Nuclear buzz grows in offshore

Allseas goes nuclear

Never one to shy away from innovation, offshore marine contractor Allseas is taking a closer look at using SMR technology to power its fleet. The family-owned company, whose fleet includes the massive heavy-lift vessel Pioneer Spirit, has launched a five-year plan to design, develop and deploy an SMR tailored for integration into offshore vessels, as well as shoreside use.

“Nuclear is the next frontier in safe, clean and reliable offshore and onshore energy,” says Allseas project manager, nuclear, Stephanie Heerema. The offshore contractor tipped its hand about two weeks prior to announcing the launch of the five-year plan by advertising an opening for a nuclear engineer.

Allseas expects to produce SMRs at a dedicated facility by 2030, with the first uses targeted for land while the legal and regulatory framework develops for offshore vessel use.

“Nuclear provides a true zero-carbon solution”

Allseas has selected high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) in the 25-MWe range, due to their inherently safe characteristics. This fourth-generation reactor technology generates energy without combustion or emissions.

To advance the project, Allseas is collaborating with a village of stakeholders made up of regulators, researchers, technologists, academia, fuel producers and shipowners.

One of the collaborators is class society Lloyd’s Register (LR), which is working on several maritime projects that would apply SMR technology.

In April, LR announced a collaboration with Australian ship designer Seatransport and American technology company Deployable Energy to develop nuclear power generation for different applications, including strategic response vessels in remote areas. The project envisions using fourth-generation reactor technology to power a 73-m amphibious vessel, designed for emergency response and disaster relief duties. This will enable the vessel to operate for 8-10 years without refuelling, and it can feed power into the shore grid of affected areas and whenever docked at port.

“Nuclear provides a true zero-carbon solution for maritime without compromising on performance,” says LR global power to X director, Mark Tipping. “We are seeing growing recognition of this in industry.”

Floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) could well be the first marine deployments. “The landscape is evolving fast – it appears much faster than was the case with LNG or ammonia adoption, but the FNPPs are indeed currently viewed as the first applications,” says Mr Przybylski. “That includes FNPPs that provide electricity and heat to ports, nuclear plants used as an energy source (electricity and process heat) for offshore installations and floating nuclear-powered data centres. This stems from the fact that such units would be built and operated under a single national nuclear regulatory framework, avoiding the international regulatory unknowns and other challenges that merchant vessels would face crossing multiple jurisdictions,” he adds.

Regulatory hurdles to the deployment of FNPPs were discussed at an international forum held in May at International the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna. While ship-based nuclear propulsion has been around for 70 years, only one FNPP for civil electricity generation is currently in operation — Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov, which has two 35-MWe SMRs and was commissioned in May 2020.

Several recommendations were made at the 24th INPRO Dialogue Forum to foster joint co-operation between IAEA and IMO. Among the key points were determining how existing nuclear and maritime regulations, codes and guidance can be applied to FNPPs. It was also noted that maritime applications of nuclear power could help contribute to the wider deployment of SMRs and other reactor technologies.

“FNPPs and nuclear-propelled ships could be a catalyst to accelerate the deployment of SMRs,” says Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore maritime nuclear strategy leader, Federico Puente-Espel, who chaired the forum.