China Has Launched the World's First All-Electric Cargo Ship (futurism.com) 150
slash.jit writes:
China has launched the world's first all-electric cargo ship. It can travel 80 kilometers (approximately 50 miles) after being charged for 2 hours. As noted by Clean Technica, 2 hours is roughly the amount of time it would take to unload the ship's cargo while docked. Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
China Daily reports that the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery, a cheaper and cleaner power supply. And Clean Technica notes that that battery is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs, while "Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs."
next we'll have (Score:5, Insightful)
Wind powered ships with sails and shit
Re: next we'll have (Score:1)
"instead of using a turbine to charge the batteries, we've saved tons in conversion losses by using the innovative technique of powering the ship directly by wind"
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And slaves!
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Well, on the bright side - once all the other jobs have been automated, we'll at least be able to keep busy.
robots all the way down (Score:2)
Feeding slaves is expensive, unless they learn to eat coal.
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Then we have replaced slaves eating coal with machines, and we're back to square 1.
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Too little power density for modern cargo transport needs - even with modern techniques such as rotosails and kite sails (although they can reduce ship consumption.
A much more plausible approach would be deepwater wind turbines and floating solar, both of which exist (but aren't currently as cheap as their onshore equivalents). Floating "gigachargers", if you will, across major sea lanes. As XKCD put it... [xkcd.com]
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Well the point of kite sails and Flettner Rotors isn't to replace traditional propulsion, but to harness free assist to traditional propulsion to reduce fuel consumption -- physically savings of 15-20% seem feasible.
The problem is that there isn't a lot of practical experience with such systems, and fuel prices have been too low for private companies to gamble on unproven tech.
People who start the comment in the subject box ar (Score:1)
e retards.
Next? (Score:2)
Wind powered ships with sails and shit
Next? There are wind powered ships with sails and shit under development as we speak. The concepts range anywhere from augmenting normal diesel propulsion with computer controlled sail to a ships with a super light shape optimised hull, a battery-electric propulsion and a combination of solar panels and computer controlled sails. Some of these things look like something straight out of the 5th element's Fhloston paradise. The shipping companies have expressed interest because of the potential fuel savings.
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They actually do already. Rather than big cloth sails they use vertical spinning ones now, which reduce the load on the engines. They have also experimented with kites.
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They actually do already. Rather than big cloth sails they use vertical spinning ones now, which reduce the load on the engines. They have also experimented with kites.
Like this bad boy - interestingly enough, used to transport wind turbine blades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's been out since 2010.
WOOHOO! So it can cross a river! (Score:1)
Stop the presses.
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It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
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It's a container ship. Now, if only someone could think of a way to install and uninstall battery capacity quickly and easily, and what to do with those batteries while they're sitting there in the sun not being used...
It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
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It's a bulker, don't look at that picture at the top of the article. (For one thing, the ship is only 200-something feet long, isn't a standard cointainer 53'?)
I'm sure the batteries are below her belt, (indirectly) cooled by the water. And why would you need to change battery capacity quickly? She'll be doing the same route her entire life. They can probably change out a faulty group of cells very quickly and easily any time she's in port, and probably even while she's under way.
Ah, you are right. Fooled by a damned stock photo :(
You'll have to apply my facetious idea to a future electric container ship. Then it will make more sense. In that scenario, you might change battery capacity to suit the route to next be embarked on. More importantly, you might change battery charge quickly rather then charging the batteries in place; you would charge the batteries on shore using the cheapest power source available, when available, and install them on the next ship to arrive.
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Ok, I looked up that river and I am sorry but if that is the definition of a river then I'm renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Mississippi River. 1,000+ miles!
Not laying any blame at your feet, heck it is shown on Google Earth just as you describe.
Oh for the love of... What charges the batteries? (Score:3, Informative)
Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
http://www.chinafaqs.org/issue/coal-electricity
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Re:Oh for the love of... What charges the batterie (Score:5, Informative)
As of 2016, it was down to 2/3rds [nrdc.org]. Like everywhere else, China's grid is changing fast.
And BTW.... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:And BTW.... (Score:4, Informative)
That's because A) they've been undergoing an exponential scaleup, meaning the quantities didn't become meaningful until recently, and B) it takes time to replace an entire electrical generation system. In 2016 alone China installed 35GW of solar capacity, for example, nearly doubling their total (coal is 943GW currently installed). It's clear that it's only a matter of time.
... it's still just 1.1% (Score:1, Troll)
And also I guess we're just supposed to forget that China has rampant problems with air quality and particular matter. All of which really fucks with solar power efficient. And you're just not going to ramp up one enough to displace the other.
Of course at all assumes that the Chinese government isn't just lying about their plans and capability to even do this. Something that the government of that nation has systemic problems with doing both historically and today. yeah that whole 'Great Leap Forward' t
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A large portion of China's solar power deployment is west of the industrial heartland, in the high deserts, connected to cities by HVDC lines. Furthermore, solar panels don't "breathe"; most pollutants don't affect them, and nor do they care about whether PM is fine/health effecting, or natural coarse PM blown up from the ground. Solar farms are cleaned regularly for a reason.
Whether you like it or not, this is happening. Already is happening, continues happening, the rate keeps accelerating, and the fun
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Okay now your just flat out lying. And as such I'm not going to response to anything you say beyond this.
ALL solar systems are very much affected by particulate matter in the air, that shit does NOT just 'blow off'. In fact most of them require large amount of water to constantly clean the fucking things. There's also the problem that Solar panels are not eternal. In fact temperature changes in them is why the eventually start to fail. And then you also have the nice problem with disposing of large amo
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Re-read and try again.
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ALL solar systems are very much affected by particulate matter in the air
Are you really pointing out the fact that solar panels are adversely affected by the very air borne particulate matter that they help to eliminate? Really?
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Yeh, its not like water ever just falls from the sky, and cleans the panels.
3 years in im still getting full output from my panels, which have never been cleaned other than by nature.
They produce all my power needs, including Air cond.
Hoe are thing back in the 20th century?
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You are just an idiot who knows nothing about the topic ... e.g. like to explain what toxic stuff is produced and deposed?
Re: Oh for the love of... What charges the batteri (Score:2)
So has China, like the rest of the world, stopped building coal-fired power generators?
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Re:Yeah, and? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because internal combustion engines are made from fairy dust, and petroleum appears out of thin air.
People who complain about the horrors of lithium mining simply demonstrate that they have no clue how lithium is actually produced. The majority of the world's lithium supply is produced from salar brine. Look at it [google.is]. The horror. The horror, right? They pump brine up to the surface into ponds, let it dry out to deposit unwanted salts (leaving a lithium-rich concentrate), then send that for refining. On many salars, the entire salar floods annually, wiping out the evaporation ponds, which they have to rebuild. Nature literally reclaims the "mine" annually. Its hard to picture a less environmentally impacting resource production process.
The remainder of lithium is produced from spodumene. Spodumene mines are listed as having no particular environmental impacts associated with them apart from the general impacts of hard-rock mining; the largest impact risk is listed as suspended solids in waterways - aka, silt from the rock crushers. Which is a risk from anything that crushes rock.
Do I even need to mention that there's not actually that much lithium in lithium-ion batteries, or that - as large boxes full of useful minerals - recycling rates will be nearly 100%?
And coal is in the progress of being replaced with solar and wind, whether you like that or not. In China, in the EU, and in the US. Some places have some other types of power that are also on the rise - for example, in the US it's "wind, solar, and natural gas" - but coal is in a death spiral everywhere.
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They're not stupid, you know.
They probably have a windmill generator on the roof, so as they speed through the ocean the wind recharges the batteries. If they go super fast, the extra generated power is used to create bitcoin, which in turn pays for the cost of the batteries and windmill.
Very clever those Chinese!
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Run the propeller with waste heat from the bitcoin miners.
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They're not stupid, you know.
They probably have a windmill generator on the roof, so as they speed through the ocean the wind recharges the batteries. If they go super fast, the extra generated power is used to create bitcoin, which in turn pays for the cost of the batteries and windmill.
Very clever those Chinese!
Good to see that someone figured it out!
Anyhow, I'm impressed with the high dudgeon humor - well played, sir.
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Thankfully, electric motors powered 100% by coal power plants still produce far less CO2 than diesel engines on board ship.
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Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Yeah, about that... Let's look at this "China FAQs" site you linked to. If you just go to the front page we see a series of stories...
Chinaâ(TM)s Decline in Coal Consumption Drives Global Slowdown in Emissions
China is Leaving the U.S. Behind on Clean Energy Investment
So according to those two (literally the two most recent headlines) China is actually doing quite a lot to stop using coal (its consumption actually peaked a few years ago and is in decline), more so than the world's other big polluter in
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Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Yeah, about that... Let's look at this "China FAQs" site you linked to. If you just go to the front page we see a series of stories...
Chinaâ(TM)s Decline in Coal Consumption Drives Global Slowdown in Emissions China is Leaving the U.S. Behind on Clean Energy Investment
At least at this point in history, China, whatever else thy are understands the issues with coal. The dangers of mining it, using it, and understanding that it will not last forever.
Here in America, we have political truths that trump physics. Coal is clean, and safe, and will last forever, so there is no need to explore other alternatives, as supply side jeebuz will provide.
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Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
So what's your point? That China can never experiment with new motive power sources because coal?
That the laws of physics tell us that only coal generated electricity can run this ship?
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Because at least check China produces about 80% of it's power generation from burning coal.
Your own link says 69%.
Remember: never trust some bullshit click bail green washing headline when you can easily check the facts for yourself.
Heh ironic...
And inronically, it carries coal (Score:3, Interesting)
The article should have mentioned that.
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Well, if the batteries ever catch fire - that's going to be quite a spectacle, what with the coal and all.
Re:And inronically, it carries coal (Score:4, Funny)
You mean things like "Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal."?
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I'm actually more curious what route it takes. If you figure the route is 65 km (25% safety factor in range to account for currents and wind), at 12.8 kph that works out to 5 hours travel time. If it takes 2 hours to load and unload, that's 4 hours lay time for a 5 hour trip. That's gotta be some gnarly route to make such a high percentage of lay time preferable to something like a r
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You mean things like "Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal."?
This is slashdot. Who RTFS?
Batteries Wear Out (Score:1)
Not only do batteries need charging but they also wear out. Li are no exception.
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Wait until you find out that engines need maintenance. Then I'm sure you'll campaign for the complete cessation of movement of people and cargo because it would never work right?
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â'AÂ=>â'B
Translation: Your logic abilities are weak.
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â'AÂ=>â'B
Translation: Your logic abilities are weak.
Oooh you can translate unicode? You should get a job at slashdot.
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You're ability to be snarky doesn't change the fact that you missed the point. Too bad.
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Not only do batteries need charging but they also wear out. Li are no exception.
This! Mechanical engines all last forever. Mechanical Internal combustion engines use no fuel either, they are powered by the tears of liberals guess. Finally, they are free.
Re:Batteries Wear Out (Score:5, Interesting)
A vehicle is not its fuel/battery; you have to look at the whole picture. When you electrify a vehicle of any kind, you add some things and remove others (and also change how it's built - batteries add some structural support and can be located anywhere, which frees up design constraints in other regards). As an example, the Model 3 SR is almost the exact same weight as the similar-powered, similar-sized BMW 330i.
If you tried to make, say, nonstop transpacific cargo ships with li-ion batteries, that would be a non-starter. Even nonstop transatlantic would be priced out of the market, with huge capital costs and low cargo capacity. However, for legs under around 2000km or so, electrified freight shipping should be highly competitive. I don't expect it to take off quickly, if only for the reason that it'll take time for battery production to scale up that far. But already it should be a winner from a cost perspective. That doesn't mean you can't do transoceanic shipping - you can - but it also requires deepwater wind and/or floating solar (and / or, obviously, island stops).
There are a couple interesting side benefits as well. One, ports have to have large battery buffers (several to several dozen GWh for a port dealing with large cargo ships), which trickle charge from the grid and use that to surge charge ships. But these buffers do double-duty; they'd also buffer generation and demand fluctuations onshore, to a tremendous degree. In an emergency you could even have ships haul energy over a several hundred kilometers to places in power emergencies; when you run the numbers, you find that the rent on the ships should be quite justifiable if there's a power emergency somewhere (such as after a natural disaster). A large cargo ship might carry a gigawatt hour or so each, which is massive.
Another side effect relates to design. You can use as many, smaller propellers as you want (to gain this advantage, some ICE ships run generators alongside / instead of direct drive, just to be able to do this), since efficient electric motors are much more compact and easier to locate anywhere vs. ICEs. This helps lower your draft (shallower ports become more accessible) and makes the ship much more maneuverable. The extreme end is that of azipods - electric motors on azimuth mounts which can rotate any direction as needed. An increase in the number of propellers also increases ship resilience against accidents / damage.
Re: Batteries Wear Out (Score:1)
I love your idea of using cargo ships as emergency power stores and producers.
Cache-22 (Score:2)
Adding more battery packs also leaves less space to carry cargo, though.
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Adding more battery packs also leaves less space to carry cargo, though.
Quick, list the modes of transportation which do not suffer from this exact same problem.
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Rail. Adding greater fuel capacity has no impact on freight capacity. Up to the practical limit on length of the train, of course.
Why would you want a ship that can go 50 klicks? (Score:2)
Then again, I write low level software like device drivers, so WTF do I know about hauling cargo anywhere?
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Tourism in nice quaint lake area with new gov regulations about not having more pollution.
Buy a ship from China and impress local regulators with no more local pollution.
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Probably because building a railroad is uneconomical for the quantity of coal they're planning to move. Not because the *track* is expensive, but obtaining the land for 50 km of railroad could be pretty expensive in some places compared to building what is in effect a very *tiny* bulk carrier that operates on the existing river channels.
Also because the operation of this particular ship is a step toward gaining the experience they need to build more capable vessels. State supported Chinese industries ofte
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It is easier to load and unload a cargo ship than a train with same amount of cargo.
That actually should be a no brainer.
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Good first step (Score:2)
While the electricity to charge the ship might be from coal at the moment there are three huge advantages to an electric shipping vessel.
First being that an electric ship doesn't care where it gets the electricity from so it can be charged from what ever source is available, be it solar, wind, nuclear, petroleum diesel, gas or coal. with the alternatives being switched into service as available without needing to refit the ship.
The second, and in my view best, advantage of an electric ship is that it moves
Re: Good first step (Score:2)
What happens when a 2.4 Mw battery pack falls into the ocean?
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There's a big splash and then it sinks.
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This just in... (Score:1, Flamebait)
China built a coal ship that runs on batteries for FIFTY while miles before needing a recharge!
That means it can go a whopping 25 miles away from port unless the destination also has a suitable charging station.
Color me under-whelmed.
Was it cheaper to build? Operate? Staff?
Aside from a puny range of operation, what is the benefit? Oh yeah, it runs on electricity, which, in China is probably from coal-fired plant, so what we have is a "new" coal-fired ship, difference is, the coal is burned elsewhere.
Big who
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1) It's not even remotely close to the limit of what's possible. Within orders of magnitude.
2) It's designed for a specific, 50mi trip, not go to on arbitrary routes. Most coliers are.
3) It probably was pretty darn cheap. The battery should be around $300k, which for a collier... that's nothing.
4) Staffing should be the same or less. There's not much really to operate.
5) It should be significantly cheaper per unit distance traveled; electricity is cheaper than oil, by a good margin. It should also be m
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Right. All of the supermassive solar and wind farms that can be seen from space are fakes, and nobody noticed.
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You can watch this and it will give you an overview of what the EV ship idea is all about (its the Orkney solution). https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Someone should stuff your face in a coal chute and hold it there while someone else lights a match and tosses it in. You are stupid, bigoted, and generally worth less than the shit you made in your underpants.
Solar energy (Score:2)
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Your source does not back up your claim. It is discussing tidal power not wave power.
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Solar is not even close to the required energy density
Wait What? (Score:1)
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Efficiency is relative (Score:2)
Cargo ships are the most efficient way to move cargo. They are four times as efficient as rail, and 15x as efficient as trucks.
Using oil to power them is pretty sensible, and furthermore the pollution is emitted at sea, where the concentration of such pollution is low. It's hard to imagine that any non-solar/wind way of powering these rechargeable ships would be more efficient than simply using oil.
So this sounds like a stupid idea.
We need to solve the problems of
* pollution in built up areas - this doesn't
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It sounds stupid to you because you're an ignorant piece of filth that wouldn't know a smart idea if it ripped your penis off.
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"* pollution in built up areas - this doesn't do that" - it does do that, ever looked at the water quality in a harbour?
"* overall emission of greenhouse gases - the effect would be marginal" - true, if it was ever going to be one ship - think bigger
"But offshore bulk car
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And using electricity to haul coal _is_ ironic, owever, it's still a good idea because the coal is going to be delivered regardless.
Kind of like selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. The real choice isn't between them buying or not buying weapons; it is whether they buy weapons systems from the US or from China or from Russia (which is different from the US at least for the time being).
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Perhaps you want to look at an actual sea traffic route.
Close to shore you see hundrets of ships at the same time.
I mean: you take your camera, make 360 degrees panorama picture, and you literraly see 100 or more ships.
Then again, ocean going ships don't just burn oil or diesel, they burn basically the stuff we use to plaster our streets with. Not sure if you call it tar.
That oil is so heavy it has to be melted before you can pump it into an Diesel engine.
And it cotains so much sulfur that running them in
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Nuclear has been restricted to shipping that either requires very long deployment times or very high power outputs simply because it's too expensive for general shipping use.
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You just need very thick steel plates on the stern and a bunch of atom bombs.
Maybe the Lenin, but not the Savannah. (Score:2)
While you are correct that the Lenin generated electricity which powered motors, the SS Savannah used steam from the reactor to power a turbine that directly drove the propeller shaft.
But the new thing is that stored electricity is driving this ship, not electricity generated on-site, as is done on diesel-electric locomotives. And almost all ships use electrically driven bow thrusters, and driving ships using electric azimuth pods is also common where careful controlability is required.
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Yep, the Lenin was the first propelled ship to use non-fossil fuels. Without resorting to massive batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Plus there were other battery powered boats before the Chines one.
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Do all of you people who keep proposing this stop and wonder why almost nobody in the industry ever takes this concept seriously? And the few that did went out of business or stopped doing so?
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Do all of you people who keep proposing this stop and wonder why almost nobody in the industry ever takes this concept seriously? And the few that did went out of business or stopped doing so?
You mean, the electric shipping industry? I have no idea what you're talking about. Care to elaborate?
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You mean like the vast majority of posts on every Internet venue everywhere these days? One must remember that millenials never grew up. They *are* self righteous, petulant, ninth graders.
Good reasons to test with a coal bulker... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
I understand the poster's frustration, but there are lots of great reasons to use coal as a load for the first test of a rechargeable ship. (I refuse to call it an electric ship, there have been diesel-electric propulsion systems on ships, as railway locomotives, for decades.)
You don't test your new server in production on your client's most important website, right?
If the rechargeable ship works out - no battery fires, especially! - then it might start to be used to carry heavier or more valuable cargo, like iron ore, then maybe even refitted for something else.
And if the technology works out, the rechargeable ship would be *amazing* for a short-hop ferry service, especially in an urban area where air pollution is a problem.
Ya gotta be able to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run. This is at the crawling stage. But it's encouraging.
Re:Good reasons to test with a coal bulker... (Score:4, Insightful)
there are lots of great reasons to use coal as a load for the first test of a rechargeable ship. (I refuse to call it an electric ship, there have been diesel-electric propulsion systems on ships, as railway locomotives, for decades.)
You'll call a diesel-electric ship what it is, but not an electric ship? That seems silly. And they're both rechargeable, just with different forms of energy.
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Not at all silly. Diesel-Electric is a time-tested and reliable technology that offers huge increases in fuel efficiency.
I should have called it the All-Electric ship, and I certainly didn't mean "rechargeable" as in any way a denigration. It is not, however, proven way of powering a ship. Yet. But with electric cars on the cusp of true practicality, I see no reason why it shouldn't scale up. In fact, in a ship, mass of the batteries will be less of an issue.
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Not at all silly. Diesel-Electric is a time-tested and reliable technology that offers huge increases in fuel efficiency.
Time-tested does not change what it is. They were diesel-electric when the first prototype roared to life, just like this ship was electric when it whirred nearly silently to life :p
And I don't think the main advantage of diesel-electric is (energy) efficiency. A direct-drive diesel arrangement should be more efficient. The advantage is that you don't need a ridiculous and heavy system of clutches and several-dozen-speed transmissions to make it possible to run at different speeds.
Re: Good reasons to test with a coal bulker... (Score:2)
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Time-tested does not change what it is.
Yes, it does. Mariners have more superstitions and brand loyalties than pro athletes.
And I don't think the main advantage of diesel-electric is (energy) efficiency. A direct-drive diesel arrangement should be more efficient. The advantage is that you don't need a ridiculous and heavy system of clutches and several-dozen-speed transmissions to make it possible to run at different speeds.
Well, I'm glad you don't *think* it is. That's such a relief.
If you were more astute, you might realize the need for the diesel-only propulsion system to have so many transmission gears is the same reason cars keep on adding transmission gears. And that a diesel engine, running at an ideal fixed speed, connected electrically rather than mechanically to its load, is the idea behind a diesel-electric.
You're welcome to submit
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My knowledge of ship propulsion is outdated and specialized, but the US worked with steam-electric battleships and aircraft carriers in the 1920s. It was found to be economical, but the machinery was heavy. The idea was dropped after the Washington Naval Treaty, because fuel did not count against warship size limits, but heavy machinery did.
Just as well, since the systems turned out to be seriously vulnerable to battle damage.
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"The freight isn't particularly hazardous, coal dust explosions during loading and unloading aside"
The word you're looknig for is Coalworker's pneumoconiosis, Black Lung.
Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:5, Funny)
Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal.
Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.
Wait till he finds out that the ships used to transport lithium-ion batteries are fueled by elephant tusks and rhino horns.
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" Oh...and Ironically, the world's first all-electric cargo ship is being used to move coal."
'Like an op-ed written by a self-righteous ninth grader.'
Indeed. Luxembourg has the first solar electric ferry and it is used to transport gas-guzzling cars on the other side of a river.
https://www.wort.lu/en/luxembo... [www.wort.lu]