Otto Hahn (ship)
nuclear-powered cargo vessel
Otto Hahn was one of only four nuclear-powered cargo vessels built to date. Planning of a German-built trade and research vessel to test the feasibility of nuclear power in civil service began in 1960 under the supervision of German physicist Erich Bagge. Launched in 1964, her nuclear reactor was deactivated 15 years later in 1979 and replaced by a conventional diesel engine room. The ship was scrapped in 2009.
History
Otto Hahn's keel was laid down in 1963 by Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft of Kiel. She was launched in 1964 and named in honour of Professor Otto Hahn, the German chemist and Nobel Prize-winner, who discovered the nuclear fission of uranium in 1938. The first captain of the Otto Hahn was Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, a German U-boat ace of World War II.
In 1968, the ship's 38-megawatt nuclear reactor was taken critical and sea trials began. In October of that year, NS Otto Hahn was certified for commercial freight transport and research.
Configured to carry passengers and ore, Otto Hahn made her first port call in Safi, Morocco, loading a cargo of phosphate ores, in 1970. In 1972, after four years of operation, her reactor was refuelled.
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This entry incorporates text from “Otto Hahn (ship)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.