In this penultimate episode of the Future Thinking mini-series by North Standard, host Helen Barden is joined by Mikal Boe, Chair and CEO of CorePower, to discuss the role of scalable new nuclear power technology in maritime decarbonization. They delve into the potential of nuclear power to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry, the challenges of integrating this technology, and the necessary changes in regulatory frameworks and public perception. The conversation covers the competitive costs of nuclear-powered ships, the importance of commercial insurability, and the future operational models of nuclear-powered maritime vessels.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to Future Thinking Series

00:21 Guest Introduction: Mikal Boe of CorePower

00:49 The Role of Nuclear in Maritime Decarbonisation

01:54 Challenges and Technological Developments

05:44 Commercial Viability and Cost Analysis

11:21 Public Perception and Regulatory Landscape

21:20 Future of Nuclear-Powered Ships

25:39 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

[00:00:33] CorePower is a market leading innovation company specialising in scalable new nuclear power technology for ocean transport and the heavy industry. Mikal is actively engaged in the nuclear community, serving on related advisory boards and committees internationally. Thank you for joining me today Mikal, and welcome to the Alongside podcast.

[00:00:55] Helen Barden: It's great to have you, um, on the podcast because certainly over the past couple of years, and I think especially since The International Maritime Organization's revised greenhouse gas strategy in 2023. There is a lot more talk about nuclear as being part of the energy transition and a way in which the shipping industry might actually meet the revised greenhouse gas target of getting 2050.

[00:01:49] Uh, so I wonder if we could just. Have a little look at some of the challenges and work to be done, I suppose, in terms of getting nuclear in maritime to that point. And one of the first elements of work that I know you're very busy working on is around the technology. So perhaps you could give the audience a bit of information about the preferred technology that core power is looking at and how that development of the technology is going.

[00:02:18] Mikal Boe: Before I do that, Helen, I think it's probably worth setting the scene so that it's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's obvious what the narrative is around this. Why nuclear? Why not something else? And if we're going to use nuclear, why are we choosing different technologies from the one that exists today? And I think it's It comes down to a few basic things.

[00:02:59] It comes down to chemistry, it comes down to physics, it comes down to the laws of nature, and the gradual realization that There's simply not going to be any net zero without nuclear. Nuclear is not going to be the solution to everything. But if you're going to replace reliable energy sources, the stuff that we've built our world on today, you know, we need to replace that with something that doesn't emit.

[00:03:43] And since they cannot be commercially insured, we can't bring them into ports. And if we can't bring them into ports, well, you know, there's not much we can do with them in the commercial maritime business. So that's one side of it. The other way is of course, that nuclear is, is an industry that's gone for economies of scale.

[00:04:21] We get. Deliver clean energy to industry, transport and infrastructure. And we create that independence, that energy independence, energy security, which pulls hungry assets off the grid and makes the job of wind and solar that's now being invested in so much easier. We also know that approximately 7, 000 of the largest ships in the global fleet today emit.

[00:05:03] between now and 2060, and as the pendulum of geopolitics swings towards more regional trade blocks, that opportunity to build that market in and around the OECD could really revitalize shipbuilding and manufacturing and, and, and those industries, you know, in the Atlantic, in Europe and North America, et cetera, which we see as a, as a big benefit.

[00:05:43] Both are being developed today and will be with us commercially available, you know, in the early 2030s.

[00:06:11] So the likes of ammonia. where there is going to be a need if we're going to be looking at green ammonia to produce that green hydrogen which is obviously a very energy intensive process.

[00:06:40] There's nothing we can do, nothing anyone can do, to change how much energy is required to split that. That water into hydrogen and oxygen, and that's why it's so difficult. So if you're going to have this vast amounts of reliable 24 hour a day energy, which is clean in itself to make that hydrogen, which is a feedstock for ammonia and other.

[00:07:20] It's not simple construction. It's built in the shipyard. Just like we build ships and it is floated into place. All of the workforce that manufactures it stays in the same place. We float that into place and we're able then to make fuel out of, or that can power the production platforms that produce fuel from air and water, which is what ammonia is at the end of the day.

[00:08:08] And that's where they're needed. floating nuclear power plant, the FNPP really comes into its own.

[00:08:37] Something that I took away as being a very interesting um, comment when I attended the new Nuclear Maritime Summit was there was a comparison between the life cost of a 15 000 teu methanol ship and a 15 000 teu nuclear powered ship and With the CAPEX and the OPEX cost for the methanol ship, it was 2.

[00:09:26] And I just wondered if you wanted to elaborate on that as well.

[00:09:55] 7 billion sounds rather low. I think it's going to be rather a lot more than that. We need to think about this in terms of the what you get from the energy that you have. I mean, if energy, if the energy source that you're relying on is not available, then it doesn't really matter how much it costs is the energy that you don't have.

[00:10:36] Now, clearly, if we build nuclear the way we do today, sort of one plant at a time, prototyping forever, things are always going to be very expensive. There's nothing special about nuclear in that sense. I mean, everything that you prototype costs a huge amount of money. You know, if you're building, you know, a one off ship.

[00:11:23] So, you know, I think cost wise, this is going to be extremely competitive.

[00:11:53] Mikal Boe: This is changing all the time. I mean, you know, whether something is popular or unpopular is very much to do with the narrative and discourse in the public domain. And, you know, to be fair, we've been taught, we've been taught very well. to be afraid of nuclear by those who stand to profit from nuclear not being part of our energy mix.

[00:12:34] Now, obviously, in the very early days of any technology, you know, people make mistakes, things happen, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, 80 years of civil nuclear energy development has produced the smallest number of injuries and deaths of anything that, that you can compare it with. It's, it's quite laughable actually that, that it's like that, but people have started to realize this, you know, a little bit of, a little bit of information goes an awful long way in this.

[00:13:25] And it's sort of, you start to get familiar with what it actually is that fear disappears very quickly. So I think public perception on nuclear is, is, is changing rapidly.

[00:14:11] How are those conversations going at the moment?

[00:14:36] Um, It was also pre a lot of development of international safety standards, security standards at the IMO and the IEA. I mean, the world has moved on enormously since the sixties and seventies, uh, in our lifetime, actually. And what we're finding is that there is very little that needs to be done in terms of new stuff that needs to come to the market.

[00:15:16] They're not fundamental or no showstoppers, but it does require a collaboration between one tribe on one side of the river, which is nuclear and another tribe on the other side of the river, which is maritime. don't really speak each other's language. So we've taken on that role of translating what maritime needs from nuclear and what nuclear needs from maritime and then forming, you know, this new NGO, the Nuclear Engine Maritime Organization, NEMO, which, you know, is applying for NGO status at both IAA and IMO and really helping regulators through that difficult work of trying to understand what it actually, what it actually means to take maritime safety rules and nuclear safety rules and putting them together.

[00:16:15] And we expect to see very substantial progress being made by the international community to bring those standards up to date in the coming few years, so that new nuclear for maritime can be commercialized already in the, in the early 2030s. Um, The director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, that many people have seen on television and in the newspapers, you know, called publicly for a roadmap to be created so that the IMO and the IAEA could get on and actually get this done because it's such an important part of net zero, not just for nations, but for global trade as well.

[00:17:01] Helen Barden: Yeah, I mean it's, it's obviously extremely necessary work and from an insurer's perspective one of the kind of regulatory areas that we focus in on to some extent is liability frameworks when it comes to various fuels. So in terms of nuclear, like you say, it's not necessarily that it's starting from scratch.

[00:18:06] Mikal Boe: Anything in the international community takes time because it's, it's all based in consensus. What we do see though is that we see member states now, you know, key member states, not just, not just any old pockets around these two IGOs, but key member states, you know, tier one member states standing up and going, right, actually, this needs to be done.

[00:18:43] I mean, what you said about liability is very important because many things that are important when you think about nuclear in maritime, but liability insurance is the absolute number one, because without it, you can't. Entry into an issue or environmental report is the key thing. I tried to say this earlier on unpack that a little bit with these conventional nuclear technologies, the ones that those standards were written for back in the sixties and seventies.

[00:19:28] Responsibility for emergency planning in the area, insurers aren't going to do it. So the reason we don't have nuclear ships today isn't because nuclear doesn't work. It's not because it's too expensive or it isn't safe. It's simply because you can't commercially insure it. So the conditions for commercial insurance are.

[00:20:03] It was the 25th of May, 1962, just about to be signed by, over 50 member states. And then the Bay of Pigs happened. And there was a massive standoff around nuclear, you know, and it proliferated through politics. And I said, we're not going into this. And lots of things happened. Lots of things happened in the background.

[00:20:50] Because if the conditions for commercial insurability is there, you know, that, that convention can be brought back to the table and ratified once that work is done. But we kind of need the IAEA and the IMO to make sure that standards are set so we can have safe safety standards and security standards that are uniformly agreed in the international community for that then to sit on top is current.

[00:21:13] Helen Barden: It'll be very interesting to see the road map and see the elements that are considered to be necessary in order to get nuclear to commercial shipping. It's been a really interesting conversation. I suppose if we just end by assuming that all of these hurdles are achieved and we get to a point where we have nuclear powered ships on the water, how do you envisage that a nuclear powered ship will look in terms of the operational side.

[00:22:19] a nuclear reactor or a nuclear system, you have to be a licensed operator. So the chance is that at least in the first few generations, most ship owners or shipping companies that would operate vessels will not want to become licensed nuclear operators. Not straight away. It's got a high barrier to entry there.

[00:23:00] It changes the way we think about financing. It changes Changes the way we think about flags and classification insurance as well. So you sort of, at least in the first generation, you, you, you're coming back to more of this industrial carriage concept where instead of having a ship that's there as a, as a sort of tradable asset, if you like, it's more one that is inserted into the value chain between.

[00:23:38] medium into that value chain that is able to do a lot more than what current vessels are able to do. One of them, for example, could be powering the loading and discharging gear in ports, right? So that the ship is responsible for the clean energy powers, the, the port operations that it's in. You have no need for slow steaming because you'd Really don't need to save energy.

[00:24:33] So you. Get a more, I hate to say it, but more sophisticated vessel in terms of its, its ability to manage a local area, closed area network and cyber and all that kind of thing. We see, we see it as something that could potentially be quite disruptive and something that would bring in a new generation of investors into this market.

[00:25:14] Helen Barden: I suppose it requires a rethink in terms of investment and operational model. It might be that it's kind of set up for utilizing, say, the Green Corridor kind of concept initially in terms of understanding how it'll work. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's been fascinating to talk to you today, Mikal, um, and thanks for guiding us through what a journey with nuclear in the commercial maritime space might look like.

[00:25:45] Helen Barden: That's it for this penultimate episode of the Alongside miniseries. Remember to listen to the other episodes in this miniseries, where we look at the challenges and opportunities for shipping in the energy transition, as well as looking at sustainability through a wider lens. In the final episode I'll be speaking to Peter Jamieson of Boston Consulting Group where we will go beyond just decarbonisation and look at sustainability more broadly.