As the grid strains under the weight of electrification and AI data centers, technology companies and utilities have been evaluating whether nuclear power can help with the load. After the two most recent reactors built in the United States went over budget and on schedule, they are unwilling to repeat the past.
But Jake Jurewicz, co-founder and CEO of startup Blue Energy, believes the answer to faster, cheaper construction can be found in the industry’s early history.
blue energy wants to build nuclear reactors in shipyards because these locations can handle large quantities of steel and can be easily shipped to the project site upon completion.
“The most common nuclear power technology (light water reactors) was originally invented for nuclear submarines,” Jurewicz told TechCrunch. “Actually, there’s always been a history of basically prefabricating it and looking at it in the context of a shipyard.”
To begin development of its first power plant (a 1.5 gigawatt project scheduled for construction later this year in Texas), Blue Energy has raised $380 million in financing split between equity and debt. The round was led by VXI Capital with participation from At One Ventures, Engine Ventures and Tamarack Global.
Unlike many nuclear startups, Blue Energy is not designing a new reactor, but rather rethinking how reactors and power plants are built. Jurewicz was inspired by the process Venture Global uses to build liquefied natural gas export terminals. One of his friends works at the company, and when Jurewicz heard more about its approach to building LNG projects, he said it “really clicked.”
“They cut the schedule in half by doing this, which was very disruptive,” he said.
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By moving most of the specialized construction to a shipyard, Blue Energy hopes that a more controlled environment will eventually pave the way to automation and greater cost savings.
“It really minimizes the amount of construction on site and moves virtually everything into a manufacturing environment. Then, once you’ve centralized all that work, you can start to move away from manual welding,” he said.
Once the reactor and other parts are finished at the shipyard, the company plans to move them to the installation site on a barge. Although that limits the total number of sites Blue Energy can target, the company can still use rivers to reach deep into the US, Europe, Africa and Asia.
“Most of our population and most of our freight growth occurs around waterways,” Jurewicz said.
Blue Energy says its approach has attracted interest from project funders.
“We have long been engaged with a number of large infrastructure funds and banks, including three major project finance banks who have responded to our RFP, which is a strong indicator that they feel what we are proposing is a bankable project,” he said.
The key to such financing, Jurewicz added, is the company’s plan to reduce construction costs, which have skyrocketed for nuclear power in recent decades.
“This is the crux of the issue with nuclear power. It’s not the technology, but how to reduce the costs and the construction schedule and get it to a place where it’s predictable,” he said.
