The ocean shuttle submersible, its autonomous marine power source (AMPS) and power source control system

The Ocean Shuttle is an advanced nuclear powered sub-sea vehicle which will offer a fully autonomous workbase from which a wide variety of sub-sea activities of can be carried out. Considerably larger than the current generation of deep diving manned submersibles and possessing a central mission bay, the vehicle will be used for the seabed deployment and retrieval of equipment, ROV´s and saturation divers. The heart of the Ocean Shuttle concept is the ECS Autonomous Marine Power Source (AMPS), a 100 kWe nuclear power source which can be designed for a range of power outputs and adapted to many marine applications. This low cost air-independent power source will enable low speed dived missions which are only man-limited in duration, and permit the use of manned submersibles as sole in-situ support vehicles for sub-sea ROV´s. The capabilities of the Ocean Shuttle are described in this paper and the applications for which it is intended, including the deployment of ROV´s are given. The components of the AMPS are detailed with particular emphasis on the fault-tolerant control and monitoring system.