A group of the world’s biggest banks said Monday they will increase support for the expansion of nuclear power, according to the Financial Times. The banks, including Barclay’s, Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, and Goldman Sachs will make the formal announcement later Monday at an event with White House climate policy advisor John Podesta.
The stepped-up commitment from the banks is in support of goals set out at last year’s COP 28 conference to triple nuclear generation globally by 2050. It comes as expansion of wind generation – and, to a lesser extent, solar – is meeting with rising opposition from communities and struggling with profitability even while benefitting from a suite of government subsidies and tax incentives. It also comes as power grid managers struggle with increasing reliability issues as they are forced to integrate more and more intermittent wind and solar into their regional power structures.
Developers of AI and other cutting-edge technologies that require power-hungry data centers have become increasingly concerned that their needs can’t be met by intermittent generation, even with backup provided by current battery technology. U.S. companies are increasingly seeking to execute power supply agreements with traditional forms of 24/7 baseload generation to fill their needs. Nuclear generation, as a zero-emissions power source, helps such companies meet both their power needs and emissions reductions goals.
On Friday, Microsoft announced it had reached a deal with Constellation Energy to restart Unit 1 of its Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania to provide power to fill its own regional data center needs. Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island facility suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, an incident that released radioactive gases and iodine into the atmosphere, and which still ranks at the most severe nuclear incident in U.S. history. The U.S. nuclear power industry, which had undergone a rapid expansion during the 1970s, has struggled to restore public and policymaker confidence in the safety of its operations across the 45 years since that event.
Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 was not impacted by that incident and continued in service until it was retired by Constellation in 2019 due to economic reasons. Constellation said it plans to invest $1.6 billion to refurbish Unit 1, with a target for restarting the reactor by 2028. Its deal with Microsoft is for a 20-year power provision commitment.
Source: Forbes
