I have more pics of her.
N.S Savannah specs.
Type: Nuclear-powered cargo ship
Tonnage: 13599 GRT
Displacement: 9900 long tons deadweight (DWT)
Length: 596 ft (181.66 m)
Beam: 78 ft (23.77 m)
Installed power: One 74 MW Babcock & Wilcox nuclear reactor powering two De Laval steam turbines
Propulsion: 20,300 hp to a single propeller
Speed: 21 kn (38.89 km/h) (servÃce speed)
24 kn (44.45 km/h) (maximum speed)
Range: 300,000 nautical miles at 20 knots on one single load of 32 fuel elements
Capacity: 60 passengers
14,040 ton cargo capacity
Crew: 124
More info on Her.
By the time Savannah completed her trials, the United States had added more than a dozen nuclear submarines to join USS Nautilus, as well as the guided missile cruiser Long Beach (the Navy's first nuclear surface ship), and the first nuclear aircraft carrier, Enterprise. The Soviet Union also had nuclear submarines, as well a nuclear icebreaker.
On the first leg of her voyage, the proud ship and crew suffered embarrassment after a faulty pressure indicator initiated a reactor "scam." Unfortunately, this caused the media to mistakenly report that she had suffered a major nuclear failure. Based on performance, Savannah's operators were pleased that the power plant exceeded the projected 20,000 shaft horsepower by more than ten percent; and, instead of a speed of 20 knots, she cruised steadily at 24 knots. The ship's operators boasted: The response of the power plant in meeting changes in steam demand has been excellent. While it is difficult to compare performance qualitatively with that of a conventional ship, it can be said that the Savannah reactor can meet large changes in load demand in roughly one half to one quarter of the time required for a conventional power plant.
As the first of her kind, Savannah broke new ground in establishing various types of operating procedures. New rules governing the operation and docking of commercial nuclear vessels at domestic and foreign ports emphasized safety from potential nuclear hazards. In each port she visited, arrangements were made to have stand-by tug services to move the ship out to sea in the event of a nuclear accident. Of concern to foreign authorities was the potential liability associated with nuclear-ship operation. While no private insurance was provided for Savannah, the U.S. Government bolstered the ship's acceptability to foreign authorities by extending the provisions of the Price-Anderson Act. This Act provided a $500,000,000 indemnification to cover claims filed against AEC-licensed facilities by victims of nuclear accidents.
Savannah's accomplishments in securing permission to enter foreign ports had implications beyond future prospects for a nuclear maritime fleet. Breaking ground with a ship of such benign intentions, which was engineered under rigorous safety guidelines, undoubtedly facilitated the world-wide acceptance of America's growing nuclear Navy fleet as well. After cruising through the Panama Canal, and port visits along the West Coast and Hawaii, Savannah became a popular exhibit at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair during a three week visit. In early 1963 she returned to her special facilities at Galveston for a 30,000-mile check-up, which included general system upgrading and miscellaneous repair work. In addition, she underwent her annual U.S. Coast Guard and American Bureau of Shipping certifications.
While this work was underway a labor dispute erupted. Savannah's engineering officers had been allotted extra pay in compensation for their additional nuclear training. The deck officers, however, cited the tradition that they receive higher pay than engineering officers. After a labor arbitrator ruled in favor of the traditional pay scale, the engineers shut the reactor down in protest in May of 1963. When the engineers refused to go back to work, the Maritime Administration canceled its contract with States Marine Lines and selected American Export Isbrandtsen Lines as the new ship operator. The resulting need to train a new crew interrupted Savannah's demonstration schedule for nearly a year.
Although the change in operators alleviated the immediate labor problem, the failure to resolve this dispute would forever cloud the feasibility of nuclear merchant ships. Many feared that abandoning the Masters, Mates, and pilots (M.M.& P.) and the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA) trade unions merely deferred the necessary resolution of this conflict. After all, these two unions represented deck and engineering officers on a majority of all other U.S.-flag operated ships.
In the spring of 1964 Savannah was again underway with a tour of Gulf Coast and East Coast ports. She began her maiden transatlantic voyage later that summer (New York to Bremerhaven in ten days). At her first four European port visits (Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Dublin, Southampton), 150,000 people toured the ship. Before these foreign port visits, representatives from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the ship's operating company traveled to meet with officials at each port. Permission to dock was not authorized until all three parties were satisfied with the ship's projected operations while in port.
After travelling a total of 90,000 miles, and hosting 1.4 million visitors, Savannah's passenger/cargo demonstration phase was completed in 1965. She had visited 28 domestic and 18 foreign ports in 13 countries. She had carried 848 passengers, and 4,800 tons of cargo.48 In preparation for Savannah's commercial demonstration phase, her passenger spaces were sealed and 1,800 tons of solid ballast were removed. First Atomic Ship Transport, Inc. (FAST), a subsidiary of American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines, was licensed to operate the ship for three years as a cargo vessel. To compensate for the expense of operating a demonstration vessel, FAST was given a one dollar per year lease on the ship, with no charge for the fuel.49 Despite delays caused by the replacement of the main coolant pumps, on August 5, 1965, the Atomic Energy Authority issued to the operator nuclear reactor operator's license, serial number NS-1.
In September, 1965 Savannah departed New York for her first commercial voyage with a capacity load of 10,000 tons of general cargo. During 1967 her cargo activity generated $2,600,000 in revenue. Furthermore, while performing as a cargo vessel, Savannah continued to fulfill her responsibilities as goodwill ambassador in visits to ports in Europe, Africa, and the Far East.
After travelling 350,000 miles (or the equivalent of nearly 14 times around the world), Savannah returned to Galveston in late 1968 for maintenance and her first refueling. Although a complete reactor core was ready for installation, it was not needed. Only four of the original 32 fuel bundles required replacement. The remaining bundles were rearranged to compensate for variations in fissioning activity depending on their original proximity to the core's center.
Just when the momentum for an enlarged U.S. nuclear merchant fleet should have been greatest, the single largest client for such a fleet decided to use traditionally powered vessels exclusively. The Defense Department, a major customer of U.S. shipping, concluded that oil-fired freighters were more cost- effective than nuclear ships. Furthermore, with budgetary priorities of the mid 1960s shaped by the Vietnam Conflict, funding for the nuclear merchant program was at risk. Later, the Maritime Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission initiated significant cutbacks in funding for the merchant ship reactor program. Even though the ship's operators described her as "the most reliable ship we have operating," the Maritime Administration decided that little more could be gained by adding to the $90,000,000 thus far invested in the Savannah project. A last-minute suggestion for the Army to use the nuclear ship as a floating emergency power plant was not acted upon.
By late 1970, Savannah had traveled more than 450,000 miles to 32 domestic ports, and 45 foreign ports in 26 countries. The 163 pounds of uranium she consumed was estimated to have provided the equivalent power of nearly 29,000,000 gallons of fuel oil. Included among Savannah's accomplishments, was the production of nearly $12,000,000 in revenue during her first five years of cargo operation (1965 to 1970).
Savannah was deactivated in late 1971, and presented to Savannah, Georgia, in early 1972 as part of a proposed Eisenhower Peace Memorial. Adequate support for the peace memorial never materialized. Several years later, Congress passed public law 96-331, which authorized the Secretary of Commerce to transfer the ship (under a bare boat charter) to the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in South Carolina. Since late 1981, she has served as a floating exhibit in Charleston Harbor. N.S. Savannah was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 1982. In 1983 Savannah was dedicated as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
The Nuclear Ship Savannah is a boldly-styled passenger/cargo vessel powered by a nuclear reactor. NS Savannah was one of a kind, the ultimate in break bulk merchant ship design. She was meant to light the way toward a brave new world of oceangoing commerce: Proud freighters ploughing the seas as their nuclear reactors silently, cleanly, and efficiently converted water to steam to turn banks of mighty turbines. That was the vision embodied by the NS Savannah, the first commercial nuclear cargo ship ever built. Among maritime history buffs, Savannah has assumed legendary status.
The N.S. SAVANNAH (NSS) is the world's first nuclear-powered merchant ship. In 1955, President Eisenhower proposed that the United States build the world's first atomic-powered merchant vessel to demonstrate America's peaceful use of the atom. In 1956, Congress authorized construction of the Nuclear Ship SAVANNAH as a joint project of the Maritime Administration and the Atomic Energy Commission. She was built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden, New Jersey between 1958 and 1962. The N.S. SAVANNAH is 600 feet long with a displacement of 22,000 tons. She was designed as a combination cargo-passenger vessel, with a capacity of 9,400 tons of general cargo, 60 passengers and 124 crew.
The N.S. SAVANNAH is equipped with a pressurized light water moderated and cooled low enrichment uranium dioxide (U-235 4.4%) fueled reactor with a maximum power rating of 80 Megawatts (thermal). The reactor-supplied steam was employed in the ship's propulsion system (geared steam turbine), which was capable of delivering in excess of 22,000 shaft horsepower to a single propeller, with a designed ship's service speed of 21 knots.
The Savannah -- a showcase for the Eisenhower Administration's "Atoms for Peace" initiative -- was christened in 1959 by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. After the ship was commissioned, MARAD took title to and responsibility for the ship. MARAD's contribution was the ship, the AEC's was the reactor and related nuclear systems. The reactor was first brought to power in 1961, with seagoing trials following in 1962. The AEC ended its participation in the project in about 1965, transferring liability and title of the reactor to MARAD.
The ship proved to be a technically brilliant but commercially unviable exercise. On the positive side of the ledger, Savannah steamed more than 450,000 miles from 1959 to 1971. In her five years of cargo operation (1965-1970, following several years of at-sea shakedown tests), she generated some $12 million in revenue -- real money back then. The 163 pounds of uranium she consumed is estimated to have provided the equivalent power of nearly 29 million gallons of fuel oil. She was a wonder of the sea lanes, not surprising given that this was the era when Detroit was toying with the idea of nuclear-powered concept cars and aircraft makers were designing atomic planes. In a day when nuclear power was synonymous with the highest of high technology, some 1.4 million people visited Savannah at her ports of call. She was quite a goodwill ambassador.
There was a downside to the Savannah story, though. In commerce, the bottom line is the bottom line, and on those terms, Savannah just didn't measure up. She required a crew of more than 100 highly trained sailors, including nuclear technologists and engineers. Comparable conventional ships required only 20 to 30 hands. The death knell for the Savannah -- and for commercial nuclear shipping -- came when the DoD, a major customer of US-flagged shipping, inevitably and appropriately concluded that oil-fired freighters were more cost-effective than nuclear ships.
NSS was operated in experimental and commercial demonstration service throughout the 1960's. Having completed its research and development objectives, the ship was removed from service in mid-1970. When alternative uses for the ship failed to materialize, its nuclear power plant was defueled, partially decommissioned, and prepared for long-term lay-up under contemporary best practices.
The SAVANNAH was maintained in lay-up status until defueled in late 1971. From 1973 onwards the ship was permanently removed from service, and the nuclear facility was partially decommissioned in 1975-76. From 1981 to 1994 the vessel was bareboat chartered to the Patriots Point Development Authority, Charleston, SC for public display as a museum ship. During that period the PPDA was designated a "co-licensee" for the reactor and exercised custody of the ship - but ownership remained with MARAD. The NSS charter was terminated by mutual agreement in 1994. SAVANNAH was removed from Patriots Point in May 1994; drydocked at Baltimore, Maryland in June-July 1994.
After drydocking, the NSS was placed in MARAD's James River Reserve Fleet near Newport News, Virginiafor long-term retention in accordance with the circa 1970 lay-up plan. The NSS is currently moored along side the Nuclear Barge STURGIS in the James River Reserve Fleet (JRRF) near Fort Eustis, Virginia. MARAD has no present plans to dispose of the ship itself. The NSS is a registered National Historic Landmark, and in the future MARAD hopes to develop a program for its long-term preservation.
Although less than fifty years old, N.S. Savannah possesses exceptional national significance as the first application of nuclear power to a commercial ship; and as the structure most associated with President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative. The combination passenger/cargo ship demonstrated to the world the safe and reliable operation of this new technology, resulted in the establishing of a nuclear ship training program for civilian crew members, established procedures for commercial nuclear ships to enter domestic and foreign ports, and identified a series of issues which would require resolution in a second generation of commercial nuclear ships (disputes over crew pay scales, liability, and commercial viability). In addition to her important role in maritime history, Savannah served a unique public relations role as a floating exhibit on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In this context, she traveled more than 450,000 miles to 32 domestic ports and 45 foreign ports, and was visited by more than 1.4 million people. This level of public exposure was unprecedented for a nuclear facility. A concurrent benefit of this favorable exposure was the acceptance of naval nuclear ships in foreign ports. N.S. Savannah became a symbol of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative.
So you people like this ship
