MARITIME INDUSTRY TAKES BABY STEPS TOWARDS NUCLEAR-POWERED PROPULSION TECHNOLOGY

Maersk has agreed to work with Britain’s Lloyd’s Register and CORE POWER in a joint regulatory assessment study that aims to determine the safety and regulatory considerations for a possible next-generation nuclear-propelled feeder containership. The project is set to take place at an undisclosed port in Europe.

In 2023, UK based, CORE POWER, a marine atomic propulsion developer, unveiled a concept design for a nuclear-powered, 2,800 teu boxship using molten salt reactors. Since then, many shipping giants have taken a serious note of it and dwelling upon its potential impact on the industry and their companies, behind closed doors.

The study will help understand challenges that the maritime industry will need to manoeuvre on global regulatory acceptance front, waste management protocol, the potential of handling attacks from rouge entities etc. These are some crucial aspects that could raise eyebrows across the spectrum and undermine the potential of the use of nuclear technology  for propulsion of feeder containership.

The sooner this study leads to its conclusive results, the faster will the maritime industry benefit on multiple fronts, be it size of the ship, cargo volume, speed, fuel cost or carbon emissions.

Successful results of the study could see nuclear-powered cargo ships seeing the light in approximately 10 years from now.