Big Banks Promise to Back Nuclear Energy 

As any nuclear physicist will tell you, every little thing counts.

On Monday, a group of 14 large banks and other heavy-hitter financial institutions came together to announce that they’re going to up their support for the nuclear power industry. Historically, nuclear power has had the potential to make financiers a scooch nervous, even when they have their radiation suits on.

Bank on It

Nuclear power has spent a lot of its history as a pretty divisive energy source. Some countries have embraced it while others have shunned it, citing the dangers associated with disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima. On top of that level of political uncertainty, nuclear power stations also just happen to be financially risky projects with a tendency of going way over budget and taking much longer to build than advertised. Even government drives to increase nuclear energy capacity, like former President George W. Bush’s in the 2000s, have fallen flat for lack of investor enthusiasm.

Now however, it seems like the winds may be shifting in nuclear’s favor (and hopefully not carrying any fallout with them):

• Banks including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs said Monday they will commit to more financing in the nuclear sector, aiming to achieve a goal laid out at COP28 last year to triple the world’s nuclear capacity by 2050.
• Nuclear power is also getting a boost from Big Tech companies — particularly Microsoft — that are hunting for future energy supply to support their AI ambitions and data center-building.

Less is More: A relatively new area of nuclear power that’s attracted a lot of attention is small modular reactors (SMRs), which are designed to be smaller, easier-to-build versions of traditional reactors. SMRs have received government support and spawned a new generation of nuclear power startups, and now they’re starting to make their way out into the world. Last week a US firm called Holtec, which makes parts for nuclear reactors, announced it is building a new factory in the UK to manufacture SMR components.