For the first time in 50 years, California could see a new nuclear power project, following a landmark agreement between the federal government and the Port of Long Beach — and with the help of a new startup.
The deal between the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration — also known as MARAD — and the Port of Long Beach, which was signed last month, will permit a relatively new startup to develop small modular nuclear reactors at the port, which for years has worked to have fully zero-emission operations.
The small modular reactors, also known as SMRs, will be developed by Bluecore Energy, which launched eight months ago, at Berth 48. If all goes well, the SMRs will eventually be used to generate electricity that will power some of the port’s operations and vessels.
Port and federal officials have hailed the decision as a major step toward supporting the burgeoning technology’s development. SMRs, experts say, could greatly help the ongoing energy crisis. It could also potentially help the port reach its zero-emissions goal.
“We’re building the ‘port of the future’ in Long Beach, where we’ve led in global trade by moving $300 billion in cargo annually to support 2.7 million American jobs,” port CEO Noel Hacegaba said during a recent ceremony announcing the new initiative, “and we will continue our tradition of leadership as we partner to advance nuclear energy in maritime and beyond.”
But SMRs are a relatively new technology. Worldwide, just two small modular nuclear reactors currently operate: one in Russia and another in China. Multiple SMRs are currently in development in the United States, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – but none has been built yet.
And creating viable SMR technology won’t be simple.
For one, despite SMRs being part of the Trump administration’s overall push to further invest in nuclear technology, the cost of building and operating what are essentially tiny nuclear reactors will be steep, at least initially. For another, the regulatory framework, both nationally and in California, is developing alongside the nascent technology.
Then there are the challenges bespoke to the Port of Long Beach, namely, that Bluecore’s SMR would be built and would operate on a barge in the water – potentially making it susceptible to capsizing and other weather-related issues. Some residents have also questioned how the port’s deals with MARAD and Bluecore came together, seemingly with little public input. That’s made those residents squeamish about living in such close proximity to where continuous nuclear reactions could one day occur.
Yet, for the port and the technology’s other supporters, SMRs could be a boon for clean energy – and a much-needed one at that.
“We cannot assume,” Hacegaba said, “the energy landscape of today will sustain the port in 2050.”
Nuclear renaissance
As the name suggests, small modular reactors are similar to traditional nuclear power plants — except not as large.
That means they generate less power, but they can also be moved wherever energy is needed most, said Diana Gragg, who has a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering, and is the managing director of the Explore Energy Program at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy.
SMRs have many potential benefits, including producing zero carbon emissions, being a 24/7 source of energy and having lower production costs.
The technology, though, still faces a challenging road, with a complex regulatory landscape and high upfront construction costs among the primary obstacles.
“Usually, I like to say small is relative, because even 50 to 300 megawatts is still significant — I mean, that’s a natural gas power plant,” Gragg, who is also a core lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, said in a July 31 interview. “It’s a significant-sized power plant.”
The SMRs that Bluecore Energy is working to develop in Long Beach, for example, would be able to power an entire port terminal, or 15,000 homes, according to company founder Kofi Asante.
“Everybody needs more energy and we want it to be clean,” Asante said, noting that nuclear energy is a “very good solution.”
One of the major benefits of SMRs, according to supporters, is that because the units are smaller and can essentially be put together on a factory assembly line like cars, they will eventually be more cost effective to build and operate.
“One of the biggest challenges that the commercial nuclear industry has faced in the United States, in particular, is cost,” Gragg said, noting that the last two nuclear power plants developed in the U.S. had both major cost and time overruns. “I think the modular is just to try to get economies of scale and drive down costs by making it repeatable, rather than building a custom large-scale reactor.”
But that economy of scale, Gragg said, has not yet been reached for SMRs — at least not in the U.S. And with the cost of materials and skilled laborers rising across the world, some companies working on achieving commercial success with their SMRs have already stumbled.
That’s at least partly why not everyone is convinced that SMRs are a sure thing.
Long Beach resident Jeff Miller, for example, called the effort getting underway at the port concerning.
“SMR technology is nowhere near mature,” Miller, who formerly worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, wrote in an email. “Others are in only the design, permitting, construction or testing phases. Some have already been canceled, delayed or gone bankrupt.
“The promises of faster, cheaper and safer construction compared to traditional large reactors have not been proven,” he added, “and some claims have clearly been disproven.”
He’s not wrong.
Take NuScale Energy. It is currently the only company in the country with approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on its SMR design. In 2014, NuScale entered a contract with the federal government, in partnership with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, to construct several SMRs at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory. They were supposed to be operational by 2029.
Dubbed the Carbon Free Power Project, the proposed plant would have housed several SMRs and provided power to public utilities in states serviced by UAMPS, including Utah, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming. NuScale initially proposed building the plant with 12 SMRs, but later downsized to six.
In 2020, the Energy Department approved a more than $1 billion cost-sharing award to help pay for the SMR plant. But three years later, NuScale and UAMPS announced they had jointly decided to terminate the project.
The reason, NuScale said in 2023, was because the company could not guarantee enough buyers for the power the SMRs would have generated. Ultimately, the plant faced higher-than-expected construction expenses, which led NuScale to increase the projections for its energy costs by 53% over a two-year period, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The project’s construction costs jumped from $5.3 billion in 2021 to $9.3 billion in 2023, the institute said.
“The first challenge is just that it’s not at scale,” Gragg said. “So you don’t get the cost declines until you get to scale, and we’re really far from scale.”
But the federal government, it appears, has been trying to help out.
In recent years, in fact, Washington has massively ramped up its support of SMR technology — especially financially. President Donald Trump, for example, issued four executive orders in May 2025 aimed at revitalizing the U.S. nuclear industry, specifically citing his desire to use SMRs and other nuclear technology to create a stronger, more reliable source of energy to power artificial intelligence data centers, and other resources at military and national installations.
“For too long, America’s nuclear energy industry has been stymied by red tape and outdated government policies, but thanks to President Trump, the American nuclear renaissance is finally here,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in May. “With the emergence of AI and President Trump’s pro-American manufacturing policies at work, American civil nuclear energy is being unleashed at the perfect time.”
Since then, the Energy Department has made hundreds of millions of dollars available to multiple companies working to develop SMRs.
In May alone, eight companies received a combined $94 million for various nuclear projects, many of which are focused on accelerating SMR development. NuScale also recently won Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for an updated design for its SMRs — making it the second NRC-approved small modular reactor design in the nation.
The president’s executive orders, meanwhile, also streamlined the regulatory process and established new programs aimed at supporting nuclear development across the country, and set the path forward for bringing previously shuttered nuclear projects back online, among other efforts, in hopes of significantly expanding America’s nuclear capacity.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is also working to amend certain licensing rules to give developers and operators of advanced nuclear reactors – including SMRs – “more flexibility in how they build and run their plants while continuing to ensure safety,” the NRC said in a statement.
Same technology, different scale
The Port of Long Beach’s SMR project, for its part, appears to fit right into the Trump administration’s “nuclear renaissance” agenda.
But it is also unique. Unlike other projects that are in the works, Bluecore Energy is designing SMRs specifically to operate on barges in the ocean.
The agreement between the federal government and the port, officials said, stems from the Maritime Administration’s May 7 request for information issued in the Federal Register seeking industry input on the development of U.S.-built, scalable and commercially viable SMRs for the nation’s marine transportation system.
The port, in a news release, called the deal historic. Long Beach is, in fact, the first U.S. seaport to formalize a partnership with the Maritime Administration to establish nuclear-powered vessels for commercial service. It was signed by both parties during a late July event in the nation’s capital.
Hacegaba, during that event, touted the agreement as a crucial step toward building out additional sources of reliable energy as the global demand for it continues to rise.
Experts project that global energy use will grow by about 50% by 2050 compared to 2020.
The port, Hacegaba said, will face a similar issue in the coming years as it pursues its simultaneous goals of doubling container volume by 2050 — while achieving decarbonization by using sources of clean energy.
That’s where the SMRs come in.
Under the memorandum of cooperation, the port and the Maritime Administration will work with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “help define the operational protocols, safety standards and inspection processes needed to support the safe arrival and servicing of SMR-powered vessels at U.S. ports, as well as to develop and share other best practices,” said the announcement about the agreement.
The Long Beach port also recently signed a new lease agreement with Bluecore Energy Inc., a startup company working to engineer small modular reactors. That agreement allows the company to assemble, test and store maritime power modules at the port, where it has its headquarters.
Bluecore Energy is currently developing light water-cooled SMRs on floating barges. The goal is to provide clean power to ports and nearby infrastructure.
Light water-cooled reactors are the most common variety of SMRs under development, said Gragg, the expert from Stanford. But there are three other major types, including high-temperature gas, molten salt and sodium-cooled reactors, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Light water-cooled reactors, Gragg said, are essentially just smaller versions of large-scale nuclear power plants. These SMRs generate heat, which boils water, makes steam, and turns a turbine and generator to produce electricity, according to Stanford University.
“It’s very much the same, just a smaller scale,” Gragg said. “We have a lot of experience running that kind of system, and we know how to do that.”
Asante agreed.
“We don’t have to come up with new science here,” he said. “It’s like a supply chain production and distribution exercise.
“And for that reason,” he added, “we feel good (that) in the next few years, we’ll be able to provide electricity at scale.”
With nuclear reactors, however, the heat could be a problem – unless there’s a way to slow the reaction process.
Light water-cooled SMRs use the hydrogen in water as a moderator, which controls the chain reaction and prevents nuclear meltdown, Gragg said.
“When you have the chain reaction going, basically, you’re splitting apart big atoms, uranium atoms. They’re sending off neutrons to hit the next uranium atom to split apart. Those neutrons are going pretty fast, and if you want to really have a controlled chain reaction, you slow them down a little bit with a moderator,” Gragg said. “In the United States, all of our reactors use water as a moderator. It’s a relatively safe moderator because it also can provide safety features like cooling, and it doesn’t burn.”
That’s why, though there have been nuclear accidents in the U.S., including the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, there hasn’t been a disaster in America on par with what happened at Chernobyl in 1989.
Chernobyl used graphite as a moderator instead of water.
“Graphite can burn, and that’s what happened. It exploded. It burned. So it was not just the chain reaction that got out of control and exploded,” Gragg said. “It was also the fire and the destruction of the structure, so there wasn’t an ability to contain that radioactive waste.”
There is still a possibility of nuclear accidents in America, Gragg said. But they are relatively unlikely, especially with the newer safety technology considered for SMRs.
NuScale’s SMRs, for example, have been engineered with “a fully passive safety system design that ensures reactors will safely shut down and self-cool indefinitely,” the company’s website says, alongside seven layers of protective structural safety barriers. That company’s SMRs are also designed to be installed underground to protect against aircraft impacts and earthquakes.
“The NuScale design,” the company said, “specifically addresses and eliminates safety issues found in past nuclear energy incidents.”
But, Gragg said, since nuclear power requires setting off a chain reaction that will continue until stopped, the industry requires redundant safety and security measures, which can add extra costs to running nuclear power plants and SMRs.
“Obviously, we’ve been running our nuclear reactors in the United States for a long time without major issues, so it can be done,” Gragg said. “But it takes not only triple redundancy and the technologies and the safety features, but also a well-trained workforce.”
Bluecore’s light water-cooled SMR, meanwhile, is designed to be about five feet in diameter and to be movable. It can be turned off both remotely and on the barge itself, Asante said in an Aug. 4 interview.
The SMR, the Bluecore founder added, has been subjected to weather and safety tests — and Bluecore will follow regulatory criteria set out by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The company’s SMR will have three protective barriers to contain the uranium core, two shut-down systems and a passive power cut-off feature.
The movable barge SMR, Asante said, would create energy that could be used in ships but, perhaps, primarily to power the port or terminals.
“The one that’s in the works is a floating nuclear power system,” he said, “so it’s on a barge, and that is distributed to the right locations so you can provide electricity to ports, to data centers, to really anything that’s close to the water, even to the grid itself.”
For now, Asante added, Bluecore is focusing on developing its SMR to generate electricity to power port operations and vessels — but is looking forward to potentially different applications in the future.
“That same reactor, also, is in the future going to (support) propulsion within cargo ships. It’s the same reactor, the light water reactor we’re designing and building,” Asante said. “The Navy already uses it for submarines and ships, so there’s already a 70-year safe precedent for doing this.”
Nuclear submarines have existed since the 1950s, and are powered by a form of SMR technology, according to Stanford University. Instead of generating electricity, though, those reactors are designed for propulsion.
But in Bluecore’s case, the SMR would still generate electricity.
“It’s still the same reactor creating electricity. It’s just, where does (the electricity) get distributed? Sometimes to the grid, sometimes to the terminal, cranes, charging stations,” Asante said. “If it’s in the ship, then that would be distributed to the propulsion mechanisms that allow it to move forward.”
Still, even with SMRs, there’s also the issue of radioactive waste, which is created in the process of generating nuclear power. The waste stays radioactive for thousands of years.
At traditional, large-scale nuclear plants, radioactive waste has historically been kept on site, Gragg said.
“All of the radioactive waste, right now, is stored on site at the nuclear power plants where it was generated, and that’s whether (or not) the nuclear power plant was decommissioned. Their nuclear waste is still there,” Gragg said. “The challenges that we’ve seen are not only with finding a place to store it, but also with transporting it.”
Transporting radioactive waste, Gragg said, causes some concern that it could leak or spill, and harm people or the environment. Some countries, she added, do radioactive waste reprocessing — essentially recycling the waste and reusing it in nuclear plants.
But because of concerns about nuclear proliferation and dirty bombs, Gragg said, reprocessing isn’t permitted in America.
“Nobody’s really figured this out for long-term storage,” Gragg said. “There’s a lot of work and research going on.”
But for Bluecore’s SMRs, Asante said, radioactive waste will be a lesser concern — especially compared to traditional large-scale power plants.
SMRs only need to be refueled once every couple of years, Asante said, and Bluecore’s reactors will produce a small amount of radioactive waste because of the level and frequency of refueling.
“There’s a system and compliance (that we are) going to be following that’s federally mandated to make sure that we safely dispose of that waste, and that waste is also very infrequent,” Asante said. “It’s only once every couple of years, and it’s very tiny. It’s such a small amount because it’s a small modular reactor, not a large industrial plant.”
New regulatory frontier
It will likely be quite some time until Bluecore’s SMRs get up and running, however, because the company has only just begun the process of getting approval for their technology from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The NRC has not yet received any applications for maritime nuclear reactor deployment at the Port of Long Beach, NRC spokesperson Prema Chandrathil said on Aug. 7.
Bluecore, though, is scheduled to meet with the NRC on Monday, Aug. 17, to “introduce their company, present their regulatory engagement plan and provide a conceptual overview of their design,” according to commission documents.
The NRC is also working on developing a white paper to specifically address how the commission’s existing regulations and licensing frameworks can be applied to maritime uses of nuclear power, including floating nuclear power plants similar to Bluecore’s SMR.
The commission held a question-and-answer session on May 14 as an initial step in developing the white paper, Chandrathil said.
Some questions presented by potential applicants during that Q&A session, according to a May 27 NRC report, included how the agency will be expected to address unique maritime hazards such as sinking, capsizing and other environmental extremes, and how to handle export controls for reactors deployed internationally, among others
The white paper, Chandrathil said, will aim to address those questions.
“The purpose of this white paper,” Chandrathil said, “(is to) provide prospective applicants with an overview of unique regulatory considerations in maritime nuclear deployments and present current perspectives on flexible, performance-based regulatory approaches.”
The NRC also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Coast Guard, which lays out each agency’s responsibilities regarding regulation, licensing and other operational procedures related to civilian maritime nuclear projects.
It’s unclear, though, how existing statewide regulations may impact Bluecore’s plans down the line. California, in fact, has had a moratorium on new nuclear project developments for the past 50 years.
The moratorium was approved in 1976, and specifically banned the construction and licensing of new nuclear fission reactors until the federal government comes up with a long-term solution to handle radioactive waste disposal, according to the California Energy Commission.
In 2023, Assemblymember David Mathis introduced a bill that sought to carve out an exception within the state’s moratorium to develop SMRs. The bill would have also required the California Public Utilities Commission to adopt a plan to procure more electricity generated from nuclear facilities — but the bill failed in committee.
The following year, Mathis introduced another bill, which asked the CPUC to conduct a feasibility study about potentially adopting SMR technology in California. That bill also failed.
The NRC, meanwhile, was unable to provide additional information about how – or even if – California’s nuclear moratorium could impact Bluecore’s SMR project at the Port of Long Beach.
Representatives from the California Energy Commission declined to comment on the nuclear moratorium and how it could impact Bluecore’s SMR project. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
But Bluecore’s founder seemed sanguine about the regulatory murkiness between the state and federal governments.
“We’re pioneers and kind of setting these historic precedents,” Asante said. “For example, we’re the first nuclear company ever to have a headquarters at the port, and there wasn’t really a precedent for doing that.”
Bluecore, Asante added, worked extensively with the port and federal agencies to get to this point. And now, the company is shifting its focus to working at the state level.
“Our next chapter now is also spending a lot (of time) with the state of California, who cares very deeply about zero-emission energy, and is very proud to be (a) pioneer in zero emission energy,” Asante said. “We’re working through the details.
“I’d say with the state in particular,” he added, “we want to make sure we engage very deeply and we care about bringing them on the process along, but it is slightly different than maybe like a land-based solution in its traditional route.”
Bluecore, Asante said, is also working on community outreach. The company has been reaching out to the community and has had a number of conversations about the plan with members of the public, he said.
But Miller, the Long Beach resident, wasn’t aware of such public outreach.
While Miller — who, besides working for JPL, was also in the IT department at Cal State Long Beach before retiring — expressed concerns about plans to do testing at the port, he also questioned why more information hadn’t been provided first to the public before launching such a proposal.
“I’m reading about this as being a ‘done deal,’” he said in a telephone interview. “What questions were asked and answered?”
There seem to be, he added, some “big red flags.”
Asante, though, said the plan going forward is to hold more public events at the facility.
“We really want to make sure we have one-on-ones with the community,” Asante said, noting there’s a broad spectrum of opinions regarding nuclear energy. “I’m here for the entire spectrum (of opinion). The community does not have a unilateral voice, but we’re all aware something needs to be done to create zero-emission energy.”
When asked about the timeline for bringing Bluecore’s SMRs online, Asante said the company’s priority “first safety, and then speed after that.”