Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Jurowicz: Accrued financing interest accounts for a third of nuclear project costs

Jake Jurowicz · Did someone just figure out how to project finance nuclear? · Aug 12, 2026 · at 13:34

Jake Jurowicz, CEO of Blue Energy, explains how decade-long construction schedules drive up nuclear capital costs.

0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.2s

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“Because these things are taking 10 plus years to build, the interest accrues, and that ends up being a third of the total project cost.”

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The claim, plainly

Because traditional nuclear plants take over 10 years to build, accrued capitalized interest on debt accounts for one-third of total project cost.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim states that for traditional nuclear plants requiring 10 or more years to construct, accrued capitalized interest (Interest During Construction / IDC) accounts for approximately one-third of the total project cost. Both standard energy finance modeling and empirical project data substantiate this assertion. Peer-reviewed benchmarks from the MIT Energy Initiative, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) consistently show that at market-based financing rates and construction timelines of 10+ years, accrued IDC represents roughly 30% to 40% of total nominal project costs. Furthermore, real-world megaprojects with 10+ year timelines, such as the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 expansion in the United States and Hinkley Point C modeling in the United Kingdom, demonstrate that capitalized interest/financing charges constituted 33% to 40% of all-in expenditures.

MIT Energy Initiative (2018) and NEA (2020) economic studies found that Interest During Construction (IDC) constitutes 30% to 35% of total capital expenditures for traditional nuclear plants with extended lead-time assumptions.
IAEA technical analyses determine that for 8 to 10+ year construction periods with commercial interest rates (7%–10%), accrued IDC accounts for 30% to 45% of total nominal investment costs.
Empirical data from the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 project (which took over 11 years to build) showed that Allowance for Funds Used During Construction (AFUDC) and financing charges accounted for approximately 40% of the project's ~$35 billion total cost.
EPRI and UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero modeling on 10-year gigawatt-scale reactor builds found that financing and accrued interest during construction represent approximately 30% to 33% of final project costs.

Checked against

[1] researchgate.net [2] researchgate.net [3] iaea.org [4] nih.gov [5] stopthesethings.com [6] substack.com [7] nucnet.org [8] epri.com

"interest during construction" nuclear "total capital cost" "30%" OR "35%" OR "40%" OR "25%" "interest during construction" nuclear "one third" OR "30%" OR "third of" "interest during construction" accounts for "nuclear" "percent" OR "%" "interest during construction" "overnight" "nuclear" "10-year" OR "10 years"

assessed as of 2026-09-02

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Mentioned

capitalized interest nuclear plants

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