The Maritime Administration has selected the ports of Corpus Christi and Long Beach to explore integrating small modular nuclear reactors, aiming to shore up the resilience of two of the country's most important maritime trade hubs. The move comes as Washington pushes to expand nuclear capacity even though earlier small modular reactor projects have struggled to reach completion.
Two trade hubs picked for the pilot
Corpus Christi, a major U.S. oil and fuel export terminal, and Long Beach were chosen for the small modular reactor project because of their weight in U.S. trade. Long Beach handles $300 billion worth of cargo annually, according to the port's CEO. Corpus Christi, meanwhile, exported $80 billion worth of fuel in 2024 alone, according to data from the Comptroller's office.
Maritime Administrator Stephen Carmel said the goal is to keep "our critical Gulf Coast maritime supply chains remain resilient against any contingency", from extreme weather to power grid disruptions, while training the next generation of American mariners. The Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, is running the project directly.
SMRs promise speed, but cost has been the obstacle
Small modular reactors can be installed faster than conventional nuclear plants, sited more flexibly, and built incrementally as demand grows. Yet putting the technology into practice has proved expensive: NuScale, which was set to build the first U.S. commercial SMR, canceled that project, citing a lack of interest amid rising costs.
That setback has not slowed the Trump administration's push for a bigger role for nuclear power. Earlier this year, the federal government said it was examining floating nuclear power as part of a plan to quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. The acting director of the Marine Mineral Administration, Matt Giacona, said no offshore commercial deployment is approved yet, though submerged reactor systems have been used safely in naval settings for decades.
Nuclear's broader comeback
Interest in nuclear power has revived over the past couple of years as the limits of intermittent wind and solar generation have become harder to ignore, and the International Energy Agency has backed a bigger role for nuclear in meeting the projected surge in electricity demand. The Persian Gulf crisis has added a further push toward a domestic power source, even though most of the world's uranium supply still comes from a handful of countries.
Whether small modular reactors deliver on their promise remains unproven, but sustained interest from ports, the federal government, and Big Tech's data-center demand keeps the technology in play.
Source: Oilprice.com
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