The new venture will have $150 million in funding and will include Zhejiang Zheneng Electric Power, Shanghai Guosheng Group, Shanghai-based Jiangnan Shipyard Group and Shanghai Electric Group.

The plants will be able to sail to where they are needed and could be used to operate drilling equipment for offshore oil and gas fields, to power facilities on the remote islands of the South China Sea, to meet heating and desalination needs or to run nuclear-powered icebreakers.

The reactors may also be exported to economies with large populations but scarce land resources, including economies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The technology used may involve high temperature gas-cooled reactors which China is jointly developing with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.