Financing for new nuclear power plants remains a hurdle, but multilateral development banks such as the World Bank can help by assessing nuclear project bankability and contributing lending at affordable rates, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Grossi said.

Speaking in an exchange with members of the World Bank Group executive board in Washington, Grossi noted that the World Bank and other MDBs currently do not contribute financing to nuclear power new build projects, although some MDBs have provided lending for upgrades to existing nuclear power reactors or their decommissioning.

He said financing nuclear power would better align MDBs with the “new global consensus” forged at last year at Cop28 in Dubai, where the world called for accelerating the deployment of nuclear power along with other zero emission energy technologies to achieve deep and rapid decarbonisation.

Dozens of countries also signed a pledge made at Cop28 to work towards tripling global nuclear power capacity to achieve net zero by 2050.