Core Power and MARAD Sign Seven-Year Plan for 50 Nuclear Merchant Ships
A mixed fleet of LNG carriers and boxships at $700m a hull, with first delivery targeted for 2033
Core Power has signed a seven-year agreement with the United States Maritime Administration covering a fleet of 50 nuclear-powered merchant vessels, a mix of LNG carriers and container ships.
The economics set out for the programme put a unit cost of $700 million on each ship, against roughly $250 million for the equivalent conventionally powered tonnage. The case for the premium rests on fuel cost, sea time and service speed: higher utilisation, no sulphur emissions, and an estimate that conventional tonnage would have to be 66 percent larger to move the same volume of goods.
Hulls would be built in Japan and Korea, with the reactor installation carried out at a yard to be developed in the United States. Corpus Christi in Texas is the candidate site, covered by a preliminary agreement. First delivery is targeted for 2033.
The reactor choice has moved. The company had previously looked at the Westinghouse 550MW A4W plant used in the Nimitz class carriers, and at the Rolls-Royce PWR2 submarine reactor that underpins that firm's small modular design in the United Kingdom. It has settled on a unit produced by BWX Technologies.
The newbuilding programme follows an earlier line of work aimed at the defence estate rather than commercial trade. In February the company was pursuing a tie-up with the US Department of War, on the reasoning that reactors operated at defence-owned ports fall under a regulatory regime the Pentagon has decades of experience with, and which allows far quicker deployment than the civil nuclear framework. That proposal envisaged a power station on board a vessel stationed in a military port, feeding data centre demand ashore and relocatable at the end of a contract in the manner of a floating LNG unit. A White House executive order issued in May 2025 requires an advanced reactor to be operating at a military base by 30 September 2028.
US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has publicly backed the merchant fleet plan, framing it against Chinese competition. At Marintec China in Shanghai in June, the state-owned Jiangnan Shipyard announced that it intends to build a 25,000 TEU nuclear-powered container ship.
