HWBRIEF
ATLAS, the first global nuclear and maritime forum, drew 26 signatory countries with a 2030s deployment horizon. Designs and business models remain at an early stage.
Twenty-six countries have signed an IAEA-led joint statement launching ATLAS (Atomic Technologies Licensed for Applications at Sea), the first globally-coordinated effort to connect the nuclear and maritime sectors. The inaugural ATLAS meeting convened in the United States this week, with a stated horizon that some nuclear maritime designs could be deployable as early as the 2030s.
The signatories span Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Finland, France, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the USA. India's participation is independently confirmed, underscoring non-Western buy-in.
The statement names container ships, bulk carriers, tankers, cruise ships, icebreakers and offshore support vessels as candidate platforms, alongside floating nuclear power plants for remote or coastal communities, ports, desalination and disaster response. The framing leans on small modular reactors (SMRs), factory-built units that can be shipped to a vessel or coastal site, as the likeliest near-term fit.
The headline fact is governance, not hardware. The statement itself flags that "designs, business models, and operational concepts … largely still at an early stage" and is explicitly technology-neutral. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi opened the meeting; the US Department of Energy confirmed the United States as host. The next phase of ATLAS work is coordination and dialogue, not deployment.