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1 INTRODUCTION

The shipping industry is responsible for securing some

80% of international trade by volume (UNCTAD 2020).

Nowadays, it is facing a disruptive change to its

traditional setup, which was based on a highly-skilled

workforce of seafarers. The disruptive change of

introducing autonomous solutions to maritime

among others. Each of these potential benefits can be

contested, primarily for the lack of hard evidence in a

form of historical data to support them. Safety-related

gains are questionable due to the unknown effect of

autonomous ships on maritime operations (Wróbel,

Montewka, and Kujala 2017) and difficulty in

quantifying or analyzing the effect humans have on

maritime safety (Wróbel 2021). Environmental impact

will primarily come as an effect of introducing

solutions unrelated to autonomy itself, but rather

implemented on the occasion of re-shaping the

Wasilewski, Wolak, and Zaraś 2021) including liability

(Mallam, Nazir, and Sharma 2020), lack of clear

foundation within the international maritime

framework (Bergström et al. 2018), unknown impact of

the technology on the workforce (Bogusławski, Gil, et

al. 2022), and potential unknown unknowns. As of

2022, the development of the technology is gaining

momentum, but its future is burdened with significant

uncertainties. These will not necessarily cause it to fail,

but may result in significant setbacks.

ABSTRACT: Modern industries often attempt to implement innovations that have a disruptive potential. In

shipping, this included a largely unsuccessful introduction of nuclear propulsion in late 20th century, among

other concepts. Nowadays, introduction of increased autonomy is being associated with prospects of various

industry-wide benefits, but is also burdened with serious obstacles. The objective of this study is to investigate

reasons behind the failure of nuclear-powered merchant ships introduction and whether lessons learnt from it

can be applied to the prospective implementation of autonomous merchant ships. It advocates that three aspects

of maritime technology are crucial for its successful implementation: perceived level of safety, economical

feasibility, and legal setup.

The study has been performed using a comparative

The scope of this study has been limited to civilian

The reminder of this article is as follows. Firstly,

Ten years later, in 1972, construction of a Japanese

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prohibited certain operations of ships. It is of note

however, that major safety-related obstacles to

operation of Savannah, Mutsu, and Otto Hahn (such as

denials of port entry) occurred even before the Three

Mile Island accident (1979). The event is said to have

caused major increase of skepticism and fear towards

nuclear industry (IAEA 2004) that has only been

Eventually, nuclear-powered merchant vessels are

believed in hindsight to have been a costly exploration

of a potentially feasible solution. Their impact was not

big enough (primarily due to an inability to create

profit, legal restrictions, and public/authority

acceptance) to challenge the normal development in

shipping (Schøyen and Steger-Jensen 2017).

4 NUCLEAR AND AUTONOMOUS: SIMILARITIES

AND DIFFERENCES

Both NPoMS and MASS were initially developed in a

legal vacuum. It was not until 1966 (4 years after

Savannah has been launched) that the first

classification society developed prescriptive Rules for

the Classification of nuclear ships (Hirdaris et al. 2014).

Code of Safety for Nuclear Merchant Ships was

During negotiations related to the safety requirements,

shipowners would sometimes withdraw their

application should port authorities require the nuclear

propulsion be disabled for the time of the port call. This

was the case for Savannah and Otto Hahn, purpose of

which was to demonstrate the NPoMS technology as a

safe one (Edwards 1979). Without being restricted by

commercial considerations as much as regular

operators would be, neither Savannah or Otto Hahn

could accept being deprived of their major purpose

a merchant vessel would enter port under a

conventional propulsion and would thus not fall

within a complicated nuclear legal regime of a coastal

state (Gravina et al. 2012). Similar concept was also

raised in terms of maintaining diesel propulsion as a

backup for nuclear one in case the latter fails, but

having a redundancy in a form of two reactors was also

deemed sufficient (Edwards 1979).

Similarly, up until July 2022 there is no legal

standard for the design and operation of MASS, even

left at a discretion of respective coastal states, just as it

was with regards to nuclear-powered ones. This setup

Moreover, it is also reported that current

As the experience was being gained with nuclear-

Every new technology can potentially introduce

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quite optimistically at certain point (Dade and Witzig

1974). However, it was highlighted that there are

uncertainties involved particularly pertaining to the

costs and technical possibility of maintenance,

refurbishments, salvage, and decommissioning of

nuclear-powered ships (Schøyen and Steger-Jensen

2017; Gravina et al. 2012). High costs are also said to be

competed against well-known although variable

economics of fuel oils. Again, certain data could be

drawn from military applications (Ondir Freire and de

Andrade 2019), but the economics of military

operations is different than this of commercial ones.

As for MASS, it is clear that their implementation

depends on whether they can prove profitable

(Tsvetkova and Hellström 2022). Contrary to NPoMS,

profitability was in the spotlight from the beginning of

the development of the technology in late 2010s.

Numerous studies were performed to establish the

2017; Kooij, Kana, and Hekkenberg 2021), within

specific assumptions (Sandvik et al. 2021), and with a

significant level of uncertainties. These are associated

mainly with an early stage of the development towards

redundancy and additional equipment including

sensors. On the other hand, reduction of crew costs as

well as improved efficiency among other factors are

expected to reduce OPEX. This effect can be reduced by

an increase in costs related to the maintenance of the

fully-crewed ones. From a business perspective, cargo

owners would normally be directed by a price of

moving their commodities from A to B, provided that

such movement is carried out safely and on time.

Technical specification of the vessel involved, that is

her type of propulsion or degree of automation are of a

secondary importance and do not justify a higher price

by themselves. Operators of NPoMS or MASS would

also have little incentive to offer significantly lower

freight (Sandvik et al. 2021). The relatively small

cycle costs remain lower than those of conventional

ships.

4.4 Human element

Human element has always been in the spotlight of the

maritime industry. Its complexity include the

recruitment and retention of workforce, training and

related certification, crew-related costs, working

conditions, and the effect seafarers have on the conduct

of maritime operations.

Within the nuclear ships concept, it was predicted

that special training and qualifications for seagoing

of the engineering crew to be high and the training

itself was rather lengthy (Dade and Witzig 1974).

Moreover, compliment of engineering crew was higher

than on conventional ships (Edwards 1979; Gravina et

al. 2012) which would increase costs not only through

a greater manpower but also through its high and

unique competencies. As a matter of fact, at some point

the NPoMS community raised several rather

interesting concerns (Edwards 1979). Firstly, the

quality of training for nuclear engineers was deemed

needed in case of an incident.

With regard to human-machine interfaces, basic

ergonomics issues were raised upon the review of the

Savannah power plant design, including location of

consoles and colors of indicating lamps to improve

situation awareness (Ebasco Services Inc. 1960) before

she was put into operation. Moreover, the importance

of simulator training was highlighted particularly in

dealing with emergencies, but it was also

acknowledged that such training can under no

circumstances replace hands-on experience completely

(Edwards 1979).

Eventually, particular attention was paid to the

issue of human error. In 1968, 38 of 59 (64%) reactor

shutdowns (scram can be regarded as a near-miss in a

safety terms) onboard Otto Hahn were attributed to it

(31%) scrams (Edwards 1979).

proved impossible. Crewless, autonomous, or

conventional, ships will involve humans within a

predictable time-frame. The only question is the scope

and degree of human involvement. Without historical

With a reference to the latter, the ongoing discussion is

On the other hand, failure of full-scale

The historical analysis of the development of

the development of a disruptive technology in an

ships. Uncertainties related to the legal regime also

discouraged investors from involvement in the

business projects burdened with significant capital

costs that might not be allowed to come into

applications in shipping, clearing up some

uncertainties that posed obstacles to them.

However, prospective autonomous ships are facing

legal uncertainty that is only now being addressed

by governing bodies;

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These can only be limited by proving that the

concept under development is sustainable in

financial terms. NPoMS hardly had economical

gains on the agenda and largely focused on other

aspects of operations. With economics not being a

top priority, uncertainties could not be reduced.

Meanwhile, up-front costs of some simplified

the case of NPoMS. This means that some

autonomy functions can be implemented one by

one on different ships rather than the sudden and

financially demanding removal of diesel engines

and implementation of a nuclear reactor. Moreover,

full-scale MASS prototypes that are being

developed assume at least some financial gains over

traditional vessels from the very beginning

(Maritime Executive 2021). However, there is so far

The conducted review and analysis of technical and

scientific documents revealed some parallels between

the process of development of two potentially

but is also facing obstacles related to legal, safety, and

financial concerns. The ability to overcome these on the

part of the industry will be crucial for its successful

implementation.

are placed on autonomy today. In order to ensure that

the technology is implemented successfully, its legal

foundations must be secured along with financial

benefits. It must also be proven beyond reasonable

doubt and communicated to the public that safety of

maritime transportation is not reduced in a process. By

FUNDING INFORMATION

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