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I don't get what's wrong in the Suez
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @01:57AM (9 children)
Just get one of those giant Russian ice breakers in there and ram the stern to knock her loose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @02:19AM (8 children)
Won't work well.
For starters, ice breakers aren't built for ramming as such. They work by riding up on the ice layer, and their mass cracking the ice from above.
Second, just slamming a grounded ship with the stern involved is apt to wreck the steering gear; the last thing that you need in a confined space like the canal.
Third, they already have tugs around that can apply all the safe pressure, and then some. An ice breaker that is larger and clumsier won't do anything that they can't.
There's more, but from pretty much every perspective that's a bad idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @02:29AM (7 children)
The biggest reason that comes to mind is that the Suez is too far south. Russian nuclear powered icebreakers require cold arctic water for cooling and will overheat long before they get that close to the equator.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday March 28 2021, @03:12AM (6 children)
This seems unlikely to me, since the USA builds nuclear vessels that operate globally and the USSR/Russia has
built other ships that do the same thing. An icebreaker might also have to occasionally transit warmer waters
for some reason, and since we know nuclear vessels can work in any ocean it would be foolish not to add the
additional plumbing to cool an icebreaker.
Hitting the Ever Given with an icebreaker is a bad idea; just not for this reason.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @03:35AM (2 children)
Then they can use small explosives around the bow to clear space for that appendage. Those demolition dudes would know how to do it.
Anyway it's bogus. The real story is in what's being blockaded and delayed by this.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 28 2021, @05:54PM (1 child)
The real story is that the ship's pilots "drew" a cock 'n' balls in a butt -- a dickbutt -- with their path before they went to get stuck inside the canal.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday March 29 2021, @09:06PM
If you stare at flight paths and ship navigation logs long enough, you're bound to see some interesting patterns.
Some people might look and see boobiess, others apparently like to see "dickbutts".
I have a feeling it could be rather disturbing to see Ethanol-fueled's etch-a-sketch logs! :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 29 2021, @09:35PM (2 children)
It is true that both Russia and the USA have nuclear powered vessels that can operate all over the world, but Russia's icebreakers are designed to operate exclusively in the arctic, servicing their ports on their northern coast. Russia has no naval interest in Antarctica and that is the only other place in the world that would ever need an icebreaker. Limiting the ships to arctic conditions let them save space and money by using smaller radiators. It means that they can't enter warmer water, but they have never had a reason to do so.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday March 29 2021, @11:44PM (1 child)
I can't find one, and seriously have a hard time believing this isn't a wild goose chase because first, they don't use a radiator in the traditional sense. In general, there's a closed loop steam cycle with a condenser. The condenser is cooled by seawater.
Secondly, when you're talking about cooling something that generates high-quality "dry" steam, the difference between rejecting heat at nearly freezing temperatures vs. the warmest ocean temperatures really isn't that great.
Finally, it seems like if this were an issue, the margin of safety on the reactor design would be poor. Russia has done some sketchy things with nukes, but even this seems a bit much.
I'm ready and willing to face up to an unexpected reality though--you just need to provide that citation.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday March 30 2021, @03:10AM
I eventually found this. [quora.com], of course while we can't entirely put stock in somebody on the Internet claiming to have worked on Russian nukes, he does seem to have a good Quora rep, for what that's worth. The gist is that the ship could safely go south at lower power (most likely due to a reduced ability to reject heat to the environment, which jibes with what I was thinking), but that a re-fit with what he called "additional cooling units" would be helpful. I'm guessing that's a larger heat exchanger.
So I'd rate this "partially true", because a stock nuclear ice breaker can safely go south at reduced power.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 28 2021, @01:57AM (2 children)
On a one-lane, one-way street, the dummy couldn't keep his oversize vehicle straight.
FWIW, the immediate claim that a sand storm and high winds caused the problem is being eroded. There has been talk of a momentary power failure aboard ship. Mr. Rabie has been the most vocal in questioning the high winds story.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/strong-wind-reason-suez-ship-ever-given-grounding-canal-chief-14506498 [channelnewsasia.com]
It is my understanding that there were TWO Suez pilots aboard. No one is publishing statements from those pilots, or from the ship's captain. Liability issues are probably keeping them silent.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @02:23AM
I think that the power loss story is the likeliest.
The winds aren't irrelevant, but are something that pilots would take into account and address - on any ship that was under control. However, let that power drop, and then the profile of a big freighter makes a REALLY big sail, and even if they got power back in a big hurry, they'd be in real trouble.
The bigger story is: why did they lose power? If I were in Lloyd's of London, I'd be asking a whole slew of questions around that. If maintenance were shown not to be up to snuff, or failsafes inadequately designed, maintained and tested, I'd be rewriting actuarial tables.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @05:31PM
I am sure the truck driver is overpaid and you are not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @04:06PM (1 child)
What is wrong in the Suez is the "water" equivalent to a semi jackknifed [wikipedia.org] across both lanes of an interstate highway.
No traffic behind the semi is going anywhere until the semi is no longer blocking all of the lanes.
And if the semi is jackknifed across all four lanes (both directions) then no traffic is passing at that point on the highway in either direction until the semi is cleared.
Except, that on land one can bring in equipment that is attached to the ground and can exert a pull or lift greater than the net weight of the semi to get it out of the way.
Extend that to a cargo ship that is the length of four football fields and the width of one football field, and that has stacked on top the equivalent of 1,000+ semi trucks of cargo, and all the 'work' of pulling/lifting has to happen while the rescue equipment is afloat, and you see the massiveness of the problem.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 30 2021, @06:17AM
Meh, couple dualies and some really long ratchet straps and I could have had that thing cleared in no time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.