The Nuclear Navy Proves We Can Transition To Net Zero Shipping

The United States Military is the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known. It has the ability to project power to anywhere in the world; there is no competitor. The United States Navy protects the world’s oceans ensuring freedom of navigation and guaranteeing the right to participate in global commerce. It can now leverage its proud history and range of talents to solve the problem of emissions in shipping, something it’s been capable of since 1955.

IMO Net Zero in Limbo

Shipping is an important and often overlooked component of the global struggle to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation will have to continue to be our best, first approach as we can’t rely on future peoples and technologies to solve the problems that we’re currently creating. Every megaton of CO2 matters and the shipping aspect of the global economy (90% of global trade is conducted at sea) contributes 3% of global GHG emissions. To address this, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set a target to be Net-Zero by 2050. How will we do this?

With difficulty, without American support. The current administration has pushed back at the IMO’s target of Net-Zero, threatening members who support this measure with tariffs and visa restrictions. The State Department’s statement calls the target a carbon tax that will adversely affect the American consumer, levied by an unaccountable UN organization. They fear the regulation would benefit China at American expense by precluding the use of proven fuels like liquified natural gas (LNG) and biofuels where America is currently a leader. The State Department overlooks a fuel source in which America is already the global leader.

Nuclear Powered Civilian Shipping

Even though the Department of Energy funded research into nuclear powered Liquid Natural Gas transport (LNG) ships in 2022, it seems the US will want to preserve its sovereignty on the emissions issue and act in its own time as it sees fit. While we can continue to use LNG to power cargo ships presently, we could save some of this LNG for sale or for strategic reserve by using cheaper and cleaner fuels; excitingly, this is yet another space for nuclear power to facilitate American dominance. As of December 2024, the US Navy has sailed 177 million miles on nuclear power safely; that’s 7,600 reactor years of operation. If ever there was a reason for us to feel patriotism without veering into jingoism, to feel confident in an American institution’s ability to handle a challenge, it’s with the unparalleled program that Admiral Hyman Rickover, an immigrant, designed.

If anyone were to doubt the viability of American Nuclear Shipping, they’d do well to remember that the American Navy currently has 97 reactors in operation, and that nearly half of our combatant ships are nuclear powered: 11 aircraft carriers, 48 attack submarines, 14 ballistic missile submarines, and 4 guided-missile submarines. The training for sailors to work on these systems as either mechanics, electricians, or reactor operators is up to 3 6-month schools in Goose Creek, South Carolina. The program is such that it has a suicide rate of twice the national average, and this is directly due to the academic rigor and seriousness with which the job is treated. Even those who don’t continue with the program can’t doubt the quality of the material presented, and the efficient way in which it’s done. This program is the most academically intense in the military, and those with the highest ASVAB scores either join this program or the SEALS. These two programs get the highest enlistment bonuses for good reason: it’s really hard to finish these schools.

Chernobyl was made worse by reactor operator error; this story serves as a cautionary tale for Nuke Students. Many Nuclear Veterans already pursue careers in civilian nuclear and given that the model for training nuclear qualified technicians already exists in the form of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command (NNPTC) we don’t need to reinvent the wheel here, just scale up and adjust for civilian shipping. The fundamentals of how pressurized water nuclear reactors and heat exchangers work are the same for an aircraft carrier or cargo ship. China might have a bigger ship building capacity at present, but we still have superior human capital.