Infra Dig – the US nuclear scene with Blue Energy

Less than a week before the start of IJGlobal’s flagship energy conference – REFF North America – chat turns to nuclear energy with a US-based company that has interesting plans.

The subject of nuclear power – large-scale and small modular reactors (SMR) – will be a key focus for REFF North America which IJGlobal is hosting in the Metropolitan Club, New York, over the course of 29 and 30 September (2025).

In today’s episode, IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville pulls up a mic for the latest Infra Dig episode with Jake Jurewicz – chief executive at US-based nuclear developer Blue Energy.   

This episode runs for a little under 40 minutes and sees Jake take the listener through a myth debunking session, building up big plans to project finance future projects.

This latest episode can be accessed on Spotify (embedded above) as well as through Apple Podcasts and on the Amazon service. It is also hosted across a slew of other platforms, open access on all of them.

Jake (pictured right) has deep experience in the energy community – particularly nuclear – and has plans to transform the industry, moving it away from historic issues of “cost overruns and schedule misses”.

Beyond nuclear developments in China, Europe and the Middle East, Jake anticipates there could be an upsurge in activity across the US after completion of Vogtle 3 & 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia – the first new nuclear units built in the US in more than 30 years.

However, he anticipates that the bulk of activity will be directed towards the “newer class of reactors that are designed around being more modular and being more prefabricated”. And on this front – the small modular reactor (SMR) front – Canada is taking the lead.

When it comes to financing SMR projects, Jake has good news for the project finance community as he is convinced that it will bring lenders to the table.

Jake says: “You've got to be able to bring commercial debt to bear on that technology. We did this with wind and solar. The definition of a derisked technology is that you can get banks to do 90% loan to value on it.

“You can do that all day long for wind and solar, and even – to some extent – you can do that with gas. Historically, nuclear has always been the domain of government financing because it's so risky. It's so prone to cost overruns and schedule overruns.

“By addressing those issues with this prefabricated approach we're borrowing techniques and we're even borrowing a financing strategy that's been used in the LNG sector very successfully to bring project finance to bear.

“That is our goal.

“We believe we have a strategy at Blue Energy to bring commercial debt to bring project financing to nuclear at a much earlier pace than some of the other conversations that are out there right now.

“And that is because we believe we've got a strategy where we can get fixed price contracting on the build of these modules.”

To listen to this – and much more – tune into the latest episode…