Australian_Science_Illustrated_Issue_52_2017

scienceillustrated.com.au | 53

Two canals and one strait allow the

shortest possible sailing routes

between the world’s most important

ports. But as container vessels grow,

the passages become bottlenecks, and

the largest ships must find alternative

routes. When the Panama Canal opened

in 1914, the sluices were dimen-sioned

for ships the size of the Titanic.

Following an expansion in 2016, they

have become 72 m longer and 22 m

wider, but the canal is still too narrow

for the biggest container vessels, which

are forced to take a 12,500-km-long

detour around South America.

Three bottlenecks choke the titans

cranes on rails set out to sort the huge

quantities of containers according to when

they will be picked up. When a truck arrives to

collect its goods, the port computer system

tells the automatic cranes to find the right

container. The truck is parked in a marked area,

and once the robotic crane has placed the

container on it, the driver can leave right away.

The introduction of robots in ports is still

a relatively new phenomenon, but the initial

comparisons of manual and automated

industrial ports indicate that the new

technology can handle about 80 % more

containers during the same period of time.

Although the port of Los Angeles is one of

the biggest in the US and central to trade

with Asia, it is too small to handle vessels like

the MSC Oscar. The ports which do not follow

suit, when ships grow bigger, lose traffic, and

so, Los Angeles is carrying out a costly

modification project, which will enable the

port to handle the biggest of container

vessels in 2020.

EXTREME DETOURS

Not only ports have come under pressure, as

container and cruise ships have grown to be

as long as skyscrapers are high. For 100+

years, the Panama Canal has been a

commercial shipping hub, but in 2007, the

CARGO INCREASED
40 TIMES IN 50 YEARS

1960

HAWAIIAN CITIZEN

490 containers

980 cars

1970

DART EUROPE

1,556 containers

3,112 cars

1981

FRANKFURT EXPRESS

3,430 containers

6,860 cars

1994

NYK ALTAIR

4,953 containers

9,906 cars

2000

CORNELIUS MAERSK

8,400 containers

16,800 cars

2014

MSC OSCAR

19,224 containers

38,448 cars

PANAMA CANAL

In spite of the 2016

expansion, the biggest

container vessels – MSC

Oscar and Maersk's Triple

E class – are still too large.

SUEZ CANAL

After an expansion in

2014, the canal, which links

the Mediterranean and the

Red Sea, is big enough for

the largest container vessel.

STRAIT OF MALACCA

The 890-km-long strait

between Indonesia and

Malaysia is too narrow for

the world's largest ship, the

Prelude natural gas platform.

SHIPPING TRANSPORT
COSTS THE LEAST CO 2
Ships are the means of transport,
which impact the environment the
least. The figure shows the number of
g of CO 2 emitted, when 1 t of cargo is
carried 1 km.

560 G OF COAIRCRAFT

2

47 G OF COTRUCK

2

TRAIN

18 G OF CO 2

SHIP (MAERSK TRIPLE E)3 G OF CO

2

SHUTTERSTOCK

SHIPPING ROUTES

LOS ANGELES, USA SHANGHAI, CHINA

JEBEL ALI, DUBAI

ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

SINGAPORE

SHENZEN, CHINA