Who knew that a sexy nuclear superyacht could save us from climate catastrophe? That was theawesome newsfrom CNN’s travel desk yesterday.
CNN wasn’t alone.Forbes,BBC Science Focus Magazine, and a host of other media outlets have previously hailed the world-rescuing potential of what CNN described as “an emissions-free megaship that will pit together climate scientists and the wealthy in a daring quest to save the ρłɑɴet.”
“Pit together” sounds like an apt description of a would-be merger between luxury tourism and climate action. You can put those two things together in a sentence, but in the real world they mix about as easily as oil and water.
And there’s another big problem with the ρłɑɴ for this overҺуρєԀ 300-meter-long vessel and its global research:Earth 300, as the $700 million superyacht is called, will be powered by a molten salt nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist yet and won’t be certified for at least five years. The company’swebsiteillustrates the reactor witha scale modelofan experiment done in the 1960sat Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The website also says the scientists onboardEarth 300will have the world’s first ocean-going quantum computer. But that, too, has yet to be built.
Meanwhile, the climate crisis needs immediate attention. “We really are out of time,”UN Secretary-General António Guterres warnedthis month.
While they wait for a modular nuclear reactor that might never come, the developers ofEarth 300say they will use green synthetic fuels. These are liquid fuels derived from coal or natural gas in a process that captures carbon. However, they are much more expensive than fossil fuels. Aaron Olivera, the entrepreneur behindEarth 300, told CNN he ρłɑɴs to “eventually” retrofit the yacht with a reactor being developed by the UK company Core Power in collaboration with TerraPower, a US nuclear engineering firm chaired by Bill Gates.
Globally, there areat least 171 motorized megayachtsthat are 75 meters (246 feet) or more in length. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, is ɾυмօɾed to be buying asuperyacht so bigthat it will have a dock for its own “support yacht.”Eclipse, an even bigger superyacht owned by Russian-Israeli billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich, has its own missile defense system. The largest yacht currently operating,Azzam, is 180 meters (590 feet) long and consumes 13 metric tons of fuel per hour at its top speed of 33 knots. That’s about 0.01 miles (or a little over 50 feet) per gallon.
Earth 300would be much bigger.
And the customers Olivera would like to attract—the wealthiest people in the world—also tєɴԀ to have the world’s largest carbon footprints, thanks in no small part to their habit of traveling aboard superyachts and private airρłɑɴes.According to calculations by two researchers at Indiana University, a superyacht with a permanent crew and helicopter pad is “by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint.”
Earth 300’s luxury suites will each rent for $300,000 a day, which presumably will cover the personnel and expenses needed to operate the ship and its 22 scientific laboratories. But construction won’t begin until 2025 at the earliest, and any groundbreaking scientific discoveries or billionaire epiphanies that could help stabilize the climate are even further into the future.
Construction is already delayed on another 600-foot-long yacht that will combine climate research with charters for paying customers. Financed by Kjell Inge Røkke, a Norwegian billionaire who made his fortune in fishing and oil drilling,REV Oceanwill investigate climate change and ocean acidification, plastic pollution, and overfishing, butthe nonprofit projectis at least three years behind schedule.
Who will be aboard these superyachts? CNN asked Olivera which famous people he’d like to host on his future ship, and he named Elon Musk, Michelle Obama, Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein and Yvon Chouinard. Like the superyacht itself, some of those potential guests seem more aspirational than realistic.
Greta Thunberg doesn’t take airρłɑɴes or motor yachts. Elon Musk doesn’t take vacations. And Bill Gates may be hurt that he’s not on the A-list.
