China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC)

China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) is China's state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate, headquartered in Shanghai. Its shipyards, design institutes and equipment makers cover merchant, offshore and naval vessels, and marine propulsion machinery.

In marine nuclear propulsion, CSSC is listed here for the KUN-24AP concept. This is a 24,000 TEU container ship design from its Jiangnan Shipyard, to be powered by a thorium-based Generation IV molten salt reactor. The design was made public at the end of 2023 and reported by NucNet in January 2024. CSSC said the ship was 'designed to truly achieve zero emissions' over its operating cycle, and pointed to safety advantages of molten salt reactor technology.

The KUN-24AP remains a concept design. No construction order has been announced, and no reactor thermal rating or propulsion details were published with the reveal. It is one of the most prominent civil molten-salt-reactor ship concepts. It sits alongside wider Chinese thorium MSR research, but the naval architecture and ship integration are CSSC's.