A study of the size of nuclear fuel carriers, the most required ships for safety : how large can ship's tonnage be?

Title of Dissertation :A study of the size of nuclear fuel carriers, the most required ship for safety: How large can ship's tonnage be?Degree : Master of Science in Maritime Affairs (Maritime Safety and Environmental Administration)The Tonnage Measurement Convention is the only existing international standards for tonnage measurement of ships.During the last four decades, ship design and operation systems have been changed drastically.Even new type of ships appeared gaining the economic advantage by exploiting a kind of loophole of the Convention and drove rival ships away from the fleet.Most merchant ships are likely to have incentives to reduce gross tonnage (GT) to achieve the economic benefits that are most prominent.Yet there are ships which are not limited by the restriction of the GT based threshold.This dissertation is a study to examine the distribution of general merchant ships looking for a trend comparing the ship's purpose and cargo types.The samples chosen are ships with a length of 100 metres from the world fleet register database.The study focuses on the exceptional trend of GT appearance of the Irradiated Nuclear Fuel (INF) carrier with its abnormal characteristics of the cargo or the purpose and what factor makes the figures outstanding.vThe idea of 'a safe ship tends to be large' was supported by the result of this study.Further, it might give a little push to shipping industries' opinion which requests the amendments of the Tonnage Measurement Convention as it was never amended since its entry into force in 1982.The question remains whether there is a direct link between changing the Convention and the ship becoming safer and crews' well-being; however, the current measurement theory stands on the common sense of shipbuilding over a century ago; therefore, the Convention is too old to fit the reality of the shipbuilding and the operation system today.In the end, the critique and recommendations of the author are reiterated in relation to the amendment of the Convention which has been emphasized in order to introduce the tacit amendment procedure.