Couldn’t you just build nuclear powered container ships?
The biggest reason nuclear powered shipping isn’t mainstream is because many countries have local policies to prohibit nuclear vessels from docking.
If the major powers coordinated they could force the minor powers into cooperation. If a country like New Zealand refuses to let nuclear ships dock at their local ports, then simply throw them out of the WTO. They’d have no other option but to change their irrational anti-nuclear policies.
Ships sink at the rate of about 10 per year, and there are on the order of 80,000 large commercial cargo vessels in the world's trade fleets.
About 1/3 of that is dedicated to the movement of hydrocarbons themselves (mostly bulk crude oil, but also natural gas, coal, and refined products).
The total military nuclear fleet is on the order of 500 vessels, and actually accounts for the overwhelming majority of nuclear reactors in operation.
Sea lanes are not distributed evenly over the oceans, but are concentrated along a limited number of high-traffic routes, notably between China, the Straits of Malaca, Gulf of Aden, Suez, and Mediterranian, between western Europe and the Americas, and from the west coast of the US to Japan and China, by way of the Aleutian Islands (great circle route).
Odds of hull losses in coastal waters near fishing grounds and shore habitation are high. Piracy and other activities are another risk.
I'm wondering how the headlines following a decrepit nuclear-powered bulk carrier discovered to be carrying a cargo of poorly-loaded ammonium nitrate, blowing up somewhere in the Medierannian, South China Sea, or Singapore, and dirty-bombing the hell out of a few thousand square kilometres will read.
To be fair, there are a lot of countries that I would not trust to build safe nuclear ships. There'd need to be a shitload of regulation around the building of these ships.
The biggest reason nuclear powered shipping isn’t mainstream is because many countries have local policies to prohibit nuclear vessels from docking.
If the major powers coordinated they could force the minor powers into cooperation. If a country like New Zealand refuses to let nuclear ships dock at their local ports, then simply throw them out of the WTO. They’d have no other option but to change their irrational anti-nuclear policies.