Bluecore Energy raises $10M to put nuclear reactors on barges
Bluecore Energy Inc. today announced that it had raised $10 million to shrink nuclear reactors to barge size and dock them at ports where the grid falls short. The pitch is zero-emission power for ports and other sites where grid capacity runs short.
The reactors are water-cooled and sit on floating energy barges. They would power ports and critical infrastructure first, and Bluecore wants to run cargo ships on them down the line. Founder and Chief Executive Kofi Asante sums up the concept plainly: Take reactor technology that has run power plants for 70 years, make it smaller and put it on a barge. “A power plant that floats,” he said.
Bluecore is headquartered at the Port of Long Beach, which it says makes it the first small modular reactor company to base itself inside a major U.S. port. The company has already delivered its first barge and an electric test reactor to the site and is now building and testing components as it works through the engineering, regulatory and classification steps.
The first system produces 10 megawatts of electricity. That is enough for about 15,000 homes, or one major port, according to the company. Each reactor is fueled once and then runs for years. When a customer needs more, Bluecore bolts several units together and it’s targeting utilities, data centers and offshore operators. Power generation is the first application. Asante frames maritime propulsion as the longer-term goal, with the same underlying technology eventually driving the ships that carry more than 90% of global trade.
