Core Power: Sanjana Shashikumar, a senior regulatory analyst at Core Power, discussed the importance of nuclear security frameworks at sea and laid the groundwork for the broader maritime nuclear conversation. Core is a private company that is working to build the Liberty Program—which Shashikumar called “the world’s first maritime civil nuclear program.”
Shashikumar then covered Core’s ambitions for both floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) and nuclear-propelled vessels. She defined FNPPs as “plants permanently mounted onto non–self-propelled barges” that allow energy to move to both coastal infrastructure and offshore facilities. Core plans its FNPP fleet to be supported by a “central facility that’s responsible for manufacturing, distribution, servicing, refurbishing, refueling, and decommissioning of the reactor and barge.”
ORNL: Marc Fialkoff, a nuclear security researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, evaluated the potential for FNPPs to become targets of piracy. The definition of piracy, per United Nations law, is a vessel-to-vessel engagement that is conducted in international waters by individuals with private goals (distinguishing acts of piracy from terrorism), he said.
Because FNPPs that are no longer in transit are broadly considered to be facilities rather than vessels, the international legal framework around adjudicating piracy is generally not applicable. As such, other nuclear-specific frameworks (such as the IAEA’s Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material) must be relied on for maintaining nuclear safety and security.
ABS: Mayir Mamtimin, a nuclear subject matter expert at the American Bureau of Shipping, spoke on ABS’s developing role in supporting the maritime nuclear sector. ABS is an independent maritime classification society that recently published Requirements for Nuclear Power Systems for Maritime and Offshore Applications.
Mamtimin described ABS’s approach to developing maritime requirements in the nuclear sector as “technology agnostic.” The organization follows a philosophy based on setting goal-based standards focused on the desired outcomes themselves as opposed to prescriptively laying out the processes and methods by which those outcomes are achieved. Key areas of consideration that ABS emphasizes are physical, structural, material, operational, and radiological safety across all relevant systems, including machinery, electrical, hull design, and monitoring.
Lloyd’s Register: Jez Sims, the nuclear technical authority at Lloyd’s Register, was the final speaker. Like ABS, Lloyd’s Register is an independent classification society tackling the unique safety challenges at the crossroads of nuclear and maritime technology. To do that, it has developed a nuclear integration framework which is guided by a principle of not “treating security as a siloed function,” instead acknowledging that “security considerations, threat assessments, and protection systems are integral to the verification process at every concept and project stage.”
In other words, Sims explained, Lloyd’s Register’s seven-stage integration framework (which aligns itself with existing IAEA guidance) “isn’t about adding security features on at the end, it’s about making informed design and project choices from day one to mitigate threats proactively.”
