Radioactive reticence

摘要

The desire to adopt nuclear powerfor shipping is driven by the fact that it is the ultimate clean propulsion in terms of exhaust emissions-an objective increasingly sought in today's environmentally focused world. Attempts over the years to develop nuclear-powered merchant ships, together with some of the political problems encountered along the way, are described in the IMarEST's annual Propulsion Perspective supple-ment. The technology needed to use nuclear reactors to power ships is well established and, especially in the case of naval submarines, well proven. Despite this, nuclear power remains controversial both at sea and on land. Disasters at nuclear power stations at Windscale (1957), Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011) have all raised questions about the safety of nuclear power, and regardless of how these accidents came about, have negatively impacted on public perceptions.