Maritime decarbonisation: correcting course with nuclear power

When it comes to alternative energy, Mikal Bøe thinks the marine industry is headed in the wrong direction.

“Human progress is measured in how effectively we use energy. We have got to do more with less, not less with more, which is what we are doing with green fuels,” he says.

As chairman and executive director of CORE Power, a leader in the development of fourth-generation reactor technologies for the maritime sector, Mr Bøe has a clear vision of nuclear’s role in shipping’s transition to zero-emissions. He sees floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) and civil nuclear propulsion for ships using molten chloride fast reactor (MCFR) technology as the way forward.

Mr Bøe tells us nuclear makes a lot of sense, particularly when considering green fuel options like ammonia for oceangoing ships.

“The entire system is no larger than a big diesel engine”

“When it comes to green ammonia, there is very little energy, somewhere around 19 megajoules per kilo” says Mr Bøe. By comparison, he points out that bunker fuel has about 42 to 44 megajoules per kilo. “This means you’ll have to burn two to two-and-half times more ammonia to get the same amount of energy,” he says.

He also points to the issue of nitrous oxides, a by-product of ammonia combustion, which would need to be handled by selective catalytic reduction.

He says with ammonia the industry is “going backwards”. Ships will have to have larger fuel tanks, bunker more frequently and operate at reduce speeds to save on fuel costs.

“But with nuclear, the entire system is no larger than [a] big diesel engine and there are no fuel tanks. You’re using one gram of fuel per 25 MWh, and you can calculate that into horsepower and number of hours at sea, but that’s a gram of fuel. That means there’s only a gram of waste,” he says.

CORE Power is exploring the use of eVinci microreactors with Westinghouse on FNPPs, and counts MCFR developer Terra Power, energy utility Southern Company, nuclear fuel recycler Orano and shipbuilding giant HD Hyundai Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering among its development partners.

Public perception is changing around nuclear technology, and in the maritime industry, too, in part through the efforts of Mr Bøe and others. Amazon, Google, Meta and X see nuclear power as a carbon-free energy solution to feed energy-hungry data centres for AI expansion.

CORE Power has held a series of global summits aimed at advancing the conversation on nuclear in the maritime sector, sharing information on advances in technology, and addressing tough questions about economic, training, certification, safety, regulatory, and commercial challenges.

In its latest New Nuclear for Maritime Summit, held in Houston, in February, a keynote address by Mr Bøe outlined the Liberty Program, a plan to develop a US-anchored maritime civil nuclear programme that would commercialise FNPPs and merchant nuclear-powered ships by the mid-2030s.

Mr Bøe thinks maritime civil nuclear power is not too far over the horizon. “We could see the first commercial license by 2030 and the first prototype ships by the mid-2030s,” he says.