Bill added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

And let us not forget the NS Savannah (Nuclear).

I toured the Savannah where she is moored at Patriot's Point
near Charleston, SC. Smaller than I had envisioned her.

Small was the NS Savannah's problem. She could not make it
financially. She was built as a small break-bulk cargo ship,
just as large containerships were coming along. Her nuclear
power plant required highly trained and therefore very expensive
people. The Captain (understandably) objected to being paid less
than the Chief Engineer, and so it went. Could not make enough
money in the small break-bulk ship to pay the high costs of her
crew, not to mention the high costs of maintenance of the
nuclear power plant.

Even the U. S Navy found smaller nuclear-powered surface ships
too expensive to operate and maintain, because of the large
number of highly-trained and highly-paid nuclear power plant
operating personnel, and the high cost of overhauling the
nuclear power plants. The Navy has found that nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers make sense, and of course nuclear submarines
do because they don't have to come up for air, but the
nuclear-powered cruisers proved hard to justify after the Soviet
Union collapsed, so they are all decommissioned and scrapped. I
served in two of those ships, and am a firm believer in nuclear
power in the right application, but a small ship is not a good
application for nuclear power.

Good info, thanks, Bill.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"That's all I have to say about that" - Forrest Gump