US Weighs Putting Nuclear Power Plants in Ocean Waters
(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration is exploring the potential for nuclear power projects in the 3.2 billion acres of federal waters managed by the US government.
An agreement announced Wednesday between the Interior Department’s Marine Minerals Administration and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is intended to strengthen cooperation between the agencies as they evaluate the possibility of deploying undersea nuclear power plants.
No commercial nuclear power plants are approved or planned in federal waters, but the agreement is designed to assess whether and how the technology could be “responsibly implemented” in the future, the Marine Minerals Administration said.
“Submerged reactor systems have been safely deployed in naval applications for decades, demonstrating their potential as a reliable source of energy in demanding marine environments,” said Matt Giacona, the Marine Minerals Administration’s acting director. “It could greatly strengthen America’s energy security in the future.”
Also on Wednesday, the Department of Transportation and the Port of Long Beach signed a memorandum of cooperation to test small modular reactors, or SMRs, for commercial vessels and other applications at the port.
“Everything that’s going on in the energy market, the cost of fuel, and the uncertainty surrounding that is strengthening the case for energy diversification,” Port of Long Beach Chief Executive Officer Noel Hacegaba said after the signing at the Transportation Department’s Maritime Administration in Washington. “Now is the right time for us to explore nuclear energy.”
Hacegaba said Long Beach-based Bluecore Energy is working with the port on research and development for maritime applications of small modular reactors.
“My team and I took nuclear reactor technology that’s been running power plants safely for seventy years, made it smaller, and put it on a barge — a power plant that floats,” Kofi Asante, Bluecore founder and CEO, said in a statement released Tuesday.
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