Almost a hundred years ago, the United States was the first country to use a ship to project electrical power ashore. That ersatz engineering effort helped a U.S. coastal community survive a crushing drought, and fueled development of an entirely new maritime platform. Today, as small modular nuclear reactors move from prototypes to reality, America stands, once again, on the threshold of a similar maritime power revolution, leveraging mobile sea “power” to help aid communities ashore.
Many out there look to the U.S. Navy to move things along. But the Navy, while it leads the world in employing small nuclear reactors, makes an imperfect partner for today’s innovative ship-to-shore power platforms. The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency—a department familiar with managing both nuclear risk and disaster recovery—is a far better choice to refresh America’s long-forgotten legacy of projecting power—electrical power—from the sea to shore.
It will take funding and aggressive White House leadership to implement, but a FEMA fleet of nuclear-powered power generation vessels, built to bolster damaged or hurting electrical grids, can solve several pressing national issues.
First, it can push civil development of nuclear power into the maritime. As a civilian, government-managed enterprise, a FEMA-managed disaster-response power-projection fleet can quickly bring new, clean, no-emission modular nuclear power plant designs to point where they are commercially viable.
Second, by moving stewardship of this modern technology from the military sector to the civilian world, a FEMA disaster-response fleet gives the Department of Defense a much-needed civilian partner to help socialize the new technologies at sea. A civilian buffer between the Navy’s insular and secretive nuclear navy reduces risk of information loss while enabling wider and deeper public engagement.
A FEMA power-generation fleet helps the military in other ways too. With a civilian assistance fleet, the military can avoid entanglement in unwanted portions the National disaster-response mission set. And yet, the military also gains a partner in helping to stabilize America’s strategically important territories and, potentially, some friendly island democracies. With DHS
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America needs this asset. Today, power is a more vital community lifeline than ever. In areas of instability, where disasters and conflict are now supercharged by powerful storms and abrupt climactic shifts, everything from basic economic development to disaster recovery is impossible without reliable and ready access to power.
With several designs for new nuclear-powered electrical generation ships already on offer, a disaster-response fleet of reactor-equipped power generation vessels and barges makes sense. A disaster response fleet is a good way to justify operational evaluation of the various technical options out there.
On a strategic level, the use case is simple. America’s island holdings and remote border states are more strategically important than ever. Beset by tropical storms, high energy prices and almost no political power in Washington, these isolated forward territories have struggled to maintain solid electrical generation infrastructure. Mobile power-generation platforms can do a lot to help when island power grids start coming apart.
Put bluntly, power projection ashore is a critical unmet need in America’s geopolitical toolbox. America still hasn’t learned a lesson from twenty years ago. In 2003, America’s inability to quickly reconstitute the grid in Iraq’s urban areas was directly attributable to the emergence of civil unrest and resistance. Failure to reconstitute power—be it in hurricane-struck New Orleans, a beleaguered missile-hit Kyiv, or in the streets of Apra, Guam, power generation is the coin of credibility for modern societies and governments.
As aid and assistance, electrical power is one of the most high-yield investments any country can make.
America Has A Legacy Of Projecting Power Ashore After Emergencies:
The Administration may struggle to justify the investment this new, low-emission technology. Efforts to grapple with extreme weather and rapid climate shifts is controversial fare for Congress, but America’s century-long record of using power ships and barges to address climate challenges is undeniable. The only problem is that nobody in Washington knows industrial history. America’s long and proud record of employing safe, maritime power generation is largely forgotten, and the industry itself is ignored.
America has a strong record of success in afloat power generation. In 1929, after a severe drought cut hydroelectric generation sources in the Pacific Northwest, one of America’s first aircraft carriers, the USS Lexington (CV-2), powered the city of Tacoma for a month. For the Tacoma area, that electricity prevented economic disaster. It helped America’s national security too, by keeping the lights on at what today is now Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
The world’s first power generation barge, the converted merchant ship SS Jacona, was converted in 1930, after a winter storm destroyed major transmission lines in the northeast. After supporting power generation needs in northern New England, it supplied power to Hawaii, South Korea and Okinawa before being sold in 1971.
The world’s first floating nuclear power plant, the MH-1A Sturgis (formerly the Liberty-class cargo ship SS Charles H. Cugle), generated power in Panama from 1968 to 1976, helping the Canal Zone weather a drought that limited access to hydroelectric power. With the Suez Canal closed, and the Vietnam conflict raging, the Panama Canal was breaking traffic records and needed the extra electricity to keep the locks operating.
The Navy’s legacy fleet of about 14 floating power barges—a grab bag of designs ranging from purpose-built barges to converted tankers, converted cargo ships, or even dry dock sections hosting an array of different types of generators—have faded from memory. Only a few people realize U.S. power barges were prototype platforms testing all kinds of operational scenarios.
America’s power barges and power ships have been used to power everything from tropical islands to Distant Early Warning radars out at Thule, Greenland, near the Arctic Circle. In World War II, alone, seven destroyer escorts were converted to serve as floating power-ships/power barges. Up until the seventies and eighties, America used World War II-era power barges and power ships to power war-hit cities, keep critical ports open, radar sites operational and even to dredge strategic anchorages and fleet concentration areas.
With a high-profile fleet of FEMA power-generation ships, the U.S. can recover this lost chapter of America’s industrial legacy. By gaining operational time and experience with modular reactor designs, the U.S. government can use a wide-ranging FEMA fleet to refine modern operational and regulatory expectations.
A perfect application for America’s romantic pragmatism, this new disaster response fleet can set the groundwork for wider maritime exploitation of clean, safe modular nuclear reactors.
The Business Case For An American Nuclear “Power Projection” Fleet:
A true “power projection” fleet makes sense, particularly for America’s strategically-important forward territories.
In Puerto Rico alone, FEMA, after a series of storms and earthquakes, has obligated more than $9.4 billion to keep the island’s battered electrical system operational. At that level of investment, America could have fielded several powerships—platforms that would be available today for activities beyond just supporting Puerto Rico.
Mobile “power-projection” support at sea is needed. Today, the strategic islands of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are America’s front-line communities. But they are in typhoon country too. It’s simply inappropriate and strategically silly to let these power grids struggle after a disaster or wallow in management challenges. The island grids break often. In 2015, Typhoon Soudelor compromised Saipan’s 104-megawatt power grid. In 2018, two super typhoons ripped through Saipan, Tinian and Rota, disrupting power on those islands for months.
Right now, Guam is still trying to recover from a 2015 explosion and fire at their main Cabras power plant. It is simply unacceptable that, today, Guam faces regular rotating blackouts. But the list of power generation problems facing Guam is enormous. Critical base-load combustion turbines require a hot exchange and repair in the Continental United States. The generation facility to replace the broken Cabras generation complex is behind schedule, with typhoon damage pushing that start back almost two years—to the end of 2025. Procurement protests have shaved production from other important generators by 75%. The situation is critical. Right now, Guam has 234 megawatts of generation capacity while Guam’s peak demand is in the vicinity of 220 megawatts.
Certainly, conventional floating power plants can provide the same support. But, unlike nuclear power generators, they can’t do it alone. Conventional power plants need fuel, and that means added infrastructure, a fuel supply, and potentially more ships to carry fuel oil, diesel, gas, biofuel, or some type of natural gas, or maybe, in the future, methanol, ammonia or hydrogen. For a disaster-hit site, thousands of miles from anywhere, the logistical cost adds up. Fuel surcharges—particularly for remote regions—can boost retail energy prices by 400-500 percent. In an emergency, those costs are even higher.
Floating nuclear power plants make political sense. The Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, is proposing something a lot of us have been urging for a long time—a “new maritime statecraft,” integrating the various aspects of America’s maritime power into a cohesive, unified whole. It’s time for the Administration to put its money where its mouth is.
This call to introduce a new agency into America’s wider maritime family, using it as an opportunity to both revitalize America’s waterfront as well as to help jump-start America’s nascent nuclear industry—while bolstering the islands and towns on the front lines of an increasingly contested maritime—is an easy win. And if we don’t move on it, right now, China, where researchers are busy producing engineering papers exploring the technical challenges of restarting dead electrical grids on islands, will.
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