Key Points:
- Blue Energy aims to build nuclear reactors in shipyards for faster, cheaper construction.
- Raised $380 million for a 1.5-gigawatt plant in Texas, starting construction this year.
- Inspired by LNG terminal construction, reducing on-site work and enabling automation.
- Focuses on cost reduction and predictable schedules, a key challenge for nuclear power.
As electrical grids struggle with increasing demand from electrification and AI data centers, tech companies and utilities are re-evaluating nuclear power. Past projects in the U.S. that went over budget and behind schedule have made them cautious, but a startup named Blue Energy believes it has found a way to build reactors faster and cheaper by looking to the industry’s early history.
Jake Jurewicz, co-founder and CEO of Blue Energy, plans to build nuclear reactors in shipyards. Shipyards are ideal because they can handle massive amounts of steel and easily transport completed reactor components to project sites.
Jurewicz explained to TechCrunch that the most common nuclear technology, light water reactors, was originally developed for nuclear submarines. He noted, “There has actually always been a history of basically pre-fabbing it and looking at it in a shipyard context.”
To fund its first power plant project—a 1.5 gigawatt facility slated to begin construction later this year in Texas—Blue Energy has secured $380 million in financing, split between equity and debt. VXI Capital led this round, with participation from At One Ventures, Engine Ventures, and Tamarack Global.
Unlike many nuclear startups, Blue Energy isn’t designing a new type of reactor. Instead, they are rethinking the construction process for existing light water reactors. Jurewicz drew inspiration from Venture Global’s method for building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. He said that a friend working at the company explained their approach, and it “really clicked.” “They cut the schedule in half doing this, which was very disruptive,” he said.
By shifting the majority of specialized construction to a controlled shipyard environment, Blue Energy hopes to pave the way for automation and significant cost savings. Jurewicz stated, “It really minimizes the amount of construction on site, and it moves pretty much everything into a manufacturing environment. Then once you’ve centralized all that work, you can start moving away from manual welding.”
Once the reactor and other components are finished in the shipyard, Blue Energy plans to transport them to the installation site via barge. While this approach limits the total number of sites Blue Energy can serve, it still allows access to regions deep within the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia by utilizing rivers and major waterways. Jurewicz highlighted, “The majority of our population and the majority of our load growth is happening around waterways.”
Blue Energy’s innovative approach is attracting interest from project financiers. Jurewicz mentioned, “We’ve been engaged for a long time with a number of large infrastructure funds and banks, including three major project financing banks who have responded to our RFP, which is a strong indicator that they feel what we’re proposing is as project financeable.”
He added that the key to securing such financing is the company’s plan to reduce construction costs, which have dramatically increased for nuclear power projects in recent decades. Jurewicz concluded, “This is the crux of the issue with nuclear. It’s not the technology, it is how do we get the construction costs and the construction schedule down and to a place where it’s predictable.”
