Nor-Shipping 2025: Jiangnan Shipyard plans ammonia and nuclear-powered ships

At the Nor-Shipping conference and exhibition at Lillestrom, Norway this week [June 2-6], Jiangnan shipyard officials said they are planning for next generation zero-emission vessels including ammonia and nuclear-powered vessels.

The company, located on Changxing island in Shanghai, is a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited. China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) is a state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate. The shipbuilding group owns some of the most well-known shipbuilders in China, such as Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company, Jiangnan Shipyard, Hudong–Zhonghua Shipbuilding, Guangzhou Huangpu Shipbuilding and Guangzhou Wenchong Shipyard. As of 2024, CSSC builds a third of all ships in the world, making it the world's biggest shipbuilding conglomerate. Jiangnan Shipyard was established in 1865. It is one of the oldest shipyards in China. It is now one of the important subsidiaries under the China State Shipbuilding Group (CSSC).

In 2006, the yard started to move its shipbuilding base to Changxing Island, located about five miles from Shanghai Pudong. With more than 150 years of experience in developing and building various kind of merchant and navy ships, Jiangnan says it has successfully delivered to the local and worldwide shipping market a large variety of sophisticated vessels-including oil tankers, bulk carriers, PLA Navy vessels [the shipyard built the PLA Navy aircraft carrier Fujian] and container ships. For the shipyard, gas carriers of various classes have become one of the major products of the shipyard.

The Jiangnan shipyard by any measure is one of the largest in the world, comprising 1,050 acres, including 6,500 meters or around 4 miles of shoreline, two drydocks, two outfitting basin, seven Goliath cranes with a capacity of up to 1,000 metric tons. Overall, the shipyard employs 28,559 workers of which it lists 4,267 as “permanent employees.”

Ammonia and Nuclear-Powered Ships

The company is now beginning to look at ammonia powered vessels to provide zero emission marine propulsion: “For zero emission ships Jiangnan believes ammonia fueled propulsion will be the more practical solution rather than hydrogen.”

The company says it has “rich experience in designing and fabricating the containment system of ammonia…” Jiangnan says it has secured “firm contracts” for its Very Large Ammonia Carrier based on a Jiangnan design.

Company officials told AJOT that the company has plans to build a nuclear-powered container ship with a capacity of 24,000 TEUs. They believe that new nuclear technology will make the ship safe. [see Can building nuclear merchant ship revitalize the U.S. maritime https://www.ajot.com/premium/ajot-can-building-nuclear-merchant-ships-revitalize-the-u.s-maritime.]

The Jiangnan Shipyard officially released the ship type design of the 24,000 TEU-class nuclear-powered container ship in 2023. At the time, China’s Global Times reported that, if built, the ship “marks a revolutionary achievement by the shipyard in the development of near-zero emission ships.”

To meet the demands of energy saving and emissions reduction due to climate change, the Jiangnan Shipyard has been actively exploring ship types for container ships and solutions in propulsion systems. It proposes to deploy zero emission nuclear energy. The company proposes to utilize a fourth-generation molten salt reactor technology that is considered very advanced in the world and proposed the design of this ultra-large nuclear-powered container ship, according to design reports.

Jiangnan says the design has high safety standards, as the reactor runs under high temperature and low pressure, avoiding reactor meltdown. According to design reports, if an accident took place, the reactor could be stopped so quickly that contamination would not spread.

Education For Shipyard Employees

Company officials say that one of the keys to success in training and keeping shipyard workers is that the company maintains schools for the children of workers and when these children graduate from high school they are encouraged to go to work at the shipyard as welders or design engineers.

The professional training school at Jiangnan was founded in 1950 and has trained 22,300 skilled workers for Jiangnan and other companies.

At Jiangnan, 83% of the workforce are production workers. A technically oriented education system is one of the keys to China’s shipbuilding success, company officials say.