Sea Control - Sea Control 465 - China's Floating Nuclear Power Plants with Omar Pimentel and Edward Jenner

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

"Uncharted Waters: Assessing China’s Intentions to Deploy Floating Nuclear Power Plants in the South China Sea", by Jonathan Deemer, Omar Pimentel, Mi Jin Ryu, Miku Yamada, and Edward Jenner, Center for Global Security Research, June 2023.

Hello and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today I speak with Omar Pimentel and Edward Jenner about the Chinese plans to utilize floating nuclear power plants in the South China Sea. I edited and produced this episode. Here at CIMSEC, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out CIMSEC.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you would like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. And with that, Kimber's Men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello and welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. My guests today are Omar Pimentel and Edward Jenner, and we're discussing their recent paper for the Center for Global Security Research entitled Uncharted Waters, Assessing China's Intentions to Deploy Floating Nuclear Power Plants in the South China Sea. Omar, Edward, welcome aboard. Edward, could you please start out by telling us a little bit about yourself? Sure. So my background is in chemical engineering.

I got my Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. While there, I also became a licensed senior reactor operator, which was a position I worked in for a year after my Ph.D. I then was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Texas A&M, before then moving to Washington, D.C. to be a postdoc with, and this is a long one, the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Center for Global Security Research, and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Thank you. Omar, same question to you. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Great. Thanks, Nathan. Thanks for having us on board. Hey, everyone. My name is Omar. I hail from growing up in the Dominican Republic. I went to Florida State University. Go Knolls. College football starts next week.

I did my undergrad in political science and economics there, and I mention it because I was deep into the political world, worked on Capitol Hill in Congress for about three years after undergrad, dealing foreign affairs committee and appropriations. Started working in national security a little bit towards the end of my time in Congress and spent the past two years at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University working as a researcher in national security and wrapping up my master's in international policy. And today I work for the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, with the Defense Innovation Unit space portfolio, working on onboarding commercial space technology for national security purposes. Great to be here.

Thank you. And as a reminder to our listeners, all opinions expressed here are strictly our own and not reflective of any of the institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Also, as a bit of a timestamp, it is August 23rd. So if there's anything that's going on in this space between our conversation and the airing of this podcast, it's because it hasn't happened yet. And that's why it's not coming up. But to start us off, Edward, I wanted to ask, what is a floating nuclear power plant or FNPP? What's it used for? What are the precedents? And kind of comparing it to something that our listeners may be a little more familiar with. How does it differ from like a naval nuclear

power plant on an aircraft carrier, for example? Sure. So what is an FNPP is actually a very good question that regulators in the nuclear energy industry are having to ask themselves because it's not a formally defined term. Some experts will argue that an aircraft carrier counts as a floating nuclear power plant. So for our research, we specifically were looking at generating stations that are based out at sea, but mostly stationary. And so that's basically just eliminating nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers. And when you do that, you're left with only two flow to nuclear power plants have been deployed in existence. The United States deployed a FNPP to the Panama Canal during the late 60s, early 70s to

provide electricity and energy for the canal dock and local infrastructure. And then Russia has deployed one in the last few years to a small mining town of Pevek in the far Russian north. What they're used for, by and large, is just the same thing a normal nuclear power plant is, which is generating energy, and most of that is for electricity. But there are potential other use cases, which is one of the reasons why they are gaining a lot of interest in, I would say, the nuclear field and also in some of the security studies, because there is potential for them to be used for, say, maybe, you know, deployment to, you know, a contested region to provide local energy and minimize supply chains. There's potential to do water desalination, so that would be great for

emergency response. But those are just hypothetical things. How they differ from a traditional land-based reactor is most significantly, I would say, in the regulations as you were probing towards. So by and large, the regulatory industry has been dealing with land-based reactors, and the naval reactors are moving, and they're usually military in nature, and so those haven't been, you know, within the scope of your civil authorities. And so how they differ is that they may potentially exist in a regulatory loophole that may create certain problems. So, you know, if you just think that nuclear material out at sea is generally either going to be a military vessel, or it's going to be in a vessel that's like a shipping container

moving nuclear waste, or it's a cargo container bringing in fuel that's only in port for, you know, a few hours to a few days, that's really not providing a lot of risk to the neighboring areas where it's passing by. A floating nuclear power plant is going to be stationed anywhere from 40 to, or could be stationed anywhere from 40 to 80 years, thereby you have a much larger window for which you need to be mitigating risks. So if there's regulatory gaps, which I perceive there are, then I would say the biggest difference is that a floating nuclear power plant presents challenges for regulatory regimes for managing safely nuclear energy. You mentioned that the Russian FNPP is still currently in operation. Is the U.S. currently

operating one? No, it was decommissioned. If my history is correct, gas prices dropped in the 70s after the oil crisis, and they replaced the FNPP in the Panama Canal with diesel generators. Then it sat in a dock somewhere for a number of years before finally decommissioning the reactor and vessel. But the U.S. is interested in exploring the topic. They're not fully committed to that they want to build out a fleet of floating nuclear power plants, but they're definitely interested in the technology because there are a lot of benefits for having a reactor out at sea as opposed to land-based. So given that your piece is talking about China and you mentioned that there are some regulatory gaps, the Chinese FNPPs that they're proposing that, you know, your piece is on, would those be military in nature and owned by the PLAN or would those be more of a civilian venture and that's how they would push those forward? so that is one of the problems we identified is that from our view it seems that china is

wanting to blur the lines between its civilian and military nuclear programs and not just with floating nuclear power plants um we i won't get too off the rails but they're modernizing and building up um you know a large nuclear arsenal they've had historically only a few nuclear weapons. They're going up to 1,500. And they're, from our view, definitely blurring the lines between what infrastructure is supporting their military versus their private sector. I will ask Omar if he wants to talk about that, since if I remember correctly, I do think some of the experts they interviewed specifically did mention about how they're somewhat blurring the lines, then it's hard to differentiate. Yeah, so we see this happening across the board when it

comes to development of certain key technologies in China. If anyone were to tell you bluntly who would be directing the use of the energy produced by these power plants today, with 100% certainty not being from the Chinese government, they're lying to you if they tell they know. But from our year-long investigation and from our travel to the region, speaking with a number of experts in academia and government officials from neighboring countries, we visited Japan, Vietnam, and Singapore, spoke with the Philippines as well. The lines are pretty blurred. So from our initial understanding, the development is being led by two Chinese organizations, the cgn the chinese general nuclear power group i think believe that is a state-owned energy

generating company and the cnnc which is a the nuclear regulatory agency of the government um so it just all goes to say um we we do see a public private partnership occurring uh but the way we understand this to work in China, it's a lot more nuanced than that. So this, it would bleed in later in the conversation when we talk about what we think China wants to accomplish by deploying these at some point. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and get into that question. What do you see as the goals of China's FNPP program? And kind of how does this affect South China Sea neighbors? Yeah, that's a good question. So we, as the international community, became much aware of this development of this technology by China in the mid-2010s. There was an important article that came out around 2016 that sort of outlined the plans for these power plants by China.

And the initial official word on what the purpose was, was for supporting resource extraction. So at the time, the region of the South China Sea was in every headline. Mid-2010s was a time that we all had our eyes on that region. And a lot of it was moves being made by China to secure territory and to build up the artificial islands for the extraction of precious materials. So that was the initial big highlight, right, that China was building these to support that. Later investigations and further publications led us to believe that there is more to it. Once China began putting airstrips, anti-air capabilities, and decided to militarize these islands that they were building in South Genesee, it became clear to us that these floating nuclear power plants would not just be a good thing for resource extraction. we realized there were a number of capabilities that would be augmented

by having this amount of energy being generated in the region. It's a little bit of overkill for a tiny island if you have a couple dozen or a hundred members of the military there. These things like we see up in Russia can power tens of thousands of homes. So in our paper, we boil it down to three reasons. And these three reasons bring with them three big buckets of risks, strategic reasons, security reasons, and safety reasons. On the strategic side, floating nuclear power plants, as you may imagine, and just like we're seeing now in Ukraine, nuclear power plants are quite the deterrent for conflict, right? And if the South China Sea is as important as China claims it is to them, having these stationed around the region would serve as a huge deterrent for any regional or international adversary that would come and were to be involved in a hot conflict, right?

So these contested waters would then be de facto Chinese. It would be very difficult to be able to get them back with force. On this other side, on the security reasons, and also bringing along security risks, is the augmentation of military capabilities. So on one side is logistical. Our current understanding is that these islands are powered by frequent refueling of diesel, with the frequent diesel refueling from the mainland, which sounds like a logistical nightmare. These tiny islands having to be refueled from the mainland constantly brings with it a nightmare for military purposes. Like it would easily we would easily be able to cut them off from the mainland if you just stop the refueling. So floating nuclear power plants would solve that issue quite easily. And then further conversations with military experts have led us to believe that the extra power generated by these plants would allow for the augmentation of certain military capabilities, such as better and wider air defense capabilities and potentially even EW, electronic warfare and directed energy weapon capabilities by the PLA in the region. And then the last one is the one that comes up with most folks that aren't involved in national security is safety risks, which bring along with it economic risks.

The neighboring countries rely heavily on fisheries of the region. So along with the deterrent effect that it may have, this is probably the largest deterrent effect. And it's that any just a whiff or a rumor of something going wrong with one of these plants would probably have devastating effects to the economies in the region. So all these three tied together as what we believe to be the reasons China is developing and intends to deploy these in the next decade. Have you had any analysis on how this would all play out between the players in the South China Sea? Or is this something that is far too abstract to answer in a place like this? yeah i'll give you my take and and i'll let edward give his take because at this point we'll probably have individual opinions um and and i'm sure edward is a fan as well i think

if you were to look at it holistically this is some really cool technology right floating nuclear power plants are something that seemed like a really interesting idea that could benefit a lot of countries in the region not just china countries like singapore that land to them is more valuable than oil how awesome would it be that you don't have to put a nuclear power plant which takes up quite the amount of acreage just put it out at sea and power your your city state right so there are a number of awesome advances and and benefits that these plants bring with them but the issue we're looking at is is who's doing it why where and how right so it's it's an agglomeration of all these characteristics of this specific region and the kind of technology

we're talking about the outcomes we see are are very politically muddy like we have allies in the region that are very hesitant to counter china publicly and we could we could see the situation where these are deployed and there is there's even less dialogue on these right uh with because they don't want the unintended effect of of angering the ccp and having more detrimental effects on other things. But I think the most consequential effect will be how the United States and AUKUS and other allied organizations from the region react militarily. I think, you know, we all see on the horizon a potential conflict in Taiwan and how that might boil over to the South China Sea. There's going to be and there needs to be a lot of discussion on how we would react

if this were to be a factor, right? I think it'll change a lot of the ways that we would respond to potential conflict in the region. And I think that's where I specifically am thinking about a lot of this. But real quick, back to the economic side of stuff. Having visited a number of countries in the region, the interest isn't just on China's side. People are looking at this technology and thinking twice about it on the good side of things, right? And exploring ways that they might be able to deploy these kind of capabilities in the future. But again, it's all about the circumstances and these circumstances and the actor involved is no bueno. Edward, same question to you. Do you have any input or thoughts on kind of how you see the situation

playing out given your research? It's really hard to figure out how. There's definitely potential avenues and setting probabilities to those is way beyond my capabilities. I will say one thing that may just be an optimist in me is that historically China has made large boasts or promises of what capabilities they're going to deploy and achieve in the very near future, and then usually undershoot that. And that is true in nuclear too. They, in the early 2000s, mentioned, and I lose the number, but they'd have X so many gigawatts of nuclear within the next decade. And they far undershot that. In our paper, we mentioned two different corporations wanting to deploy these floating nuclear power plants, and one of them has already stated that

the safety analysis is not going as well as they were hoping, so they're delaying the project. So the optimist in me hopes that, you know, this was kind of a boast by China that they would want to get 20 out in the South China Sea within the next few years, and instead maybe they only produce one or two, and it's closer to their home country waters, not what they call their territorial waters being the South China Sea, of course. But, you know, they deploy them closer to home that is not presenting nearly as much as a risk to, you know, ASEAN or Southeast Asian countries, and they're not deploying a fleet of them, which, you know, as we've mentioned, this is a prototype technology in a lot of ways. There's not a lot of history and experience with nuclear power being

used in this capacity. And so really rushing a lot out could always have some unforeseen circumstances. So hoping they only deploy a few close to home, but you never know. The world is a very unpredictable place. So it could go in a completely third direction that I've no, you know, completely unforeseen so on that same thread i think it's important contextually and what we're seeing from china rhetorically it china's positioned itself to be a resurgent nuclear power right as of recent so the way we've also looked at this situation is that this is quite the risk a new technology in an interesting place of the world with lots of stuff going on We see it as a politically risky move by China. If anything were to go wrong, and like I said, rumors in the nuclear world go deep, right, and can cut deeply before we realize there's not really a cut.

So it's politically risky, and I think China would think twice before putting itself in a position where it would embarrass itself in the international stage at this point where they're trying to be a nuclear power that is to be trusted, right? So I think that's another angle to sort of maybe look at this from. I was just wondering if there's anything else that I've missed that you feel like is worth mentioning or something about your research that you would like to share with the listeners. We've said a lot of maybe scary or unnerving things about the technology, but there are a lot of benefits, which I probably should have mentioned earlier. So very briefly, when you put a nuclear power plant out at sea and you have a large amount of water between your, you know, ocean floor and your facility, that acts as a large dampener for any seismic activity. And so you are not at risk of a lot of the potential accidents that you would normally see with a land-based facility. And so a floating nuclear power plant can be potentially significantly cheaper by being put out to sea versus put out to land. Additionally, it takes a whole generation to raise regulators, lawmakers, health and safety, et cetera, to oversee a nuclear industry, let alone even another decade just to build it.

With a floating nuclear power plant, you can float it to a port city, power it up and be providing energy and as long as it takes to sign the agreement. And so, you know, nuclear newcomers aren't having to look at nuclear power as something they have to commit themselves to for 40, 60, 80 years. And so a floating nuclear power plant is a way to let newcomers get a very useful low emissions technology in a pretty small committal sort of way. So there's a lot of risks, there's a lot of concerns because it is so novel and it may be used for geopolitical reasonings, but the technology also has a lot of benefits. So I would just encourage listeners, if this was intriguing, to read more because there's a lot of depth there to the potential for these technologies. I agree, Edward, and I think it's been interesting. I've learned so much even after the publication of our report reading about this technology. I think it'd be great for listeners to also pivot because I don't think we've mentioned the three letters enough. It's, you know, that the technology isn't just your regular old land based nuclear reactors just put in on the water.

These are small modular reactors that only produce a certain amount of electricity. There's a new and emerging technology that are modularized. And from readings, diving deep into Chinese research publications on this technology and trying to translate it, a lot of what they've been talking about is desalination. And it appears that on these islands, that would be another benefit for them is to be able to use these and the heat generated and the boil off to desalinate water for not for just for drinking purposes, but for irrigation and such. So, yeah, like you said, there's a lot of interesting things with this technology to look into. But again, it's the who, the what, the where, the why this is happening that led us to write this report. And I will mention something that you will see if you look into this issue on Google or you start your initial search on what's actually going on. You'll see hints from the South China Morning Post of an article in late May that points towards discussions within China on suspending development and the deployment of these reactors.

At least our team has been quite skeptical of that report due to some of the citations not being highly verifiable. It also only mentions one of the two kinds of reactors China has been developing for this specific purpose. So I'm on the side that thinks that China is heavily invested in this endeavor and that we'll see a nuclear reactor on a barge, call it what they call it, be deployed in the next decade. At least one, maybe not 20 like they had initially planned seven years ago. But yeah, I think it's something to look at. And again, anything even from sources in the region to be skeptical on too, right? There's a lot of information from a lot of different people trying to predict a lot of different things from a black box we call China.

Well, I'm sorry, but that is all the time that we have for today. I would like to thank my guests, Omar Pimentel and Edward Jenner. Edward, can you tell us where we can find you online and what you're working on next? Sure. So most of my publications will be either through the Center for Global Security Research or the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Outside of that, the next project I'm most hopeful about coming to fruition is looking at how fusion energy may impact nuclear weapon states. And Omar, same question to you. What are you working on next and where can we find you online?

Yeah, I am active on Twitter. I talk about floating nuclear power plants and space tech at Omar J. Pimentel. I am currently working on a publication for the International Astronomical Congress, which will be hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan in October. And it is a discussion and analysis on the role of commercial space industries during conflict and how states should look at aggression toward commercial companies and how we might react to them. And we're seeing a lot of the Ukraine war and just trying to get ahead of the curve here. And the day that we do see offensive actions taken towards commercial companies in space, how we as the United States and allies should react to that. So looking forward to that. And thanks for having us on, Nathan. Thank you for joining us. And to the listeners, thank you for tuning in.

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