LONDON, England – Building a nuclear plant isn’t just about typical infrastructure development; it requires a multi-generational commitment. It can take 10-15 years, or even longer, before a project can advance to commercial operations.

Beyond the grueling work of securing public acceptance and ensuring policy viability, the real deal-killer in nuclear development is financing. Billions must be sunk upfront, and banks demand front-loaded loan repayments, yet the revenue stream could be stretched over several decades.

Compared to renewables, which are the current "hotshots" in the energy investment game, solar and wind projects are sprinting ahead because of a faster return on investment and more predictable risks.

Conversely, for most lenders, nuclear is a slow-motion money trap. Banks hate long recovery periods while private equity funding typically craves quick exits. Therefore, every delay, policy shift, and even shaky political condition can endanger billions worth of investments. It’s no wonder that even insurers hesitate to underwrite these ventures at scale.

At the core of these hesitations, how do you then finance nuclear facilities that will be highly essential and existential for long-term energy security but economically prohibitive in the initial years of a project’s operations?

This week at the World Nuclear Symposium in London, the major players in the industry, policymakers, and finance heavy hitters will converge to dissect and unlock strategies for the global ambition of tripling nuclear capacity by 2050. It’s estimated that the nuclear power community will need $150 billion annually to deliver that commitment.

According to the World Nuclear Association, the finance summit will confront the hard truths of nuclear funding, where stakeholders must move beyond talk and deliver real, bankable solutions on project development. This year’s agenda will delve into discovering why investors are taking a fresh look at nuclear, how to repeat the rapid expansion of nuclear power, what models are needed to attract market-based finance, and how public-private partnership (PPP) frameworks can improve current investment practices for the entire nuclear value chain. The global nuclear industry will also carve out critical paths to move small modular reactors (SMRs) from promising prototypes to full-scale commercial deployments.

Taking center stage at the finance summit will be multilateral funding institutions, including the World Bank, West Africa Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as private investment banks like HSBC, UBS, and BNP Paribas. Their goal is to recalibrate the playbook on how new nuclear builds could viably take off from drawing boards.

It is worth noting that most, if not all, recently completed projects in the nuclear sector have suffered cost overruns—including the Barakah nuclear power facility in the UAE, the Flamanville-3 project in France, and the Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power installation in Finland. The "overbudget burden" of project developers has triggered either litigation, significant debt exposure, or credit rating downgrades, as well as the ever-present risk that regulators will not allow recoveries for these cost overruns. As it stands, the unpredictable precept of cost overruns and delays are almost "universal" to new nuclear power projects, and ill-suited project finance models often spark investor retreat. Despite nuclear’s alignment as a solution in the “net zero” race, the sector’s pitch for green bonds is still a no-go for many institutional investors because they still do not consider nuclear “green” under the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) lens.

In the Philippines, the initial policy being zeroed in on by the Department of Energy (DOE) is a “special incentive” for the very first new nuclear power project that will be developed commercially—a prize for a trailblazer that will re-ignite the country’s nuclear ambitions. When pressed on whether the "first-mover special incentive" will take the form of a government guarantee, Energy Secretary Sharon Garin didn’t rule it out, stressing that further talks on the matter are still being advanced with the Department of Budget and Management and Department of Finance.

For the targeted power supply agreements (PSAs) for nuclear power plants to be built in the country, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) is still studying and assessing the appetite of investors and lenders for longer-duration contracts of 30-40 years. With the country’s major banks, sources forthrightly stated that nuclear power financing is not even on their radar yet. They will only dive deeper into it if the Philippines truly gets serious about turning its nuclear aspirations into tangible megawatts. It’s truly a bitter paradox because even if some power developers understand both the potential and risks, they are still confronted with a major financing firewall even for conventional builds. Lenders are also holding back and still waiting for SMRs to prove commercial viability and for the proposed Gen IV technologies to also advance.