Mutsu (ship, 1970)

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The merchant ship Mutsu ( Japanese む つ ) was the fourth civilian ship to be powered by a nuclear reactor after the Soviet icebreaker Lenin , the American Savannah and the German Otto Hahn .

history

The launch of the Mutsu was on June 12, 1969. On July 13, 1970, the ship was in Tokyo by the Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (IHI) handed over to the Japan Nuclear Ship Development Agency for testing purposes. On July 15 of the same year she headed for the intended home port of Mutsu , still powered by a steam turbine . A light water reactor was installed there. In January 1972 the Mutsu should be put into service as a test ship for core drives for merchant ships. The construction cost of the vessel amounted to 21 million US dollars . When starting up the nuclear reactor, however, it was found that the shielding in the upper part of the reactor was not sufficient. The radiation exposure that occurred would have been too great. The fault found was that a ring of the primary shielding in the upper part was made of steel instead of concrete . As a remedy, a 40 cm thick polyethylene ring had to be installed on the steel ring later. After a comparatively long repair and maintenance work and a few test drives at sea, defects repeatedly occurred. Not least because of protests by Japanese fishermen, the Mutsu was taken out of service again without being tested in cargo shipping. In 1995 the reactor was finally removed and a decontamination program initiated. After being converted into an oceanographic research vessel, the ship is now in service as the Mirai .

technology

The 8,400 GRT Mutsu was 116.0 meters long, 19.0 meters wide and had a side height of 13.2 meters. The draft was 6.9 meters. The nuclear reactor came from Mitsubishi Atomic Industries . The power of the steam turbine was 7360 kW or 10,000  WPS . With a speed of 16.5 knots and 2.8 tons of low-enriched uranium , the ship should be able to cover a distance of 145,000 nautical miles without any problems .

See also

literature

  • Dudszus, Alfred / Köpcke, Alfred: The great book of ship types. Augsburg, Weltbild Verlag (licensed edition by transpress, Berlin), 1995, ISBN 3-89350-831-7 .

Web links