The invention of containerized cargo was the game changer in international cargo. Shipping moves 80 per cent of global trade.
However, the shipping industry has a fuel problem it cannot easily solve. Batteries cannot cross oceans. Methanol is difficult to produce sustainably at scale. Ammonia is toxic and its supply chain is dirty. Hydrogen is too bulky to store safely at sea.
As the world edges toward its 2050 net-zero target for maritime emissions, the industry is running out of good options. Small modular reactors could give ships far greater range without refueling. Floating nuclear plants could bring power and clean water to remote coastal areas. The industry is looking back at an old idea with new eyes: the nuclear reactor.
A few years ago, this could appear as Science Fiction. This is not a distant, speculative conversation anymore. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just launched ATLAS — Atomic Technologies Licensed for Applications at Sea brings together regulators, shipbuilders and maritime authorities from around the world to build the licensing and safety architecture this new industry will need.
Already, early adopters have emerged with the US Maritime Administration soliciting proposals for scalable small modular reactors (SMRs) for marine use. London-based Core Power intends to open an order book for floating nuclear power plants in 2028, with commercial nuclear-powered ships to follow in the mid-2030s. In China, the Jiangnan Shipyard is targeting a thorium-powered container vessel by 2035. A 2023 US projection estimates that several hundred nuclear-powered merchant vessels could be operating globally by 2050.
Kenya has a rare opportunity to position itself early in this emerging space not as a passive observer, but as a serious regional participant. Kenya's strategic geographical location along the East African coastline establishes it as the primary economic and logistics gateway to East and Central Africa.
By bordering the Indian Ocean, Kenya serves as the literal and symbolic bridge between global maritime routes and the African continent. This positioning allows the country to command regional trade while serving multiple landlocked neighbours, including Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
However, it is worthwhile to note that a nuclear programme is not a collection of institutions, technologies and responsibilities, but a system whose strength lies in how well they connect. That connection runs through the different milestones of a program, linking policy and implementation, technology and regulation, safety, security and safeguards, and ultimately the people and institutions that make it possible to deliver meaningful benefits to communities and States.
Kenya Shipyards Limited was established in 2020 to serve the operational needs of the Kenya Navy, but its mandate has always extended further to catalyse a genuine shipbuilding industry in Eastern Africa. The commercial logic is sound. The entire eastern coast of Africa has only a handful of shipyards, in Egypt, Djibouti and South Africa, and they are booked solid year-round. Kenya and its neighbours have long had to send vessels to Europe or Asia for major repair and construction work. KSL, headquartered at the Mtongwe Naval Base in Mombasa with a second facility in Kisumu, has already proven it can deliver including building and floating a 100-metre wagon ferry at its Kisumu yard.
That is a real industrial base, with steel fabrication capability, a trained workforce, and government backing through 100 per cent Treasury ownership. What it does not yet have is a stake in the technology that may define the next generation of commercial shipping.
This is where nuclear regulatory institutional experience becomes directly relevant, and not in the abstract. Through the years, this regulatory capacity has been built in Kenya through the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority.
However, this being a new frontier mentorship programmes such as the IAEA Regulatory Cooperation Forum will come in handy. Kenya is also, at present, negotiating a Section 123 peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States the same kind of government-to-government framework that would underpin any future access to reactor technology, fuel, or components for maritime or other civilian applications.
In other words, Kenya is not starting from zero. It already has the regulatory muscle memory safety, security and safeguards that the IAEA's ATLAS initiative identifies as the central bottleneck for nuclear-powered shipping.
As the Nature commentary on ATLAS bluntly puts it, current international rules for nuclear vessels are “outdated and fragmented,” and a reactor licence, a ship certificate, and a port authorisation all answer to different regulators asking different questions. A nuclear-powered ship without a port willing to receive it is not a viable ship at all: the Japanese vessel Mutsu sat idle for years after a public-relations crisis eroded local trust, despite the underlying technical fault being minor.
This is precisely the kind of institutional trust-building that is needed for high risk industries. A regulator that can already reassure Kenyan port authorities, shippers and the public about radiological safety at Kilindini is a regulator with the foundational credibility to eventually engage with the licensing questions ATLAS is trying to standardise internationally.
None of this means Kenya should rush to build a nuclear-powered vessel. The realistic and valuable near-term opportunities are more modest, and more achievable: As ‘nuclear-ready’ class notations become standardized across global maritime bodies, local shipbuilding facilities can proactively build foundational engineering competencies such as hull designs adapted for nuclear retrofits, radiation shielding integration, and specialized maintenance protocols. Positioning domestic yards with "nuclear-ready" capabilities creates a distinct competitive advantage long before nuclear fleets become an operational reality in regional waters.
With six expert project groups now standing up under ATLAS to work through safety, security, safeguards and regulatory harmonisation, Kenya has a genuine opportunity to participate rather than simply adopt standards set elsewhere particularly on questions relevant to African ports and the East African coastal trade corridor, where local practical experience is important.
Kenya's ongoing nuclear cooperation negotiations with the United States are, at their core, about building the legal architecture for peaceful nuclear technology transfer. Explicitly scoping maritime and offshore applications into that conversation now even at a preliminary level would position Kenya ahead of the curve rather than needing to renegotiate access once the commercial maritime nuclear market matures.
Kenya will not build a nuclear-powered ship in this decade, and it should not pretend otherwise. But the countries and companies that shape the rules, standards and port infrastructure of this emerging industry now will be the ones best placed to benefit when it matures — through shipbuilding contracts, servicing revenue, and a stronger claim to regional maritime leadership on the Eastern African coast.
Kenya's experience in ship building, coupled with radiation and nuclear regulation, brings the much-needed framework. Kenya's genuine opportunity lies in making sure synergy is being developed and the different institutions are talking to each other now, well before the first nuclear-powered commercial vessel enters African waters because by the time it does, the countries that prepared early will be the ones it visits.
-The writer is director of Public Awareness at the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority
