New Cargo Ship Is 488 Meters Long

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on the construction of Prelude, a new ship that will be the world's longest vessel. It is 488 meters long and 74 meters wide, built with 260,000 tons of steel and displacing five times as much water as an aircraft carrier. Its purpose is to carry an entire natural gas processing plant as it sits over a series of wells 100 miles off the coast of Australia. Until now, it hasn't been practical to move gas that comes out of the wells with ships. The gas occupies too much volume, so it is generally piped to a facility on shore where it is processed and then shipped off to energy-hungry markets. But the Prelude can purify and chill the gas, turning it into a liquid and reducing its volume by a factor of 600. It will offload this liquid to smaller (but still enormous) carrier ships for transport.

Comments

Displacing five times as much water...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be hard for it not to given that it weighs five times as much.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[ColdWetDog]

Oh stop with the physics already. What do you think this is, a technology site?

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[bobbied]

It'd be hard for it not to given that it weighs five times as much.

Archimedes? Is that you?

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[wonkey_monkey]

It'd be hard for it not to given that it weighs five times as much.

But that's not "given" - it's not stated in the story, and I don't personally happen to have any idea how much an aircraft carrier weighs off the top of my head, so the story pointing out that it displaces as much water as six aircraft carriers - that's what the linked article says - is useful information. Though a direct weight comparison would probably make more sense to the average reader.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[rtb61]

Well, when it comes to weapons of war, the question is how big a bang will it make after a few years of corporate bonus pumping short cuts cut into safety. I would hope BP, Halliburton and Transocean having nothing what so ever to do with it. You would think with that volume of gas you would be up there with a nuclear sized detonation. Rather than too big to fail, it is so big, greed to drive up profits will inevitably result in failure.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[William Baric]

You could at least read the Wikipedia page you're linking :

for an object floating on a liquid surface (like a boat) or floating submerged in a liquid (like a submarine in water or dirigible in air) the weight of the displaced liquid equals the weight of the object.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[Martin Blank]

You would think with that volume of gas you would be up there with a nuclear sized detonation.

It has a capacity of some 430 million liters of LNG. At an average density of 0.463 kg/L at -160C, that's 199 million kilos of liquefied methane. At 22.2 MJ/L, that's 4.42 billion MJ, or a shade over a megaton of TNT if it were to all go off at once.

Though I doubt that's possible. The storage facilities will have separation, so at best there would be a chain that would dampen the impact somewhat.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[RabidReindeer]

Eureka!

Seriously, tell most people it "displaces 5 times as much water" and they're going to be thinking volume, not weight.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[uninformedLuddite]

Historians have proven that he never said 'Eureka'. He was yelling 'Im a streaker' and waving his dangly bits at small children.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[RockDoctor]

You would think with that volume of gas you would be up there with a nuclear sized detonation

you could only detonate that gas if you managed to breach all of the holds, then bring in a very large tanker full of LOX, then vaporise both the liquefied gases (spilling them onto the sea wouldn't work too well - they'd crust it with ice and then run across the ice while the gas clouds disperse - you'll need to pump heat into the mix for a while), and then finally put the spark to the mix.

That's not impossible - but it's pretty hard to do.

If you're saying "detonate" when you mean "deflagrate", well that's a very different thing. The limitation of getting fuel and oxygen together becomes the limiting factor on the intensity of the fire that can happen. Didn't you cover this in your first week in employment, when you were doing your fire-fighting training? The old smoke-filled room? 4-man hose teams? Playing "find the valve" (hint : it's always behind the 30ft tall jet of flame)?

Actually, you may be shocked to learn, but people who design gas processing plants do go to considerable efforts to design out that sort of possibility. And, shockingly, the plants operators (who live and sleep on board) tend to be fairly cautious about, you know, blowing themselves up. Incidents do still happen (I had friends die on the Piper Alpha.)

Just as a start, there will be thousands (literally, not figuratively) of gas detectors all around the plant. And they'll be hooked into a detection system that, if gas is detected near tank 'P', for example, will re-route production into tank 'Q' ; start pumping the LPG from tank 'P' into another available tank (while flooding the head space in 'P' with exhaust fumes, to prevent entry of air), and alert maintenance techs (most of the 200 POB, Personnel On Board) to fault find and repair. Conceptually, the systems are not complex, but with hundreds of tanks (probably) and thousands of pipes and valves, the actual problem is quite complex.

If you'd RTFA, you may have noticed there is a "flare" built into the turret. The purpose of that is to be able to dump the process plant's contents into, in the event of a major system failure. It takes little time to shut wells in (a couple of minutes, depending on water depth), but the gas already in the lines need somewhere to go to. We call it "dumping the flammable inventory", and the safest way to do that is to burn the fucking stuff. There's a bloody good reason for that flare stack to be several hundred metres tall : when it is in use, it'll peel skin and paint at any shorter range.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[rtb61]

I see that the art of satire is lost on you. It really is about corporations routinely bragging about greater ways of generating more profit and always hiding the inevitable criminally negligent short cuts and then using public relations to cover up failures, until final eventual total collapse. This as a matter of modern psychopathic routine.

Re: Displacing five times as much water...

[RockDoctor]

And yet you participate in the corporate - consumerist love-fest by using telecommunications, electronics, and electricity. But since you don't want the responsibility of change, you probably don't vote.

Prelude to what?

[hooiberg]

If this is the mere Prelude, something truly gargantuan must appear shortly.

Re:Prelude to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since we're talking about Australia, the obvious successor to the Prelude will be the Whole Lotta Rosie.

Re: Prelude to what?

[dunkelfalke]

Macross

Re:Prelude to what?

[magarity]

The Prelude will be replaced in a few years by the Civic Si.

Re:Prelude to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps. How else could we harvest methane clathrate deposits?

Re:Prelude to what?

[Luckyo]

That is correct. This is supposed to be the first ship out of many designed around the concept of having a large ship as a mobile gas extraction platform with its own power.

The idea is that they want to extract gas from underwater wells that are much harder to access than before and in much greater numbers. This is supposed to be just a first ship in the fleet of such ships. Hence hte name.

Re:Prelude to what?

[hooiberg]

Ha, that actually makes sense! :-)

Re:Prelude to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The megaship Civic would probably still have a tighter turning circle than the Honda Civic.

Re:Prelude to what?

[RivenAleem]

I'm going go to with Rorqual.

Not a cargo ship

[eastern]

The headline is wrong. This is not at all a cargo ship. It's more like an free-floating platform on which a gas refinery has been built. It will stay in place during its entire lifetime.

It should not even be compared to ships.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Russ1642]

Exactly. This thing isn't navigating cramped harbors on a regular basis.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

It should not even be compared to ships.

If it can move under it's own power it's a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ArcadeMan]

Well, is it going to go there on its own power or will it have to be towed? If it can go there by itself, then it's a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ColdWetDog]

Well,technically it's a ship, I think. A quick search did not answer the question as to whether it is self powered. If it is, it's a ship (certainly not a 'cargo' ship). If it isn't it is a barge according to maritime right-of-way rules.

It's friggin large whatever you want to call it.

Funny, Shell is going to spent $20 BILLION or so on this thing for a 25 year lifespan (and perhaps another 25 with a whole lot of refurb). That's a lot of solar panels, insulation, wind mills and hell, even a nuclear plant or two.....

Re:Not a cargo ship

[geekmux]

It should not even be compared to ships.

If it can move under it's own power it's a ship.

Uh, we also label those things flying around in zero gravity "ships" too.

This logic is fucked no matter how you look at it, but hey let's keep inviting the Navy to steer those nomenclature meetings across every industry...

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Guppie]

Looks like it's generally recognized as the world's largest ship, even if it does not have the power to move itself: http://www.arcticgas.gov/flng-...
"Shell hopes to tow the vessel to the site — it won't have its own propulsion — and produce the first LNG cargoes by 2017."

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ColdWetDog]

And the difference between a ship and a barge is a bit pedantic here. It's going to fit under the category of 'restricted mobility vessel' which means that , if you are captaining another ship, you have to give this monster right of way.

Of course, you would be perfectly insane to try to play chicken with it, no matter what you are piloting.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[gstoddart]

Of course, you would be perfectly insane to try to play chicken with it, no matter what you are piloting.

Unless of course it's a lighthouse. ;-)

Re:Not a cargo ship

[iggymanz]

"I am captain of the world largest ship, change course at once and give us right of way"
"I am a lighthouse bulb changer, your call"

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

That's a lot of solar panels, insulation, wind mills and hell, even a nuclear plant or two.....

But, if they are thinking $20 billion is worth it, you can be it is going to process a LOT more than that number in gas. My guess is they are looking at around $10 Billion/year return from their investment which gives them a 5 year payoff with operational costs. This beast will likely produce $250 Billion in revenue with about half that being profit.

No "green energy" installation of the same price would come close to this kind of profit.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Green Salad]

I think it's okay, as long as those naval nomenclature steering invitations are, um...shipped electronically.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hibernia oil platform sailed itself to it's current location, not really a ship

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, we also label those things flying around in zero gravity "ships" too.

Yes because they can move under their own power.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[geekoid]

You're numbers aren't even close:

3.6 million tonnes a year, projected.
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

1 million metric tons LNG = 52 trillion Btus
http://www.extension.iastate.e...

3.6 * 52 trillion
that's about 175 trillion BTUs.

Current price ~10 dollars per million BTU.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/his...

1.75 Billion a year, BEFORE cost of operation.

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[dj245]

The headline is wrong. This is not at all a cargo ship. It's more like an free-floating platform on which a gas refinery has been built. It will stay in place during its entire lifetime.

It should not even be compared to ships.

It may be freed from having to think too much about propulsion, but it still has to float, weather storms, and keep the crew alive and comfortable with water treatment, sewage treatment, laundry, cooking, etc. Not to mention providing all the functions of a refinery on an island made out of steel. It's an FPSO but for LNG. That kind of vessel is considered a ship, and not an rig, for the purposes of most class societies such as Lloyds or the American Bureau of Shipping.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[drew870mitchell]

How on Earth can you just imagine numbers and so confidently make assertions based on them?

Re:Not a cargo ship

[PPH]

It's a ship if that affects in which countries it can be registered.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[DerekLyons]

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Which is a very odd claim - since you produce no numbers whatsoever for "green" energy.

And you forget that natural gas isn't just a source of BTU's - it's also a major feedstock for a variety of industrial processes. (A significant portion of "oil derived" plastics are actually derived from natural gas.)

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Khomar]

It sounds like the plan is for this ship to be the first of several, so the question is how much of that $20 billion investment is for upfront costs (design, shipyard upgrades, construction equipment) that will not be duplicated in subsequent ships. As it is, the first ship looks to probably at least break even or even make a decent profit (provided it works as expected) with bigger profits hopefully to follow. I am sure these numbers have been gone over very carefully. You don't make an investment this large on a whim.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ArcadeMan]

From the photo, this new cargo ship does look like a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

You're numbers aren't even close:

[...]

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Hmmm, "Green energies" and "made up numbers" should not be used together in a sentence...

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it could be a boat unless it carries other vessels that are capable of being moved under power. (So not just life rafts, but rowboats would count.)

That's why submarines are boats, not ships.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

1.75 Billion a year, BEFORE cost of operation.

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Thanks for the information.

I'd like to point out though, I made no secret of the fact that I was guessing based on sound business practice. If you don't make your money back in 5 years, there are better investments out there. Big Energy companies may be able to stretch this out to 10 years if they have enough cash flow, but if your numbers are correct, they are going to loose their shirts.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Firethorn]

If you don't make your money back in 5 years, there are better investments out there.

Low interest rates have been pushing timelines out. At 10%, 5 years makes sense. At under 5%, 10 years makes more sense.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

It's called "sound business practice" and a few rules of thumb.

1. ROI must be break even in less than 5 years. So if you don't break even in that amount of time, you are wasting your investment dollars. If you are paying cash (not borrowing) to fund the project, you can possibly go longer, but you still need to show an annual return of better than 10% to make money over 10 years.

2. Manufacturing usually charges double the production cost for the product. Add up, labor, materials, energy, maintenance and all other production costs and that should be half the sales price. Out of the 50% you take your infrastructure costs, money costs and such to arrive at profit.

Of course all "rules of thumb" are just how the average works. There are exceptions to these rules.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Wintermute__]

How on Earth can you just imagine numbers and so confidently make assertions based on them?

You must be new here...

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

If you don't make your money back in 5 years, there are better investments out there.

Low interest rates have been pushing timelines out. At 10%, 5 years makes sense. At under 5%, 10 years makes more sense.

Hadn't thought of that, but what you say is correct, lower interest rates do mean longer ROI is possible. Personally, I think we are at the very end of low interest rates right now. Russia's latest rate hike is going to bite. Low energy prices will spur economic activity in pretty short order. All this will conspire so the Fed will be tightening the money supply.

I'd stay out of a 10 year ROI unless I can get bond rates under 2.5%. About the best a corporation can get is just under 4% for a 20 year, 10 year is about 3%. This means you will need to have MINIMUM annual returns of 8% for 20 year break even on principle and interest and 13% on 10 years.

Of course if you have 20 Billion in the bank, the numbers are that much lower..

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ColdWetDog]

Dunno. A fully loaded LNG carrier (or processor) vs. a pile of rocks. Something you might want to see on a YouTube video. From a distance.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Firethorn]

Personally, I think we are at the very end of low interest rates right now. Russia's latest rate hike is going to bite. Low energy prices will spur economic activity in pretty short order. All this will conspire so the Fed will be tightening the money supply.

Oh, I agree. The way I look at it - you look at any project, figure out the payoff, how long the payoff will take, the risk, etc... This results in an expected return percentage - it'll return the equivalent as though the money had been invested in a savings account of return X%.

The money flows to the highest returns first. Stuff that returns 100%. Today we're investing in things with 4% expected returns, because money is flowing so easily. It won't last, but it's happening.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Submarines are not ships because the Navy Brass did't trust them or understand their value. The term boat stuck ever since and is now a badge of honor for submariners.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

How can something be flying in zero gravity when by definition, it's impossible to fall? You could just as well call it being stationary since movement depends on your frame of reference.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

No sailor would ever believe that urban legend, which of course has been debunked on snopes too (I assume, too lazy to look but I am a sailor). The almost always correct rule of thumb at sea is that vessels always have fixed lights - the only exceptions are hovercraft and police boats. Anything which blinks, does not move (but isn't necessarily land either, it can be just an anchored sea mark).

Re: Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no island, it's a gas station!

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the plan is for this ship to be the first of several, so the question is how much of that $20 billion investment is for upfront costs (design, shipyard upgrades, construction equipment) that will not be duplicated in subsequent ships. As it is, the first ship looks to probably at least break even or even make a decent profit (provided it works as expected) with bigger profits hopefully to follow. I am sure these numbers have been gone over very carefully. You don't make an investment this large on a whim.

I'm pretty sure that if they spent $21 Billion instead of $20B, they could have put DC motor/impellers and enough solar panels on it to not need fuel or a tow ship for propulsion.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Skidborg]

Because space ships are self-propelled and capable of maneuvers. Space stations are less so.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

well it can, but once in position, it wont.
its A FPSO - Floating Production Storage and offloading. - They operate under different rules then a ship.
It will Sail into place, then moor, connect an undersea umbilical, and spend its life processing gas, storing it, and offloading it to ships for transport. it wont likely move again untill its due for a refit.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Luckyo]

This is specifically a ship. It's entire point is that it can move on its own power like a ship, instead of having to be towed to a new location as it is with platforms and barges today.

What is true however is that it's not specifically a cargo ship as much as a platform that is designed for extraction and temporary storage. LNG carrying ships are supposed to get gas from this ship and then handle the transportation part.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Martin Blank]

Based on mentions that they will tow it into place, that's a billion dollars for something that would be used for a few weeks and then left to sit for the next 25 years. Better to spend a few million dollars towing it into place. Less cost, and less machinery to go wrong over time.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Some numbers for green energy would certainly help his point, but you're missing the mark on the second thing you said. It doesn't matter what you use the gas for, the price is going to be the same regardless. If the oil company can make more by selling the gas to a plastics manufacturer then the cost of heating using the gas will go up commensurately. So taking the cost from a single industry works fine as a stand-in representational cost for the commodity as a whole.

That's pretty cool

[Cpt_Kirks]

162 C below zero

Compression and cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to say in my head, "Wouldn't it just be easier if they compressed it through chilli-oh" and then read the rest of the sentence.
Still amazingly large. You could still do the freezing process on a much much smaller vessel. But this goes a step beyond that. Full-on.
But hey, I ain't complaining. So who's up for paintball?

What I wonder is how long it will be before some mega rich person(s) decides to build a semi-permanent offshore city, not so much a rig, more a case of a huge boat that is actually anchored to the ground and you take boats TO it.
There'd be loads of technical hurdles, but given the sheer size of such a construction, the issues of waves would be lesser, more so if it is designed properly to deal with them. (not to mention the use of large-scale wave guides similar in design to metamaterials, which is being tested on some oil rigs last I remember)

Re:Compression and cooling

[ColdWetDog]

What I wonder is how long it will be before some mega rich person(s) decides to build a semi-permanent offshore city, not so much a rig, more a case of a huge boat that is actually anchored to the ground and you take boats TO it.
There'd be loads of technical hurdles, but given the sheer size of such a construction, the issues of waves would be lesser, more so if it is designed properly to deal with them. (not to mention the use of large-scale wave guides similar in design to metamaterials, which is being tested on some oil rigs last I remember)

Somebody even wrote up a technical manual about this.

Re:Compression and cooling

[ShanghaiBill]

What I wonder is how long it will be before some mega rich person(s) decides to build a semi-permanent offshore city, not so much a rig, more a case of a huge boat that is actually anchored to the ground and you take boats TO it.

It will happen approximately 47 years ago.

Re:Compression and cooling

[geekoid]

Sealand isn't exactly a city, or visited by the mega rich.

Re:Compression and cooling

[Tumbleweed]

What I wonder is how long it will be before some mega rich person(s) decides to build a semi-permanent offshore city, not so much a rig, more a case of a huge boat that is actually anchored to the ground and you take boats TO it.
There'd be loads of technical hurdles, but given the sheer size of such a construction, the issues of waves would be lesser, more so if it is designed properly to deal with them. (not to mention the use of large-scale wave guides similar in design to metamaterials, which is being tested on some oil rigs last I remember)

I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be over the very large mega-yachts the super-rich currently use - they're mobile, so they get the benefits of going to places around the world in luxury, plus being able to move out of the way of bad weather, etc.

I suppose the possible sheer _scale_ of a floating city has an appeal as a display of wealth to some.

Re:Compression and cooling

[Luckyo]

It's not worth it because of maintenance costs. Large ships have extremely complex structures which require constant ongoing maintenance and stops for significant maintenance once every few years at the very least.

Modern large yachts that billionaires own are typically the "optimal" in terms of size in that they're big enough to basically have about as much room as a city block without being prohibitively difficult to maintain and require consistent downtime.

kaboom!

[Anonymous Coward]

what could go wrong with a fire nozzle like that attached to a natural gas well?

Re:kaboom!

[thoriumbr]

Surprisingly nothing!

To things explode, you need combustible and oxidant. You have only the combustible, and the oxigen from air is not enough to make the shipo explode. And if you look closely, the well are deep underwater.

Re:kaboom!

[ColdWetDog]

what could go wrong with a fire nozzle like that attached to a natural gas well?

Here you just might have an earth shattering 'kaboom'.

Re:An enormous natural disaster waiting to happen

[OzPeter]

One typhoon later Deepwater Horizon will look like child's play in comparison.

Well its a good thing that this floating facility is not in the pacific then.

Re:An enormous natural disaster waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Gob forbid all that natural gas leak into the water? Who will clean up a natural gas slick?

BBC is stuck in the dark ages

[ArcadeMan]

"You need to install Flash Player to play this content."

Is this 2004?

Re:BBC is stuck in the dark ages

[Anonymous Coward]

They really need to tax the British more so that entitled pricks can have their HTML5 video.

Re:BBC is stuck in the dark ages

[ArcadeMan]

You want to bet the video is already in H.264?

Re:BBC is stuck in the dark ages

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah it's really fucking hard to do graceful fallback of HTML5 video down to Flash playback of the same fucking video file. It takes less than a minute to Google the information and another 60 seconds to modify your main video playback template if you're a half-competent programmer using a CMS that's not brain-dead.

Re:BBC is stuck in the dark ages

[HatofPig]

The BBC iPlayer lets them do fine-grained restrictions on all their web videos. They'd never allow circumvention of that by allowing anything other than their own flash applet to see the raw video file.

Interesting end...

[geogob]

I can imagine Falcon 9 mistakenly trying to land on that ship. A not so happy end for both the ship and the rocket.

Re:Interesting end...

[ColdWetDog]

And the controllers who somehow managed to land the rocket on the OTHER side of the planet.

I'm sure 'ol Elon is worried about this particular scenario.

Something new for my oldest to get interested in

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Well now my oldest will be interested in a different ship other than the Maersk Triple Es. In his mind the bigger the better, so things like the Bagger 288, Big Muskie, The Captian, and the Cat 797 are the best things ever created.

A big boat!

[spaceyhackerlady]

I live in a port city and see lots of ships, but I'm not sure this baby could even enter the harbour here.

It's far bigger than what the Panama Canal can handle (maximum 290 meters long), as well as the Saint Lawrence Seaway (225 meters). The Panama Canal was designed for the largest ships of the day, RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic.

...laura

Re:A big boat!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The Panama Canal is being expanded to handle larger ships. These are "superpanamax".

In the US, harbors are in the middle of legal entanglements by environmentalists to deepen harbors by 5 feet to handle them, 7+ year battles, longer than the canal took.

Meanwhile, China is building an even bigger canal for even bigger ships.

The center of empire has shifted. The empire that keeps the trade routes open prospers. An empire that turns to lording over its own people falters.

Goodnight, Irene. Your kids will live in an economically broken.1984-like panopticon state ruled by populist memes.

Words don't matter. Actions and history do.

Re:A big boat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those max lengths has been beaten long ago:

100 Largest Container Ships

Re:A big boat!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, harbors are in the middle of legal entanglements by environmentalists to deepen harbors by 5 feet to handle them, 7+ year battles, longer than the canal took.

Meanwhile, China is building an even bigger canal for even bigger ships.

Goodnight, Irene. Your kids will live in an economically broken.1984-like panopticon state ruled by populist memes.

Words don't matter. Actions and history do.

You seem to be suggesting that China is better than the USA because they place the balance of industrial needs ahead of environmental ones. Tell me again, which country's cities have trouble attracting skilled foreign workers due to air pollution concerns and which can usually tell where the sun is in the sky? You may have to cross the street to see the sun in NYC because of the tall towers, but you can still see the sun. Meanwhile Beijing has "fog" in the middle of a summer day...

Re:A big boat!

[maestroX]

this ship probably has multiple titanics attached as sacrificial metal to its hull.

Re:A big boat!

[Anonymous Coward]

the panama canal was actually sized for the Battleship USS Pensilvania.

Re:An enormous natural disaster waiting to happen

[ColdWetDog]

Tasman sea (where it is going first) still has 'cyclones' I believe.

It's supposed to be able to deal with a 100+ year storm (185 km / hr winds IIRC). Not that I want to sitting on untold tons of explosives and and things that spark when they break in a hurricane / cyclone, but that's just me.

Built by Samsung

[Deflatamouse]

There's quite a bit of rounded edges on that ship. Watch out, Apple might sue.

Because what we need is more gas!!!

[presidenteloco]

because it's too damn cold on this planet.

Couldn't the brilliant engineering minds and business minds who built this put their brains to work on some technology that is actually going in the right direction?
Please remember we need to be substantially off fossil fuels by mid-century. Time is ticking.

Re:Because what we need is more gas!!!

[some1001]

So what's the answer? And don't put it on "brilliant engineering minds" to figure something out for you. Tell us what a good, economical, and environmentally sound option should be.

1. Renewables? A massive decrease in the cost of petroleum does not make the economics of renewables, especially solar, more attractive.
2. Nuclear? Good luck convincing regulatory bodies, the population, and environmentalists that's the best way to go. Besides, nuclear waste is a real problem, and we are in the perpetual state of "a few years more" to achieving the fast breeder reactors.
3. Fusion? Not technically possible right now, but you never know, maybe with "another 10 years" and we'll have it.
4. Force demand to be lower by using quotas or raising electricity price artificially? Yay, big government regulation causing dramatic changes in how people will live their lives. I'm sure everyone will just love being told to stop using heaters in the winter and air conditioners in the summer.
5. Carbon tax? Yay, big government regulation. Guess who profits from "carbon exchanges?" Goldman Sachs.
6. Kill off tons of people thereby reducing energy demand? Go for it, Mr. Eugenics. Just remember, killing people also takes energy expenditure in one way or another.

Nothing is easy.

Re:Because what we need is more gas!!!

[presidenteloco]

Solutions (so sensible that they are guaranteed political suicide):

1. A carbon tax, starting off modest, but with a growth escalator built in and known in advance to assist planning of transition.

Note: Since we know the economy did ok with oil priced double what it is now, the carbon tax need not start out so modest. It could be adaptive, so that for example retail gasoline prices are made roughly what they just were over the last 5 years (average), as a starting point for the tax to kick off system-transition investments.

Carbon trading is not a viable option. A simple at-source carbon tax is more effective and more transparent. Carbon trading is too easily gamed by accountants at the expense of physical reality. e.g. giving you credit for the forest you haven't chopped down yet (how nice of you) so that I can continue to burn more coal.

2.One third of proceeds of carbon tax used to reduce income tax, to keep the economy stimulated.

3. One third of carbon tax revenue used to fund R&D into bleeding-edge alternative energy and transportation technologies.
e.g. better PV, better batteries, hyperloop, magnetized target fusion, thorium, novel grid-scale energy storage, smart-grid, superconducting supergrid

4. One third of carbon tax revenue used to fund non-fossil-fuel infrastructure projects with current technology. Examples:
a) Rapid transit
b) High-speed rail links
c) Energy-efficient building technology (LEED, Passivhaus) - regulations for all new construction, and subsidies
d) Geothermal Energy Projects. Redirect oil&gas industry drilling know-how and workers.
e) Significant feed-in tariffs for clean renewables (as done previously in Germany)
f) Other incentives for solar farms and solar thermal plants with molten-salt energy storage
f) Other incentives for residential PV and solar water heating
g) Deployment of grid-scale storage initially using existing technologies including Li-ion and sodium sulphur batteries, pumped hydro, underground pumped hydro.
h) Addition of long-distance HVDC power transmission lines long enough to cross weather systems. Encourages wind power and solar by evening out intermittency.
i) Expanded subsidy of electric vehicle purchase.
j) Electric vehicle charging infrastructure expansion

KaBOOOOM!!!!!

[pigiron]

nt

Alien

[ThatsNotPudding]

It reminds me of Nostromo and its cargo.

Sure hoping for a better outcome.

Re:Alien

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Except about twice the size. I love reading this stuff, it helps me extrapolate the possible cost for spaceships in RPG games.

It is so big ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... Smothsonian channel will spend two episodes to cover it in Mighty Ships series. Wonder who watches that thing. It keeps showing up in the listings, but do people really watch them?

Putin

[JustNiz]

I bet these guys couldn't beleive their luck when Putin anounced he was cancelling the European gas pipleline a few weeks ago.

Re:Putin

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not. Russia has lots of subs...

Hmm

[koan]

Be interesting to see some pollution metrics for this things processing.

Video

[koan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

another

[kqc7011]

If one reads Gcaptian, this and other maritime news is old hat. Here is a real ship (travels under it's own power) that is quite large. http://gcaptain.com/giant-piet...

Re:An enormous natural disaster waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be alright as long as the front doesn't fall off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Not a cargo ship, a landing strip

[drainbramage]

Something this size would be hard to miss.
SpaceX to Prelude: Incoming!
What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah... but....

[closer2it]

It is 488 meters long and 74 meters wide

Yeah... but, how many football stadiums is that?

Energy in perspective

[KonoWatakushi]

This ship is a marvel, and showcases the truly impressive capabilities of modern shipbuilding industry. What isn’t mentioned, but is equally impressive, is the rate at which such shipyards can turn out new ships, and the surprisingly low cost. However, one can’t help but lament that this capability isn’t being used to produce ThorCon reactors, instead of draining resources for a quick profit. (Do have a look at the white paper, it provides fascinating perspective.)

This LNG ship extracts and condenses 3.6 million tonnes of natural gas per year, with an energy density of 55.5 MJ/kg, giving:

        3.6e6 tonnes/year * 1e3 kg/tonne * 55.5 MJ/kg = 199.8e9 MJ/year
        or 199.8e9 MJ/year * MWh/3600 MJ * TWh/1e6MWh = 55.5 TWh/year

This yearly energy content represents a continuous power output of:

        199.8e9 MJ/year * GJ/1e3 MJ * year/(365.2425*24*3600)s = 6.33 GW

That is the equivalent of a few large power plants. In the scheme of global energy requirements though, it barely registers: world energy consumption in 2008 was 143,851 TWh.

Now, given the energy density of Uranium/Thorium at 80e6 MJ/kg, the energy contained within that 3.6 million tonnes of LNG could instead be derived from:

        199.8e9 MJ/year * kg/80e6 MJ * tonne/1e3 kg = 2.5 tonnes (of U or Th)

That is a rather small number, but lets put it in terms of volume. With Uranium at 1.5e9 MJ/L, or Thorium at 9.3e8 MJ/L, that amounts to roughly the size of a yoga ball:

          U: 199.8e9 MJ * L/1.5e9 MJ = 133L (sphere of radius 32cm)
        Th: 199.8e9 MJ * L/9.3e8 MJ = 215L (sphere of radius 37cm)

The fun part happens when you scale it back up to the global energy consumption of 143,851 TWh, and it translates to a meager 6500 tonnes per year, capable of replacing the billions of tons of fossil fuels we consume today. Even with projected growth, global energy demands could still be satisfied by a single mine, to say nothing of the billions of tons of uranium available in seawater. Before that is necessary, the tens of thousands of tons of so-called “nuclear waste” can be consumed, as they still contain ~95% of the original energy content.

Re:Energy in perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

LNG is far more uses than just electricity production so just comparing energy output is idiotic. you could have enough Thorcon reactrors to cover the planet and there would still be a need for fuels like LNG.

Re:Energy in perspective

[KonoWatakushi]

...and it will be depleted if we continue to pump it out of the ground. We need a sustainable and carbon-neutral replacement, and synthetic carbon-neutral fuels can be created with nuclear heat. Today, ammonia is produced using natural gas as a feedstock, but it can also be created with nuclear heat. With abundant energy, most anything can be produced, and LNG is no exception.

Either way it would be better to look for alternatives, rather than heating our homes and producing fertilizer with something that is both running out and increasing in price. That is idiotic.

What does this mean for Australia?

[mykro76]

The Browse Basin is within Australia's 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. The cynic in me wonders if Australia signed away a nominal lease on the region while assuming there would be income from the port facilities & import/export taxes. Now instead of pumping the stuff onto shore Shell can load directly onto ocean-going ships. I for one hope the Australian contracts are water-tight (pun intended).

Re:What does this mean for Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's shell's response to the environmental protests and injunctions, and magically materializing 'sacred sites' and the whole industry.

So, now, zero jobs in constructing and maintaining port facilities, a refinery, a transport industry, township service and support etc, and the desert remains in its pristine state.

Royalties will still be collected though.

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