steam for turbines driving the propellers or generating electricity to power them.

The aim is to produce a concept SMR tanker-ship design based on conventional and modular concepts. Special attention will be paid to an analysis of a vessel’s life-cycle cost as well as to hull-form designs and structural layout, including grounding and collision protection.

Until now, the use of maritime nuclear reactors with power outputs ranging from 10 to 300MW has been largely confined to submarines and other types of naval vessels, including aircraft carriers.

The London-based World Nuclear Association said that work began on nuclear marine propulsion in the 1940s and the first test reactor started in the United States in 1953.

Some 140 vessels are now powered by more than 180 small nuclear reactors and over 12,000 reactor years of marine operation have been accumulated, mostly by submarines. The world’s first nuclear-powered surface vessel was Russia’s icebreaker Lenin, commissioned in 1959, which remained in service for 30 years.

Development of nuclear merchant ships began in the 1950s, led by the commissioning of the 22,000-tonne US-built Savannah in 1962. Although the first examples were a technical success they proved not to be economically viable.

But now international shipping has been identified as a significant global contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and operators are under mounting pressure to contribute to overall emissions reduction.

As a result, the World Nuclear Association believes there is renewed interest in marine nuclear propulsion. A spokesman said: “Nuclear power is particularly suitable for vessels which need to be at sea for long periods without refuelling.”

Such vessels would include large bulk carriers, cruise liners, nuclear tugs that would take conventional ships across oceans, and some types of bulk shipping where speed was essential.

While the two-year consortium research project gets under way, the marine division of the UK’s Babcock International Group recently completed a study of the commercial implications of developing a nuclear-powered liquefied natural gas carrier.

The projects director of the integrated technology unit of Babcock’s Marine Division, David Dobson, said the study has shown that particular routes and cargoes lend themselves well to the nuclear propulsion option, and technological advances in reactor design and manufacture have made the option more appealing.

He concludes: “Nuclear power for commercial vessels is becoming significantly more attractive on a number of counts, not least from an environmental perspective.”


Contact details:

Name: Nick Brown, Marine Communications Manager, Lloyd’s Register

Website: www.lr.org

Telephone: +44 (0)20 74231706

Email: nick.brown@lr.org

Address: Lloyd’s Register, 71 Fenchurch Street, London, United Kingdom EC3M 4BS


http://www.londonpressservice.org.uk/lps/environmentenergy/item/128747.html
 
After the Japanese earthquake /tsunami not irrational fear at all. Add in terrorist/piracy issues, and the cost of building, maintaining, and disposal of such ships, I'd say the idea is dead on arrival.
 
Demon Lord Razgriz said:
This will never get out to sea, too many people irrationally fear anything with the word nuclear in it. :-\ :-\
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Depends by which atom is used
???
Theorically is possible recicle the nuclear waste but we haven't right technology again !!
 
Well if they can get that Siberia > Alaska tunnel built it will connect all of Europe to the Americas by railway. That will certainly put a spectacular dent in demand for shipping fleets. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=17317
 
Thiel said:
sublight said:
Well if they can get that Siberia > Alaska tunnel built it will connect all of Europe to the Americas by railway. That will certainly put a spectacular dent in demand for shipping fleets. http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=17317
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Not really. The amount of goods are simply too great for a single tunnel to cope with.
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I think once the project gets closer to the "real" stage a lot of companies (like Apple) will anticipate the benefits of low latency cargo distribution from the Asian Pacific regions. They'll probably change the design to accommodate several train tracks.
 
What about the American NS Savana launched in 1959? She carried cargo from 1962 until 1972 and retired to a museum.
 
NS Savannah had several problems:

1. it was a bulk cargo carrier that arrived just when shipping containers came into use
2. it was a really inefficient design, with over 1/3 of its length not available for cargo: it had lavish passenger accommodation (another 'behind the times' decision at the start of the jet age)
3. Labor disputes (IIRC the Captain didn't like that the nuclear engineer was earning more than he was) caused long delays and high cost

Savannah couldn't compete with cheap diesel-powered ships at the time. Build some 200,000t container carriers with a standardized nuclear plant and things might be different.
 
Ones operated by at least nominally civilian agencies and/or bodies, yes.

EDIT: The body that currently responsible for the Russian civil nuclear powered icebreaker fleet is what would be called a semi-state company in the West, FSUE Atomflot, which in turn is under the direct control of Rosatom.
 
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East german nuclear-powered merchant ship.

"Der DDR-Atomfrachter- ein Projekt der Warnowwerft Warnemünde"

schifffahrtsmuseum-rostock.de

Vortrag: Der DDR-Atomfrachter- ein Projekt der Warnowwerft Warnemünde

Am 19. November 1957 beschloss der Technische Rat der Warnowwerft, ein mit Kernenergie angetriebenes Frachtschiff zu projektieren. Geplant wurde ein 180 m lange
schifffahrtsmuseum-rostock.de schifffahrtsmuseum-rostock.de
 
One thing I'm surprised i don't see much is speed when it comes to nucular powered civil carg ships. Befor the second oil crisis (so still during heighten oil cost from the first oil crisis) the sl-7 cargo ships were extremely profitable, maby one of the most profitable in the world. That seems to suggest to me that when you can get out of the paradigm for fast=high fule cost and into a paradigm of fast=timed saved then nucular powered ships will start looking really good to cargo carriers.
 
Speed stopped being useful decades ago, if it ever were useful in the first place, as the Liberty Ships (and 19th century clippers) were about 15 knots cruise too. Cargo ships often have wildly circuitous routes because they're already too fast.

Primarily cargo ships go slow due to the general ricketiness of the global economy and its reliance on Japanese derived JIT inventories these days, where keeping large inventories and general redundancy is punished. A modern factory is more akin to a coal powerplant than a inventory warehouse. You don't want things arriving too late anymore than you want them arriving too soon, because both are inefficient, and this inefficiency hurts worker productivity, which is the only thing that matters in modern macroeconomics these days.

It's also important to remember that high cargo ship speeds (>25 knots) originated primarily as a response in the 1950's to high speed Whiskeys interdicting militarized merchant marine and amphibious transport convoys going to Europe. At a time when submarines could only kill stuff when they got within about 5 miles of a target, so actually going fast was important to be able to ambush merchants before they got within range of friendly aviation. This is no longer the case in a world of open source, commercial satellite targeting of high temporal and visual/radar resolutions, where even relatively poorly developed countries will be able to interdict merchant shipping with hypersonic weapons or long range, INS guided torpedoes.

When the XXI economy's most recent "oil glut" is "only as bad" as the 1973 oil shock, you know "fast" isn't on the menu any time soon without changing the actual fuel, and nuclear fuel is one of the few fuels that's actually more expensive than oil once you account for all the regulatory requirements, stringent production measures, and training of operating personnel, among other things like the need to shift to relatively alien-to-shipping practices of needing to maintain twice as many cargo ships to account for the bulk downtiming for maintenance/refueling.

In fact it's hard to think of anything else that comes to mind immediately, maybe some sort of very deep diving. long-duration stationed research vessel though. Nothing like NS Savannah will ever be economically viable though, as the shipping environment has only become more ruthless towards any minor inefficiencies. Nuclear cargo ships are just a anachronism like supersonic transports or cargo zeppelins.

That said the most obvious civil utility of nuclear power is icebreakers, but even that will be fairly dubious over the course of the XXI.

Fast cargo ships will come back only if modern economies become able to grow without squeezing more productivity out of a dwindling supply of youthful workers, or if there's a major wartime threat of interdiction by incredibly slow, short ranged submarines, but there's very little reason else for them.

Iron combustion engines have a much bigger future than nuclear powerplants for commercial shipping though, unless you remove all regulatory aspects of nuclear powerplants and accept pot metal containment vessels and train nuclear engineers from Starbucks baristas. That would certainly cut their operating and manufacturing costs I suppose, but the results might be a bit dramatic.
 
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Kat Tsun's list is pretty extensive. I may add a couple more. First, there is a reason all these shipping companies register in Carjakstan and San Sombero. If there is a corner to be cut, they will cut it. Also, some countries may ban the ships from their ports.
 
Flyaway said:
Do the existing nuclear powered ice breakers count as civilian shipping?
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There was the roll on roll off Sevmorput, if I am spelling that right…from the old Bellona site IIRC. Savanna was the real looker though.

The NEW Arktika class giant icebreakers are going to be wonders to behold. If Russia would embrace Sea Dragon or even Truax’s smaller concepts—each Ruble to space also goes to shipyards—no more to Kazakhstan…let the UAE buy Baikonur. Sevmash could get extra work. Forget subs.
 
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Grey Havoc said:
I forgot to mention, there was also a joint project between Japan and post-Soviet Russia in the early 1990s (1992 onwards) for the development of nuclear powered ships for commercial use. Not sure when it ended but it was likely short-lived enough. JAERI officially handled the Japanese side of things, though I believe the entire idea was one of the MOF & MFA's (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) infamous 'cunning plans' (Blackadder fans will of course recognise that particular reference!), likely with U.S. State Department involvement in the background.
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Grey Havoc said:
Incidentally, the Matsu appears to have been not only intended to be a proof of concept/technology demonstrator for domestically built nuclear merchant ships but also (from relatively late on in the program's development) to double as a disguised testbed for a domestic submarine reactor hidden in plain sight, much as its West German counterpart the Otto Hahn was. This meant its reactor was rather underpowered for a large surface vessel. The follow-on design to the Mutsu was in contrast planned to have a more powerful reactor much better suited to naval and commercial surface ships; detailed design work was intended to begin in 1975 with completion (including fuel loading) and service entry by 1983, indicating that the keel would have been laid down in 1980. However the (actually minor, but ultimately politically fatal) shielding problem with the Mutsu reactor (which was traced back to what could only be called pure bureaucratic stupidity) and the resulting popular backlash (helped nicely along by Soviet agents and associated fronts and/or useful idiots it should be noted) would cause that particular plan to be indefinitely shelved, something that Japan would soon increasingly come to regret dearly.
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Kat Tsun said:
It would certainly be one way to get rid of the excess HEU from the Soviet nuclear weapons program.
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As well as keep ex-Soviet scientists and technicians in sensitive areas gainfully employed and out of the reach of hostile regimes, terrorist groups, etc., also a major concern at the time.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Kat Tsun said:
It would certainly be one way to get rid of the excess HEU from the Soviet nuclear weapons program.
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As well as keep ex-Soviet scientists and technicians in sensitive areas gainfully employed and out of the reach of hostile regimes, terrorist groups, etc., also a major concern at the time.
Click to expand...

Well, my implication with that was more that it was a more roundabout way of the actual deal, which was just buying HEU and converting it to LEU directly for civil use, application agnostic.

Japan would have just finished the PLH Shikishima, and after the MOX scheme fell through, someone probably thought this could replace it I suppose. Goes from Soviet stockpiles to Japan and into maritime reactors for cargo ships? It's not a terrible idea on the face of it. Converting it from HEU to LEU in Japan and just putting it in the civil powerplants or stockpiling would be better though, I'd imagine. Maybe Japan could have been a second France in that case.

Unfortunately, I imagine the only reason this didn't happen is probably that Japan simply didn't have the cash to pony up at the time. Wrangling in the shipbuilders was probably just a hackneyed attempt to draw in private monies to pay for something the government couldn't finance itself. Then big bucks America, even in the death throes of being eclipsed by the Asian Tigers because it hadn't invented the Internet yet, still ponied up enough fat stacks to buy half the Soviet HEU.

If only the asset bubble had been delayed another decade and a half or so and happened in the mid-90's instead of mid-80's it might have happened. Could have made that SPY-7 super BMD 20,000 ton cruiser a nuclear ship to give USN supercarriers a fast surface escort. :v
 
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www.rina.org.uk

Could Ulstein's nuclear superhero be shipping's saviour?

Earlier this year, the company made fresh ripples with the announcement of the Ulstein Thor, a concept design for a 149m 3R (Replenishment, Research and
www.rina.org.uk www.rina.org.uk
(Royal Institution of Naval Architects website)

The Ulstein Thor 3R (Replenishment, Research and Rescue) vessel concept.
1663264492316.png
Earlier this year, the company made fresh ripples with the announcement of the Ulstein Thor, a concept design for a 149m 3R (Replenishment, Research and Rescue) vessel that would be powered by a thorium molten salt reactor (MSR). The Ulstein Thor would essentially serve as a mobile nuclear power station with which other battery-powered vessels could rendezvous to recharge. While mooted as a potential solution to allow zero-emission expedition ships to operate in the Norwegian fjords and other remote or environmentally sensitive areas, Ulstein is keen to emphasise that really this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Thor’s potential applications.
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Simultaneously with Thor, Ulstein also revealed a concept design named after the mythological Norse hero’s partner, Sif, in this instance a battery-driven cruise ship capable of accommodating 80 passengers and 80 crew. Both the designs include Ulstein’s trademark X-BOW®. The company reckons that a single Thor vessel could be responsible for the recharging of as many as four ships cruising within a particular area. Dynamic positioning or anchors would be used during these charging operations, with a drone vehicle used to transfer the charging plug between the ships. With the rapid advances being made in battery technology it’s estimated that the passenger vessel could be fully charged in as little as six hours.
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EDIT:

The ULSTEIN THOR superpower is shipping's silver bullet to zero emission - Ulstein

The vessel concept ULSTEIN THOR is a 149m 3R (Replenishment, Research and Rescue) design with a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (MSR), Thor is a floating, mobile, multi-purpose power station that never needs refuelling, creating the ocean infrastructure required for full-electric vessels. Thor...
ulstein.com ulstein.com
 
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I know the feeling. I'm nearly a zombie myself today. Early night for me tonight! But first a nice cup of tea....
 
Kat Tsun said:
Speed stopped being useful decades ago, if it ever were useful in the first place, as the Liberty Ships (and 19th century clippers) were about 15 knots cruise too. Cargo ships often have wildly circuitous routes because they're already too fast.

Primarily cargo ships go slow due to the general ricketiness of the global economy and its reliance on Japanese derived JIT inventories these days, where keeping large inventories and general redundancy is punished. A modern factory is more akin to a coal powerplant than a inventory warehouse. You don't want things arriving too late anymore than you want them arriving too soon, because both are inefficient, and this inefficiency hurts worker productivity, which is the only thing that matters in modern macroeconomics these days.

It's also important to remember that high cargo ship speeds (>25 knots) originated primarily as a response in the 1950's to high speed Whiskeys interdicting militarized merchant marine and amphibious transport convoys going to Europe. At a time when submarines could only kill stuff when they got within about 5 miles of a target, so actually going fast was important to be able to ambush merchants before they got within range of friendly aviation. This is no longer the case in a world of open source, commercial satellite targeting of high temporal and visual/radar resolutions, where even relatively poorly developed countries will be able to interdict merchant shipping with hypersonic weapons or long range, INS guided torpedoes.

When the XXI economy's most recent "oil glut" is "only as bad" as the 1973 oil shock, you know "fast" isn't on the menu any time soon without changing the actual fuel, and nuclear fuel is one of the few fuels that's actually more expensive than oil once you account for all the regulatory requirements, stringent production measures, and training of operating personnel, among other things like the need to shift to relatively alien-to-shipping practices of needing to maintain twice as many cargo ships to account for the bulk downtiming for maintenance/refueling.

In fact it's hard to think of anything else that comes to mind immediately, maybe some sort of very deep diving. long-duration stationed research vessel though. Nothing like NS Savannah will ever be economically viable though, as the shipping environment has only become more ruthless towards any minor inefficiencies. Nuclear cargo ships are just a anachronism like supersonic transports or cargo zeppelins.

That said the most obvious civil utility of nuclear power is icebreakers, but even that will be fairly dubious over the course of the XXI.

Fast cargo ships will come back only if modern economies become able to grow without squeezing more productivity out of a dwindling supply of youthful workers, or if there's a major wartime threat of interdiction by incredibly slow, short ranged submarines, but there's very little reason else for them.

Iron combustion engines have a much bigger future than nuclear powerplants for commercial shipping though, unless you remove all regulatory aspects of nuclear powerplants and accept pot metal containment vessels and train nuclear engineers from Starbucks baristas. That would certainly cut their operating and manufacturing costs I suppose, but the results might be a bit dramatic.
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Jit invatorys make fast delivery much more desirable then not. Cargo ships arnt slow because of the "ricketiness" of the global economy (whatever that means) but because of the price of oil. Faster delivery means lest time used which equals time saved wich equals efficiency.

The sl-7 ships i used as en example were not biult for the whisky threat, they were built by the same man who created containerized shipping. The wisky threat wasn't even used when the navy bought them so I don't know why you bought them up.

Also yes standardized nucular reactors and new regulatory requirements will pe required but say nucular fule is more expensive then oil is really dishonest why of putting it, you can say the same as all the refinerys and oil well for oil, or all the other ways need to create hydrogen or other "clean" fules.
 
Yes, I'm sure that submarines couldn't go faster than 12 knots underwater in the 1970's...

It is true that oil is extremely expensive now, but it isn't the main reason shipping is slow these days. Addressing it will only address one half of the two major issues, which are fuel is getting more expensive and warehousing capacities for factories are generally shrinking. The latter is more important than the former because shipping industry is generally reactive to factory needs, not the other way around. Nuclear fuel is also not cheaper than oil unless you accept it being rather more dangerous than diesel. Perhaps as dangerous as coal or something.

At the end of the day, getting things delivered quickly is mostly just a hedge against poor planning. Unfortunately, modern computers and forecasting software (of all types, economic and weather), the Internet, and industrial layouts have all coalesced over the past about 40 years or so to make economic planning tasks much easier than they were in the past. That's sort of how Japan was able to invent JIT/eliminate warehousing in the first place.

Of course, this makes the modern global economy far more vulnerable to unanticipated shocks, but redundancy is punished by insolvency.

The fact that the "SL-7 ships" completely failed and had to be purchased by the government or be sent to the scrapyard sorta proves that.
 
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Kat Tsun said:
warehousing capacities for factories are generally shrinking.
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Though that particular trend seems to be reversing now with the collapse in JIT logistic chains and the implosion of globalisation in general. That is only likely to speed up with onshoring and reshoring now seemingly becoming the new normal.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Kat Tsun said:
warehousing capacities for factories are generally shrinking.
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Though that particular trend seems to be reversing now with the collapse in JIT logistic chains and the implosion of globalisation in general. That is only likely to speed up with onshoring and reshoring now seemingly becoming the new normal.
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This is counterbalanced by the aging populations and declining youth workforces in the "reshored" economies, which are invariably Western/developed, so it's going to be very temporary. Offshoring will continue at a later date much quieter, and probably be visible only in industrial workforce percentages. We filled 80% of the industrial workforce placements over the past decade, an improvement over the 65% of the late 2010s, by moving the jobs to another place. That sort of thing.

Globalization is imploding in a sense, but what we call globalization really just means "we put 'basically everything' in one country" more or less, so it's more like the global revolves around a single factory for a bit. JIT is ultimately just a natural evolution of highly reliable communications links, predictable economic forecasting, and a sufficiently available workforce. Sure, if any one of these pull out it stumbles a bit, but that's not a big big deal since the other two legs can catch it.

Western economies right now only has reliable communication links and economic forecasting, but no workforce left. That ain't changing. They'll still be head honcho managers of the factories, but they'll be shotgunned across Africa or Southeast Asia instead of all concentrated in three Chinese provinces.
--
Anyway this is drifting into a tangent but the only way faster cargo ships comes back is if freight rate tanks a lot, because cargo shippers would need to perform more jobs quicker to make up money. Realistically this just means they all crash and burn and international trade dies without fat pumps from the subsidy machine, but assuming infinite subsidies that indicates gas turbines, not nuclear power. Gas turbines are almost as reliable as diesels and can go faster. Unfortunately, high bunker prices means that most petrofuels aren't useful for that job, which indicates another form of fuel would be better.

So you'd see weird stuff like methane, iron powder, or maybe coal dust turbines being used until people figure out what that fuel is cheap.

Conversely, nuclear cargo ships will always be white elephants, like the occasional cargo submarine, supersonic airliner, or 30+ knots passenger liner. At least these days, anyway. They aren't profitable, but not impossible, because a government can just subsidize it to thump its chest and make big waves (literally?) when it pulls up at the shipping port. On the other hand a gas turbine ship can theoretically be profitable, it just isn't these days. It wasn't in the past either, as the SL-7's proved with their nonviable business model. Maybe it will be in the future, but not with petrofuels barring the discovery of a couple secret Texas-sized stashes of petroleum somewhere.

I hope that explains it to cjc fairly succinctly.
 
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Kat Tsun said:
Yes, I'm sure that submarines couldn't go faster than 12 knots underwater in the 1970's...

It is true that oil is extremely expensive now, but it isn't the main reason shipping is slow these days. Addressing it will only address one half of the two major issues, which are fuel is getting more expensive and warehousing capacities for factories are generally shrinking. The latter is more important than the former because shipping industry is generally reactive to factory needs, not the other way around. Nuclear fuel is also not cheaper than oil unless you accept it being rather more dangerous than diesel. Perhaps as dangerous as coal or something.

At the end of the day, getting things delivered quickly is mostly just a hedge against poor planning. Unfortunately, modern computers and forecasting software (of all types, economic and weather), the Internet, and industrial layouts have all coalesced over the past about 40 years or so to make economic planning tasks much easier than they were in the past. That's sort of how Japan was able to invent JIT/eliminate warehousing in the first place.

Of course, this makes the modern global economy far more vulnerable to unanticipated shocks, but redundancy is punished by insolvency.

The fact that the "SL-7 ships" completely failed and had to be purchased by the government or be sent to the scrapyard sorta proves that.
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In fact sl-7 ships completely disprove your point, they failed because of a wild swing in oil prices, something that wouldn't have happened with nucular ships, which you would know if you looked them up. But thin you think productivity is the only thing that maders in the global economy (insted of innovation) plus that hole warehouse thing this gust not ture, warehousing has increased across the board, for decades now. and jit directly encourages fast shipping (how do you think we got to the point that Amazon can offer 2 day ship, had nothing to do with bazos that I can tell you)
 
If we want an example of a modern fast Cargo Ship, the 37-knot, diesel-powered Maersk B class proved to be so useful that they spent several years after the Global Financial Crisis moored together as a raft in Loch Striven, only being used as a film set for a children's television series.
 
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