Bluecore Energy has bought uranium hexafluoride enriched to 4.95% uranium-235 for its first floating power system, a concrete step that moves the US maritime nuclear startup beyond engineering drawings and into the fuel cycle itself.

The Long Beach-based company sourced the UF₆ through nuclear fuel intermediary WMC and is storing the material at an undisclosed US nuclear fuel facility outside California while it works toward fuel fabrication, testing and validation. UF₆ feeds the enrichment process and is later converted into uranium dioxide, fabricated into pellets and assembled into reactor fuel.

The purchase anchors a 10 MWe compact water-cooled reactor designed from the outset for deployment on a barge. Bluecore is initially targeting electricity supply for ports, data centres and coastal infrastructure, with ship propulsion on the longer-term horizon. For port operators and coastal power customers, the pitch is a transportable generation asset; for carriers, the propulsion question remains distant but no longer theoretical.

"Establishing a reliable nuclear fuel supply is a fundamental part of moving any reactor program forward," said Per Jander, director on WMC's nuclear fuel team. That statement is accurate as far as it goes — but a secured fuel feedstock is an input, not an operating reactor, and the distance between the two is measured in years of fabrication, testing and licensing.

How fast is Bluecore actually moving?

By startup standards, quickly. The company emerged from stealth only in July and raised $50m in September in a seed round led by Silverton Partners, on top of an earlier $10m pre-seed financing. That $60m total is earmarked for engineering, hardware development, testing, regulatory work and manufacturing.

The regulatory track started this summer. Bluecore held its first pre-application meeting with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in August, presenting the reactor concept and discussing a potential licensing route. The US Coast Guard also participated — a signal that the two federal agencies have begun untangling where nuclear regulation ends and maritime requirements begin, a jurisdictional overlap that has no settled precedent.

Classification is running in parallel. ABS granted approval in principle in June for Bluecore's floating nuclear power plant concept, which the company describes as the first such approval for a US-designed floating nuclear plant. The review produced a roadmap of technical and class requirements rather than design sign-off; an AiP confirms a concept is reviewable, not that it is buildable.

Founder and chief executive Kofi Asante frames the strategy as building the fuel, testing, engineering, safety, regulatory and class pathways together rather than sequentially. That parallel approach compresses timelines on paper — but it also concentrates risk, because a failure in any single workstream, most plausibly licensing, stalls all of them.

What is happening at Pier D?

Bluecore is headquartered at Pier D inside the Port of Long Beach, where it is assembling and testing a non-fuelled maritime reactor module prototype. No active reactor or nuclear fuel is kept at the port facility, and nuclear-specific testing is intended to take place away from Long Beach.

California planning records show the startup has leased warehouse, landside and submerged space at the port for its research operation and barge testing.

The project sits inside a wider US push to commercialise nuclear technology in maritime applications. The Maritime Administration and the Port of Long Beach signed a first-of-its-kind agreement in July covering small modular reactors for vessels, terminals and other maritime infrastructure, and a broader effort involving MARAD, reactor developers and shipowners has gathered pace since.

What comes next?

Bluecore has not set a public commissioning date for its first reactor, and future operating locations remain contingent on federal licensing, class, environmental and site-specific safety approvals — the pace of NRC and Coast Guard engagement will tell observers more about the project's true timeline than any fuel purchase.