On July 21, 1959, a new era in commercial shipping appeared to dawn as the NS Savannah slipped down the way and into the water at New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey. The deliberately futuristic-looking passenger freighter was built at the then astronomical cost of US$46.9 million (US$495 million in 2024) as part of the Eisenhower administration's Atoms for Peace program.

The Savannah was never meant to be economical to operate. It was a demonstrator vessel designed to show how nuclear power could be used for peaceful commercial operations. Despite being a remarkable piece of nautical engineering and a beautiful example of atomic age aesthetics complete with luxury accommodations, it only served from 1962 to 1972 before being laid up and she is now a museum ship in Baltimore, Maryland.

To date, only four nuclear cargo ships have been built and only one, the Sevmorput, remains in service in Russia to serve Arctic trade routes. Despite an initial burst of optimism, the market for civilian nuclear powered vessels simply never materialized. The life-cycle costs proved to be too high to compete with conventional ships, the highly trained crew needed to run such ships were too costly, and the port infrastructure for nuclear vessels didn't exist.

But the biggest blow were the complex and uncertain domestic and international regulations and license requirements that made nuclear cargo ships a very risky investment.

Today, that's changing in the face of mandates for shipping to go carbon neutral by 2050. It's estimated that the shipping industry burns 300 million tonnes of fossil fuels per year in the form of heavy diesel, producing 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. While other alternatives are being looked at, a number of companies see nuclear power in the form of Gen IV reactors as the most practical solution.