The World Bank is facing renewed calls from its biggest shareholder to drop a decades-old ban on funding nuclear power to help the west compete with China and Russia in atomic diplomacy.
French Hill, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has signalled that the new US administration will continue to support the push to fund nuclear projects just months ahead of a crucial decision on the contentious ban.
Hill told the Financial Times last month that World Bank chief Ajay Banga had US backing to end the taboo, as the world’s biggest development fund moves closer to embracing nuclear energy in lending to emerging markets.
“We support both the export of this technology and a much more broad-based approach to financing it,” Hill said.
The World Bank has not financed nuclear power since the 1950s. But it could bring the technology back into the fold within months after a review of energy policies under Banga, people familiar with the matter said.
Banga, a former Mastercard chief executive, has led efforts in the bank to consider how it might factor in technologies that could make nuclear power cheaper, such as smaller modular reactors, people familiar with his thinking said.
Banga earlier this month again signalled his willingness to reconsider nuclear technology in an address to the European Commission. Germany and a handful of smaller European countries have traditionally led opposition to nuclear power as World Bank shareholders.
The US is especially keen for the topic to be revisited, underscoring alarm in Washington that Beijing and Moscow are winning a race to build a new generation of nuclear plants in Africa and Asia.
“I’m in constant discussions with other governments who are extremely interested in expanding nuclear, but they can’t get the attention of anyone in western countries,” Hill, a Republican representing Arkansas, said.
The World Bank is currently finalising a new energy strategy that “is tasked with exploring nuclear as part of a practical, reliable energy mix”, alongside investments in renewables and natural gas, a senior official said. The bank still needs to determine how projects would be affordable for countries, they added. The review is expected to conclude in the next few months.
US scrutiny of the World Bank’s nuclear policy comes as the Trump administration is in the midst of reviewing ties to international financial institutions, a process that is due to report back by August.
Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto that has shaped the administration’s thinking, labelled multilateral organisations, including the World Bank, “inimical to American free market and limited government principles”.
However, Donald Trump also created the Development Finance Corporation during his first term, displaying an openness to institutions geared towards advancing US national security goals.
Hill tabled a bill last month for the US to lobby the bank to drop the ban.
The bill is “a signal that lifting the nuclear ban is a top priority, something the US would like to see happen,” said Todd Moss, director of Energy for Growth Hub, a think-tank which has called for the bank to build up technical capacity on nuclear power.
“They want to make sure American nuclear firms are not slowed down by an outdated policy at the most important international financial institution,” Moss said.
The World Bank approved its first — and last — loan for nuclear power in 1959, helping to fund Italy’s first atomic plant. It explicitly excludes nuclear technology from current lending policy, having previously argued that nuclear safety and proliferation risks are not its area of expertise.
An exclusion of nuclear power by the bank’s International Finance Corporation private sector lending arm, in particular, has been followed by many other development lenders in their own policies.
China’s state development banks have, meanwhile, overshadowed the World Bank in financing energy projects across multiple power sources over the past decade.
Most of the sixty or so new nuclear reactors currently being built are in China and other countries in Asia, compared to an existing worldwide fleet of more than 400 reactors.
Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear monopoly, has also pursued agreements with Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and other countries to finance nuclear plants.
Some US firms have won business in the global revival of nuclear power, such as a deal by Westinghouse to help build Poland’s first plant. But official US financing for projects has been scarce.
While historically controversial, support for nuclear power has recently gained momentum in Washington.
Last summer, then president Joe Biden signed legislation directing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to streamline permitting for new nuclear reactors and speed the process for converting retiring coal plants to nuclear power facilities.
The 2025 legislation introduced by Hill and Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, would go further still — mandating US support for a trust fund to pool resources for nuclear projects across the World Bank and other international financial bodies.
Western democracies should offer competitive bids and cheap financing for nuclear energy projects in countries — ideally with American components and help from the US export credit agency ExIm Bank, Hill told the FT.
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