The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects.
The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil.
The ban has been formally in place since 2013, but the last time the bank funded a nuclear power project was 1959 in Italy. In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy, on the grounds that the risk of catastrophic accidents in poor countries with less expertise in nuclear technology was unacceptably high.
The bank’s policy shift, described in an email to employees late on Wednesday, comes as nuclear power is experiencing a global surge in support.
Casting nuclear power as an essential replacement for fossil fuels, more than 20 countries — including the United States, Canada, France and Ghana — signed a pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050 at the United Nations’ flagship climate conference two years ago.
The Trump administration, while far less concerned about climate change than it is with competing against the Russian and Chinese nuclear industries, is trying to expand the fleet of American reactors and quadruple their contribution to the country’s electric grids. Cabinet officials have emphasized support for a new generation of smaller reactors that offer the promise of faster deployment but have yet to be proven.
The United States is the World Bank’s single largest shareholder and holds significant sway over its policies. In April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the bank to lift its ban, saying in a speech that doing so would “revolutionize energy supply for many emerging markets.”
A new government in Germany, led by the Christian Democratic Union, has voiced support for nuclear power, particularly the smaller next-generation reactors. Germany decided to phase out its own reactors after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and shuttered its last reactor in 2023.
Even the Union of Concerned Scientists, long a voice of caution on nuclear proliferation, has softened its stance in recent years, saying that while it doesn’t support building new reactors, “the low-carbon electricity provided by existing nuclear power plants is increasingly valuable in the fight against climate change.”
The bank’s move was welcomed by proponents of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, the burning of which is the leading cause of global warming.
“If you care about getting the world off coal, then this is potentially massive, especially in Southeast Asia,” said Todd Moss, executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub. Countries like Vietnam and Indonesia are heavily coal dependent and have sought loans to help them retire coal plants early by replacing them with cleaner alternatives.
The bank stopped funding oil and gas drilling projects in 2017, but continues to work on some gas-related infrastructure in developing countries. In Wednesday’s email to staff members, the bank’s president, Ajay Banga, also raised the possibility that a ban on funding oil and gas drilling could be lifted in the future, but no agreement had been reached.
Over the past decade, the bank has ramped up the proportion of its funding that goes to projects that either help reduce greenhouse gas emissions or help poor countries adapt to climate change. That has led to criticism from the Trump administration. But Mr. Banga has vowed to keep his climate commitments while expanding energy access to hundreds of millions of people in Africa who still lack it. Much of that effort relies on small-scale solar power.
“I’m not a climate evangelist,” Mr. Banga said in an interview this year. “I’m just the guy getting the stuff done.”
Russia, China, the United States and European countries are at varying stages of developing small modular reactors and World Bank financing could help spur their development by opening up new markets in the developing world.
Currently, developing countries largely look to Russia and China for nuclear technology and financing. Because those countries have nuclear energy companies that are partly or wholly state-owned, and which control everything from fuel to financing to construction, developing countries are able to approach them as easy one-stop shops.
“The Russian and Chinese deals come with 30- to 40-year fuel-lockup agreements,” Mr. Moss said. His organization estimates that 20 countries that do not have access to nuclear energy either already have the technical expertise to begin construction or would by 2030.
Ghana, for instance, has urged the World Bank to change its nuclear policy because it wants to build its own reactors without having to throw its lot into one geopolitical corner. It has been trying since the 1960s.
“Things have been slow for us because of global politics around nuclear, but we have been preparing, setting up an institutional structure, identifying sites,” said Ishmael Ackah, a technical adviser to Ghana’s Energy Ministry. “We want a 24-hour economy, industrial production to be happening day and night,” Mr. Ackah said.
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