Savannah on my Mind

The world's first nuclear-powered merchant ship is looking for a port. The Virtual Office of Acquistion of the Maritime Administration is trying to find a home for the decommissioned N.S. Savannah. This comes about as a result of MARAD's plan to remove the reactor and piping from the vessel in order to reduce its liability as a potential target for terrorist attack.

The Savannah was launched in 1962 and spent 1965-1971 sailing the oceans for the American Export Isbrandtsen Lines under a contract from the U.S. government. While a technological and aesthectic success, it was not financially practical, and was decommisioned in 1972 to save money for the war in Vietnam. The ship was built as a passenger/cargo hybrid, with thirty staterooms, but the size of the engineering plant and the space taken up by the passenger quarters meant that it could carry less than 10,000 tons of cargo. She was built with the knowledge that it could never be profitable, but it was hoped that she would demonstrate the benefits of atomic power.



The Savannah was fast, with a maximum speed of twenty-three knots and a sustained cruising speed of more than twenty knots. She was equipped with active roll stabilization and had rolling cargo cranes instead of the common kingposts. Her reactor was surrounded by armor designed to prevent a collision from rupturing the core. This included two feet of crushing material made up of high-strength steel and redwood, and concrete reactor shielding eighteen inches thick. The reactor containment vessel had a pair of spring-loaded manholes on the bottom, which were designed to open in the event of the ship sinking. These would allow seawater in, to balance the pressure as the vessel sank, in order to prevent it from being crushed. When the pressure equalized at the bottom, the springs would drive the hatches shut, sealing the reactor.

In reality, there wasn't any way to make a nuclear ship profitable. Imagine a tramp steamer with a crew of nuclear engineers. Only two other merchant ships have ever been nuclear powered: the N.S Otto Hahn in Germany, which was launched in 1964 and which served from 1970-1979 before it was converted into a conventionally powered ship; and the "Sevmorput", an icebreaker-freighter in Russia which was launched in 1988 and is still active. The "Sevmorput" has a bit of an unfair advantage though, as it is on a highly subsidized route across the Northeast Passage. Japan built a nuclear ship, the Mutsu, which was launched in 1969. Her reactor was a technical disaster and her career consisted of four voyages in 1991 before she was decommissioned the next year. The Japan Atomic Energy Institute emphasizes the success of her 1991 cruises, but doesn't mention the twenty-two year gestation period.

It's interesting to note that the U.S. Navy has decommissioned all nine of the nuclear-powered cruisers that it built, leaving only the carriers in service. Apparently, even they couldn't make the economics work in their favor.

As an aside, the Savannah's namesake was the first steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic, in 1819. She carried enough fuel to run her boilers for eighty-nine of the 707-hour voyage.