Getting nuclear for maritime over the hump

Mikal Boe writes for Splash today on nuclear’s regulatory approval process.

It’s 114 years since the first diesel powered ships set out to sea.

That big diesel engine changed the world because diesel is more energy dense than what came before. It brought us immense improvements in energy effectiveness, the globalisation of trade, and it spurred a great eradication of human poverty. All because it was a massive step forward in how effectively we use energy.

Energy effectiveness directly impacts human development. Increasing energy effectiveness by just 1% increases human development by 6% in the long run. The opposite is also true. If we lower our effective use of energy, human development takes a hit.

But all progress comes at a price. Since that first diesel powered ship, the global fleet has spilled an estimated 3.6 trillion tons of debilitating green-house exhaust gases into the earth’s atmosphere, using it as our very own open sewer.

So, we have two challenges to solve. Not just reducing emissions to clean up our mess, but also increasing our energy effectiveness to further human prosperity. It’s a simple equation, and we must solve for both sides.

Nuclear energy is the best solution because it both improves energy effectiveness by orders of magnitude and emits nothing. And we know it works. Pressurised Water Reactors (a common type of nuclear reactor) have operated safely at sea on warships since the 1950s, but a PWR on commercial ships cannot be insured when moving in ports and waterways. That’s the reason we don’t have civilian nuclear-powered ships trading internationally today. Not safety, not economics, not public opinion; but insurance.

Commercial insurance of nuclear-powered ships needs both a new nuclear technology solution and a liability convention. The two international nuclear liability conventions which are hosted by the IAEA and the OECD, both exclude nuclear propelled ships. The convention for insurance liability of nuclear-powered ships was shaped in the 1960s as the ‘Brussels Convention’ but has not been ratified.

The reasons for this are both technological and historic. The technological challenge is being solved and commercially insurable marine reactors will be available in the 2030s. The historic reasons date back to the cold war and disagreement between the Soviets and the Americans on the inclusion of nuclear-powered warships in the convention.

The work of recently formed Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization (NEMO) is to help revise the terms of the Convention to allow for Maritime Civil Nuclear Propulsion to be commercially insured. Combining new nuclear technology solutions with an entirely commercially focus convention, gets us over the hump.

Commercially insurance and fit for purpose technology however is still not enough for nuclear to adopted widely. We must fit the purpose of the technology with applications, form the remaining regulatory standards framework so we can organise deployment, build up the supply chain, create the nuclear grade home yards, develop and train the workforce and then combine all these together into an integrated Maritime Civil Nuclear Power Program to unlock the finance required for scale.

Building that program unlocks a $3trn market opportunity in the OECD between now and 2060. CORE POWER is building that program backed by substantial investments from major shipping, energy, industrial, financial and venture investors.

The program offers many long-term benefits. It can deliver on the promise of dramatic energy effectiveness gains in the value chains of global trade, without emissions and it can provide resilient and energy secure transport and logistic for commerce and OECD nation states.

That will be good for the future of both the environment and the economy.