The numbers come first. Long Beach and Los Angeles together form the largest container port complex in the Western Hemisphere, and this summer, according to Fortune, the Port of Long Beach signed an agreement tied to the Trump administration to develop next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs) that could power ports, data centers and vessels with emission-free energy.
The twist: California banned the construction of new nuclear plants 50 years ago. The workaround is offshore. Long Beach-based startup Bluecore Energy is now working with the port to build SMRs on floating barges, though the project remains years from reality.
Bluecore was founded only in January and raised $10 million in a pre-seed round. It became the first nuclear company to partner with the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration (MARAD) on offshore reactors. Founder and CEO Kofi Asante, 31, a Ghanaian-American from Austin, Texas, built his logistics background at Uber Freight, drone company Elroy Air and electric-barge startup Arc.
'The philosophy was really process of elimination: if you need that much energy, then you arrive at a nuclear reactor,' Asante told Fortune. 'And if you need real estate, two-thirds of the world is water, so you can use barges for extra real estate.' He noted the barges can connect via subsea cable, 'so we don't have to be near neighborhoods, and we don't have to be co-located at the port.'
Each 10-megawatt reactor on a barge can power the equivalent of about 10,000 homes, can be moved by tugboat, and can be stacked for added capacity, according to Asante.
The federal push extends beyond California. This week, MARAD announced a partnership with London-based Core Power to build regulatory frameworks and technology for a future fleet of nuclear-powered merchant cargo vessels. A day later, the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency launched the ATLAS initiative to advance SMR and micro-reactor technology for shipping, which the IAEA said is 'underpinned by the highest levels of nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation.' Denmark-based Saltfoss Energy is pursuing similar barge reactors in Europe.
Max Hopkins, a nuclear power analyst at CITIC CLSA, said offshore barges are well suited to fast deployment. 'To put something into place fast, with production means, and then you can just float it somewhere—it seems like offshore barges are going to be almost ideal,' he told Fortune, adding the technology is still years from commercial deployment and needs regulatory frameworks and supply chains built out.
The appeal for shipping is speed and endurance: nuclear-powered vessels need refueling only every two or three years instead of every voyage. Maritime vessels account for roughly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to the total emissions of all of Africa, per Hopkins.
Here is the principle at stake: a state government spent five decades blocking new nuclear generation onshore, and it took federal maritime jurisdiction and a 31-year-old founder's pre-seed capital to find the loophole. The barges answer to Washington and the IAEA, not Sacramento — a reminder that when local regulation strangles supply, capital simply floats around it.
If Long Beach succeeds, the lesson for every coastal city sitting on an energy-hungry data-center boom is straightforward: the sea, unlike the state legislature, does not require a permit to generate power.
