One of the busiest ports in the U.S. is looking to go nuclear.
The Port of Long Beach this week signed an agreement with federal regulators to explore the construction of a small nuclear reactor to power the energy-hungry port. It is among the most significant steps forward so far in the Trump administration's push to bring nuclear power to the shipping industry.
The plan is still in the early stages and may not come to fruition, but if it does, it could make the port the first in the world to run on nuclear power. The next frontier could be building nuclear-powered ships in American shipyards, another administration goal as it looks for ways to revive the dying domestic shipbuilding sector.
The new nuclear push in shipping is part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to revitalize the U.S. nuclear industry. The president signed a raft of executive orders last year with an aim of ushering in a nuclear-energy "renaissance." Dozens of companies are pursuing new designs for commercial small modular reactors, or SMRs, the kind of reactor that would be used at the port. The U.S. doesn't yet have any operating, but a handful of projects have broken ground.
The port, along with the adjacent Port of Los Angeles, is the biggest U.S. import hub for products from Asia. Long Beach has a total of 22 ship terminals and officials estimate that the electricity bill for each terminal averages $420,000 a month. The port has been looking for cleaner and cheaper electricity sources for decades, a search that has taken on more urgency as it begins a push to electrify cargo-handling equipment and other operations that currently burn fossil fuels.
The shipping industry as a whole is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Ships emit about 3% of global carbon dioxide, according to the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations' maritime regulator, which has imposed rules that will require shipowners to pay governments for their emissions starting in 2028.
Momentum for powering commercial ships with nuclear power has been building for years. In June, the American Bureau of Shipping, the world's biggest ship registrar regulating safe navigation, approved a nuclear-powered ship design from a maritime consortium run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Ocean Engineering, Greek-owned shipping company Capital Group and Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries.
"Nuclear propulsion holds transformative potential for shipping and paves the way for cleaner, more resilient global trade," said Evangelos Marinakis, chairman and founder of Capital Group, which gave MIT the blueprints of one of its ships that was digitally retrofitted with a nuclear engine.
The shipping industry expects the first such vessels to hit the water in about 10 years. Construction of such ships may cost four times that of conventional ones, though that would be more than offset by the savings on fuel costs over the life of the ship.
The agreement the Port of Long Beach signed this week is a memorandum of understanding with the Transportation Department's Maritime Administration. The chief executive of the port, Noel Hacegaba, said it would work with the Maritime Administration, the Coast Guard and other federal agencies to develop safety and operational standards for the use of nuclear power in maritime settings, including on commercial vessels. The port is working with Long Beach-based Bluecore Energy, which is now building and testing components for the project.
"This could be a turning point for the maritime domain and we are going to move to move as quickly as possible," Hacegaba said, though he said there is no time frame for the port's nuclear electrification or when the first nuclear vessels will come in to dock.
Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 23, 2026 15:44 ET (19:44 GMT)
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