Lloyd’s Register supports Prodigy’s bring-your-own-reactor floating plant concept
Prodigy Clean Energy and Lloyd’s Register have announced a collaboration to support the deployment of Prodigy’s “transportable nuclear power plants” (TNPPs) in Canada by 2030. Prodigy’s goal is to build marine-based nuclear power plants that are compatible with different end uses and reactor suppliers. What the plants would have in common is offshore siting close to an end user, which could include offshore oil and gas platforms, commercial seaports, mining operations, remote communities, and desalination plants.
The collaboration is partially funded by an award from the Canadian government of about $1.9 million and is intended to “model” TNPP marine fabrication, marine transport, and centralized decommissioning. Prodigy, a small company based in Montreal, and LR, which is headquartered in London and advises the marine and offshore industries, expect to demonstrate how a country can manufacture, deploy, operate, and decommission transportable and floating nuclear power plant technologies without major changes to regulatory frameworks, as well as support power plant fabrication “by late 2020s.”
The collaboration: LR’s role is to help Prodigy combine best practices in the maritime, nuclear, and offshore industries with a goal of achieving licensing and deployment for an energy project in Canada in the next five to seven years.
“This project with Prodigy is notable as it is one of the first to establish guidelines for transportable and floating nuclear power plants. We are developing models based on real-world use cases with specific inputs from end users, setting a potential global standard. These models will be valuable for sovereign regulators and international marine fabricators as they work to position themselves in the emerging global maritime nuclear energy market,” said Mark Tipping, LR’s global offshore power to X director.
Projected future design of nuclear power barges, an example of novel technology this AI capability will be used to accelerate (Image courtesy of Lucid Catalyst)
The concept: The companies claim that Prodigy’s plants would “enhance power plant modularity and economics, speed up project schedules, reduce environmental impact and boost the technical and financial viability for SMR deployment in coastal and remote regions” because they could be built in a “marine fabrication factory setting” and transported to a prepared docking site, reducing the need for permanent infrastructure. Prodigy says its TNPPs are “not barges with reactors onboard,” but “purpose-designed, marine fabricated buildings qualified to house operating nuclear reactors.”
Prodigy wants to develop the concept in two sizes, customizable from 1 to 1,000 gross MWe: a Prodigy microreactor power station TNPP and a SMR marine power station TNPP.
“In a world where demand for more nuclear generation is surging, Prodigy’s transportable nuclear facilities are emerging as missing puzzle pieces to mass customize SMR new builds,” said Mathias Trojer, president and CEO of Prodigy Clean Energy.
LR and AI: Separately, Lloyd’s Register announced on March 5 that it would use generative AI built on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to analyze historic nuclear licensing data and enhance its work in permitting and the regulatory process, helping the company “bridge the gap” between terrestrial and maritime applications.
LR deputy chief technology and innovation officer Jeff Scott, who engaged with Microsoft to explore AI’s potential in maritime nuclear regulation, said, “Regulations shouldn’t be a roadblock to innovation—they should be a launchpad. By teaming up with Microsoft, we’re using AI to cut through the red tape and fast-track the future of nuclear in maritime.”
Darryl Willis, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, energy & resources industry, said, “By combining our AI expertise with Lloyd’s Register's expertise in maritime and nuclear safety, we are paving the way to ease regulatory barriers and make sustainability more attainable for all industries.”
Westinghouse is on board: In January 2024, Westinghouse and Prodigy teamed up to work on a TNPP featuring a Westinghouse eVinci sodium heat pipe microreactor. At the time, they announced plans for a first deployment in Canada by 2030 to provide power to a remote mine. Westinghouse and Prodigy signed an agreement in 2022 and have completed some conceptual engineering and regulatory studies with some Canadian government funding Westinghouse received in 2022.
“From the start, our eVinci technology was designed to be transportable, that was a key design principle,” said Jon Ball, eVinci Technologies President for Westinghouse. “The TNPP from Prodigy brings an additional value to the inherent transportability of the technology.”
