California · Russia · Fortune Technology
Offshore nuclear barges could power ports and data centers—starting with California, where nuclear is banned
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As the U.S. paves the way for a nuclear renaissance to power the AI data center boom, the next frontier is building small nuclear reactors offshore to power coastal facilities and merchant ships.
Key facts
- Founder and CEO Kofi Asante, 31, is a Ghanaian-American from Austin, Texas, who quickly became a Silicon Valley veteran before relocating to Southern California
- A day later, the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched the Atomic Technologies Licensed for Applications at Sea (ATLAS) initiative
- In 2020, Russia put the world’s first floating nuclear power station on a barge into service, powering the remote Arctic town of Pevek—population 4,000—and its harbor
- Strangely, the momentum could begin in California, a state that banned building new nuclear plants 50 years ago
Summary
In 2020, Russia put the world’s first floating nuclear power station on a barge into service, powering the remote Arctic town of Pevek—population 4,000—and its harbor. Long Beach and Los Angeles are a different scale entirely. “To put something into place fast, with production means, and then you can float it somewhere—it seems like offshore barges are going to be almost ideal,” Hopkins told Fortune. Still, Hopkins emphasized the technology is years from commercial deployment. The future of powering military warfare and maritime merchant shipping could be nuclear, Hopkins said.