WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Wednesday, readers! We’re just about a month away from this year’s New York Climate Week. 🌱🗽 Any interesting sessions, panels, events you think we should keep an eye on? Let us know! Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list. The Trump administration’s nuclear energy renaissance could be hitting the seas, as officials announced late last month that they would be exploring offshore nuclear power projects.
In a world where we have oil rigs and wind turbines located offshore, could this initiative result in floating nuclear power plants? Callie spoke with NANO Nuclear Energy, an advanced nuclear energy company exploring offshore opportunities, to find out. What it would look like: NANO Nuclear CEO James Walker is skeptical that the push will result in an offshore nuclear power plant – at least along the East and West Coasts of the U.S. Walker told Callie that building a nuclear power plant on land, while expensive, is much more financially viable than offshore. On land, developers don’t need to transport employees or materials via ships. In general, building any energy project offshore is more expensive. For 2024, the International Renewable Energy Agency found that installed costs for offshore wind were more than double the cost of those built onshore. Walker said that the exception would be in a country where nuclear energy development is restricted on land due to political or environmental reasons. “You could have some sort of floating vessel with a reactor system, and you could run power to shore, but I think these are very niche ideas.” Instead, Walker said, nuclear power will more likely be deployed as small modular reactors on ships, at onshore ports and refineries, or even on an offshore oil platform. How difficult would this be? Deploying nuclear energy isn’t difficult, Walker said, as the technology is already there. But, projects are still likely to run into delays. He explained that developers will need to prove to licensing agencies that they have done an evaluation of all the safety scenarios that can be applied. “Say it goes to sea, okay, a boat hits it,” Walker said. “What’s the fission event? What’s the risk there? If it sinks, does that matter? How does it shut down? Does it cause an issue to the ocean?”If developers can succeed in allaying regulators’ fears about the dangers, he said, maritime nuclear power could be deployed as early as the early 2030s. Projects already underway: NANO Nuclear is currently developing portable and stationary micro modular reactors that can produce anywhere between 1 and 20 megawatts of thermal energy. Walker told Callie that the company has been approached by several companies in the oil and gas industry interested in using these reactors to power their operations. “There’s really an appetite there,” Walker said, noting that most of these firms are having to wait until the technology is sophisticated enough before signing any deals. As a reminder, there are currently no small modular reactors operational in the U.S. That hasn’t stopped all dealmaking, however. Earlier this summer, the Port of Long Beach in California signed a cooperation agreement with the federal Maritime Administration to establish safety standards for using small modular reactors to generate electricity used by the port. That project could run into some hurdles, however, most notably the state’s 50-year-old moratorium on new nuclear energy. State lawmakers, including several Democrats, are working to exempt advanced reactors from the temporary ban.
