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The World's Largest Cruise Ship and Its Supersized Pollution Problem (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the big-polluting-machine dept.

An anonymous reader cites a report on the Guardian: When the gargantuan Harmony of the Seas slips out of Southampton docks on Sunday afternoon on its first commercial voyage, the 16-deck-high floating city will switch off its auxiliary engines, fire up its three giant diesels and head to the open sea. But while the 6,780 passengers and 2,100 crew on the largest cruise ship in the world wave goodbye to England, many people left behind in Southampton say they will be glad to see it go. They complain that air pollution from such nautical behemoths is getting worse every year as cruising becomes the fastest growing sector of the mass tourism industry and as ships get bigger and bigger. According to its owners, Royal Caribbean, each of the Harmony's three four-storey high 16-cylinder Wartsila engines will, at full power, burn 1,377 US gallons of fuel an hour, or about 96,000 gallons a day of some of the most polluting diesel fuel in the world.

7 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. I hate bad journalism like this... by Eloking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate bad journalism like this...

    "It burn 96,000 gallons a day"!! Well no shit, it's the biggest ship of the world. If you want to impress me, tell how how much fuel per passager it burn and compare it to others cruise ship. And unless it's the most efficient ship in the world, I won't see a problem.

    --
    Elok
    1. Re:I hate bad journalism like this... by fnj · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The actual figures are here if you spend 30 seconds to look them up. There are three 16-cylinder engines AND three 12-cylinder engines. The fuel consumption is actually 3x1377 + 3x1033 gallons per hour, so a total of 173,520 gallons per day. With a capacity of 6360 passengers, that's 27.3 gallons per passenger per day, or 1.14 gallons per passenger per hour. The cruising speed is 22.6 knots, which is 26.0 mph.

      So it works out to 0.0438 gallons per passenger per mile, or 22.8 mpg per passenger. That's a hell of a lot less fuel efficiency than a jetliner or passenger car at capacity, let alone a motorbus. I believe that's the point people are (clumsily) making.

    2. Re: I hate bad journalism like this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      ... Its bunker, not bumper fuel, and its the sulfur thats removed from refined oil products, not sodium. There is no compound known as sodium dioxide, but i'm thinking you mean sulfur dioxide.

  2. Bah... by sir1963nz · · Score: 5, Informative

    A 747 burns through 3,600 Gallons of fuel per hour for just over 416 Passengers. This ship burns 1/3 of that for nearly 9000 people.

  3. Plan by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they had named it Boaty McBoatface, they could have made enough on souvenirs to clean it up.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  4. Re: Finally by saloomy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a first world problem, and it has a first world solution. There's a reason commercial mega-ships are so much worse than even larger military mega-ships: nuclear power. There's no reason at all a ship of this size shouldn't have a reactor for its fuel. There are no safety precautions that aren't acceptable for the loss of a reactor that are acceptable for the loss of 8000 souls, so safety shouldn't be an issue.

    We can run reactors in the confines of a submarine, in aircraft carriers, and on large combat ships, and it's arguable that a military ship is more at risk than a commercial ship, since it will be actively engaged in combat! When anti-nuclear pundits win, the environment loses. And so does the company, since it would be cheaper in the long run, certainly in a period time for which this ship will operate.

  5. Re:Thorium: Less experience ? by saloomy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real cost of a petrochemical navy is absurdly higher than a nuclear one. Just check out:

    1. The cost of ensuring its supply (through wars)

    2. The fluctuation in real cost of fuel prices over the lifespan of the engine

    3. The environmental cost and irrecoverable damage to the planet

    4. The increase in respiratory illnesses incident rate vs the relatively nonexistent incident rate related to nuclear energy. More on this:
    Nuclear power, when compared with just about every other fuel on earth, has a vastly lower injury, death, and sickness rating, even with Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3-Mile. The safety is what makes the cost astronomical, not the science. Nuclear power is the fuel of the sun, the earth, and the source of all of life's energy. Even solar power has a higher deaths per gigawatt than nuclear. This an educational problem, not a practical, economical, or scientific one.

    Its too bad the first experience humans had with nuclear power was via WMD, and not civilian applications. We would be living in a very different world today if we first commercialized the technology before we blew up Japan with it.