A team of researchers from Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Canada, conducted a study claiming that a small-scale nuclear reactor along with renewable energy sources can help shipping cut GHG emissions.
As the study notes, Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) are free from GHG emissions and playing an important role in sustainable development by lessening GHG emissions.
Integration of RESs in ocean-going marine ships could be an option to make marine transportation free from emissions
However, ocean-going marine ships require a large amount of reliable energy to support the propulsive load demand. RESs are intermittent, and a large amount of energy cannot be stored economically by the available energy storage techniques.
Additionally, the researchers claim that the penetration of RESs in a marine ship is limited by the available area and total weight carrying capacity of that marine ship.
Because of these limitations of RESs in marine ships, there is a requirement of integrating other types of energy sources with RESs to support the baseload energy demand and to avoid the variableness of RESs
For this reason, conventional fossil fuel-based generators, like diesel generators, can be incorporated with RESs to address these shortcomings of RESs. However, as the penetration of RESs is limited to marine ships, most of the energy is supplied by fossil fuel-based generators. Therefore, the integration of RESs with fossil fuel-based generators merely reduces GHG emissions and is not a feasible option to make marine ships free from emissions.
Fossil fuel-based generators need to be replaced by emissions-free and reliable energy sources to make the marine ships free from emissions
…says the study, adding that small scale nuclear reactors, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and Microreactors (MRs), are alsofree from GHG emissions and are competitive candidates to replace fossil fuel-based generators.
Further analyzing nuclear power in shipping, the paper considers four different energy systems:
- Stand-alone Fossil Fuel-based Energy System;
- Stand-alone Nuclear Energy System;
- Renewable and Fossil Fuel-based Hybrid Energy System;
- Nuclear-Renewable Hybrid Energy System (N-R HES).
In order to measure the efficiency of each system, the researchers set specific, which include:
- The Cost of Energy (COE);
- Net Present Cost (NPC);
- GHG emissions.
The results show that the Nuclear-Renewable Hybrid Energy System could be the best energy system for the marine industry to reduce GHG emissions and improve economic performance
A sensitivity analysis is also carried out by changing certain parameters to reinforce the findings of this study.
