Blue Energy submits first construction application to NRC

The application relates to the first nuclear unit at the Port of Victoria site and includes a request to start "limited construction activities, including deep foundation and shaft works to house the power plant's first small modular reactor".

Blue Energy said it also included a request to approve its "unique approach to build nuclear faster by first constructing the natural gas portion and balance-of-plant of the gas-to-nuclear plant - that balance-of-plant will subsequently also be utilised by the nuclear reactors".

It also submitted an environmental report, running to 300 pages, "which concluded that there are no significant impacts of the natural gas portion to endangered species, tribal lands, or other environmental or historical concerns".

Jake Jurewicz, CEO and co-founder of Blue Energy, said: "This is another huge step towards building the world's first gas-to-nuclear power plant and proving the Blue Energy approach to build nuclear in the safest, quickest, and most scalable way possible.

"We look forward to completing the licensing process so we can build this groundbreaking gas-to-nuclear plant and demonstrate the world's first project-financed nuclear power product."

Background

Stemming from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Nuclear Science and Engineering Department, Blue Energy was founded by Jurewicz and Matt Slotkin in 2023.

Blue Energy says that reactors make up less than 10% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, with most of the cost coming from "construction and regulatory challenges in the rest of the plant". Its model is for a modular, reactor-agnostic power plant architecture to house the next generation of nuclear reactors using centralised manufacturing at existing shipyards. It says this will cut construction time, with the temporary use of gas generation meaning power can be delivered within 36 months, saying that cuts time-to-power for projects by about a decade.

In November last year, Blue Energy announced an agreement with AI infrastructure firm Crusoe through which it secured a site for an up-to-1.5 GW nuclear plant in the Port of Victoria, Texas, to power Crusoe AI factories on a nearby site. Blue Energy says its gas-to-nuclear conversion will see it power the proposed 1,600-acre Crusoe AI factory campus from 2028, with a transition to nuclear generation by 2031.

In May, Blue Energy announced it was joining up with GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) to collaborate on the Texas project, which will see Blue Energy power the data centre using an initial 1 GW of power supplied by using two GE Vernova gas turbines. A further 1.5 GW of power from up to five GVH BWRX-300 small modular reactors will then be added.

In July it announced a strategic equity investment from Constellation Technology Ventures, the venture arm of Constellation, operator of the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the USA.

In August Blue Energy and GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy signed the next stage of their agreement, advancing engineering design, licensing, and safety analysis of the project.