European regulators push new safety rules for nuclear merchant ships

That push lands on top of a rulebook that is plainly out of date. The International Maritime Organization’s Code of Safety for Nuclear Merchant Ships was adopted in 1981, and at MSC 110 in June 2025 the committee tasked the Sub-Committee on Ship Design and Construction with revising it. The IMO has described the code as outdated and in need of revision to reflect advances in nuclear technology, a telling signal that the current framework no longer matches the reactors being proposed for modern shipping.

The practical stakes are bigger than reactor design. A merchant vessel with nuclear propulsion has to clear licensing, port access, emergency planning, liability and cross-border oversight before it can move cargo in commercial service. It also has to fit into overlapping systems that were never built around the same machine: civil nuclear regulation, port-state control, maritime safety law and international shipping rules. The old code is limited, and industry submissions have argued that it needs revision to set internationally accepted standards for design, construction, operation, maintenance, inspection, salvage and disposal.

That is why the current debate matters. If WENRA, the IMO, national regulators and classification societies do not converge on a common basis, the technology will remain stuck between jurisdictions. The International Chamber of Shipping sharpened that point in a webinar on 26 February 2026, saying the discussion involved both the IMO and the International Atomic Energy Agency and that the legislative landscape needs clarity. In other words, the first barrier is not whether a ship can carry a reactor. It is whether anyone can agree who certifies it, who inspects it, who responds if something goes wrong and who takes responsibility when the ship enters port.