Core Power Signs a Seven-Year MARAD Deal for 50 Nuclear-Powered Merchant Ships

The British nuclear energy company Core Power has signed a seven-year agreement with the US Maritime Administration to build a fleet of 50 nuclear-powered merchant vessels, a mix of LNG tankers and container ships, with first delivery targeted for 2033.

The economics are unusual and the company does not hide them. At a unit cost of $700m per ship, against roughly $250m for the equivalent tonnage conventionally powered, the vessels would be expensive to build. The case rests on what happens afterwards: lower fuel costs, higher sea-time and higher cruising speeds, producing higher utilisation, alongside the complete elimination of sulphur fuel emissions. Core Power estimates that conventional tonnage would need to be 66% higher to haul the same volume of goods as a nuclear-powered fleet of this size.

Hulls for the ships would be built in Japan and Korea, with the nuclear power plants fitted in a yard to be developed in the United States, potentially at Corpus Christi in Texas, where the company has signed a preliminary agreement.

The proposal is the second the company has taken to Washington this year. In February it sought a tie-up with the US Department of War to take advantage of the simpler regulatory regime governing nuclear plants aboard ships calling at defence-owned ports. Because the Pentagon has extensive experience of small reactors afloat and well-established protocols for them, that route allows much faster deployment than the civil nuclear framework. Under that plan a vessel-mounted power station would be stationed in a military port to supply energy close to where data centres need it. To justify grid connection costs the ship would be committed to one port for a substantial period, but like an LNG floating unit it could be moved to a new task at the end of a contract.

The reactor choice moved during the process. Core Power initially envisioned either the Westinghouse 550MW A4W reactor used on Nimitz class carriers or the Rolls-Royce PWR2 submarine reactor that underpins the company's small modular reactor design adopted in the UK. It has since opted for a reactor produced by BWX Technologies. A White House executive order issued in May 2025 mandates the development of an advanced nuclear reactor at a military base by no later than 30 September 2028.

US Secretary for Transportation Sean Duffy has been publicly enthusiastic, and regards the programme as a response to Chinese competition. At the Marintec China conference in Shanghai in June, the state-owned Jiangnan Shipyard announced it would build a 25,000 TEU nuclear-powered container ship.

The regulatory question remains the hard one for commercial operation. A nuclear merchant ship needs port state acceptance wherever it calls, insurance cover that no P&I club currently writes at scale, and a liability regime that most jurisdictions have not tested. A parallel study into what an Atlantic crossing would require is under way, set out in the nuclear container ship corridor work.