Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - shipping

Nicaragua recently granted a 50-year concession to Hong Kong based HKND Group, led by Chinese telecom executive Wang Jing, to cut a channel between the Caribbean Sea and the waters of the Pacific. This channel would rival the Panama Canal with the added benefit that the proposed passage through Nicaragua would be wider, and leave the country well placed to capitalize on a predicted rise in global shipping over the next twenty to thirty years. The argument for the canal is that even with its current expansion, the Panama Canal will still be too small to accommodate the world's largest container ships. In addition to the canal, the HKND Group has won rights to build a railroad, two ports, an international airport and an oil pipeline.

With the sharp increase in ship and shipyard construction, port construction and port safety awareness, all prompted by the mayor pre-salt and post salt oil discoveries off Brazil, many new local service companies, specialized in subsea services have been launched. Some of them are actually developing, Work Class ROV´s in Brazil using foreign or even locally developed technology. There has also been a marked demand increase for smaller ROV´s to be used in various fields including video inspection, side-scan sonar mapping, marine environmental research and training. It is likely that demand for small AUV´s will be increasing steadily as they can be very useful for environmental research…

Easy to dismiss but it could potentially happen. Open for thoughtful consideration and discussion.The head of Chinese shipping giant Cosco has suggested that container ships should be powered by nuclear reactors in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, said to account for 4% of the global total. Shipping companies have gradually been introducing 'super slow steaming', a measure designed to cut fuel consumption and substantially reduce emissions by running engines at very low speed. However, Wei Jiafu, Cosco's president and CEO, speaking at the Senior Maritime Forum of the China International Maritime Exhibition (Marintec China) in Shanghai, said that introducing nuclear-powered ships could be an even cleaner solution.