IAEA and IDB Sign Nuclear Deal to Lift Latin America’s 1.8% Share

Latin America generates just 1.8% of its electricity from nuclear power. The global average sits at roughly 8.4%. That gap is the whole story, and two major institutions have now moved formally to close it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) signed a memorandum of understanding on 24-25 September 2026, on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York, formally announced on 28 September 2026. It is not a cheque. It is a cooperation framework, and its weight lies in what it unlocks institutionally across a region where only three countries currently run nuclear plants.

The move fits a broader pattern of the IAEA teaming up with multilateral development banks, echoing the World Bank agreement struck in June 2025. Here is what the deal actually commits both institutions to, where the IAEA’s capacity numbers point through 2060, why small modular reactors sit at the centre of the projection, and what this run of partnerships signals for anyone watching the region’s energy build.

What the IAEA-IDB agreement actually commits both parties to

The MoU sets out six areas of cooperation, and it helps to see them laid out rather than buried in a sentence. Signed by IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and IDB Group President Ilan Goldfajn, the framework covers:

• Dialogue and knowledge sharing
• Technical assistance
• Capacity building
• Workforce and institutional capacity development
• Energy-system planning and infrastructure advancement
• Technical, institutional and economic aspects of nuclear technologies, spanning large-scale reactors, small modular reactors (SMRs), and other emerging technologies

The scope reaches past electricity. The agreement also extends into non-energy domains: improved access to healthcare, agricultural productivity, sustainable farming methods, and the management of soil, water and nutrients. That breadth positions it as a development framework, not a pure power deal.

The IDB agreement connects to a wider global nuclear governance architecture spanning treaty obligations, safeguards arrangements, and multilateral financing conventions that determine which technologies can be transferred, on what terms, and with which accountability structures attached.

Grossi on the agreement IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said the agreement reflects growing recognition of nuclear energy’s role in sustainable development, energy security, and economic growth.

Now the boundary. No dedicated IDB financing window was attached to the MoU. No earmarked lending envelope. No country-level project package sat alongside the announcement.

That absence is not a flaw to skip past. It tells you the near-term work here is institutional and analytical rather than transactional, which reframes what progress looks like on this timeline. Read this as the enabling layer, the groundwork that has to exist before project-level financing can even be discussed.

For anyone tempted to price in immediate capital deployment, the scope is the corrective. This is the framework stage, and treating it as anything more would overstate what was signed.

A region starting from a low base, with projections pointing sharply upward

Start with the 1.8%. That is nuclear’s share of Latin America’s electricity today, against a global figure near 8.4%, and only Argentina, Brazil and Mexico currently operate any nuclear facilities at all. The region sits well below the worldwide norm, which is another way of saying the room to grow is substantial.

Now widen the frame. According to the IAEA’s 2026 report on energy, electricity and nuclear power estimates, global operational capacity stood at 377 GW(e) in 2025. By 2060, the conservative scenario puts that at 696 GW(e), close to a doubling, while the optimistic scenario reaches 1,284 GW(e), more than a tripling.

Latin America’s own trajectory follows the same upward pull. The IAEA projects regional capacity to more than double by 2050 and to reach roughly 2.5 times current capacity by 2060.

The number that anchors the long view Latin American nuclear capacity is projected at roughly 2.5 times current levels by 2060, according to the IAEA’s 2026 estimates.

For a long-horizon thesis, that 2.5x figure is the one that matters. It points to sustained uranium demand growth and a multi-decade infrastructure build, not a quick trade you can time to a quarter.

The most immediate lever is unglamorous but real. Reactors in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are approaching or past their original 40-year design lives, and extending their operating life is one of the most cost-effective ways to hold onto low-carbon baseload power while new capacity is planned.

Brazil’s uranium supply positioning adds a supply-chain dimension to the regional story: the country holds significant uranium reserves and has been expanding domestic enrichment capacity, meaning the IDB framework could eventually intersect with sovereign fuel security decisions as well as reactor deployment.

Why small modular reactors are central to the regional build-out

The case for SMRs starts with the map. Many Latin American countries run smaller grids, serve remote communities with limited transmission connectivity, and operate with constrained fiscal space. Gigawatt-scale plants do not fit those conditions neatly.

Smaller, modular units do. World Bank and IAEA materials describe SMRs as offering flexible deployment, lower upfront capital requirements than large reactors, and the potential for wide adoption across diverse grid sizes and geographies. That framing maps directly onto the region’s realities.

The projection reflects it. The IAEA’s 2026 report estimates SMRs will make up around 40% of new nuclear capacity additions in Latin America, which makes them the structural choice for the build-out rather than a niche experiment.

The IAEA SMR forecast underpinning the Latin America projection is itself part of a broader six-year trend of successive upward revisions, with the agency’s September 2026 update raising its estimate to as much as 28% of all new nuclear additions by 2050 at the global level.

For investors tracking SMR developers and the uranium supply chain, that 40% figure embeds modular reactors squarely in the regional thesis. The question is not whether they feature, but on what timeline.

The groundwork that must precede deployment

The honest picture is front-loaded. SMR deployment still demands heavy early-stage investment before a single unit is ordered, and development banks are actively working out how to fund that technical groundwork ahead of any final investment decision.

That groundwork includes:

• Feasibility studies
• Radioactive waste disposal planning
• Licensing frameworks
• Grid upgrades
• Emergency preparedness infrastructure

At the January 2026 workshop held at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, participants including the World Bank Group, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the OPEC Fund for International Development examined how policy-based financing might support treaty adoption and fund exactly this preparatory work. The notable shift is that funding the groundwork itself is now being treated as a bankable activity.

Regulatory readiness is treated as a prerequisite, not an afterthought. According to Nuclear Engineering International’s account of the workshop, financiers stressed robust legal frameworks and independent regulators before hardware.

There is a geopolitical strand too. ANS Nuclear News reported Chairman French Hill voicing the hope that multilateral financing gives developing countries alternatives so they are not forced to rely on coercive financing from Russia or China. It is one thread in the debate rather than the centre of this agreement.

ANS Nuclear News noted in July 2026 that the World Bank-IAEA partnership’s first year stayed focused on workshops and internal expertise rather than project financing. That sequencing tells you the deployment horizon is measured in years of institutional preparation, not quarters.

A pattern taking shape across developing regions, not just Latin America

Step back from the IDB deal and a larger shape appears. The IAEA has been systematically pairing with multilateral financial institutions to open the door to nuclear in developing regions, and the IDB agreement is the newest node in that network.

The template was set on 26 June 2025, when the World Bank Group and the IAEA signed their own MoU, the World Bank’s first nuclear-related collaboration after it lifted its longstanding ban on financing nuclear power. That partnership runs on three workstreams: building nuclear knowledge inside the World Bank, supporting life extension of existing plants, and advancing SMRs.

The World Bank nuclear energy financing framework, updated in July 2026, states that for countries with existing nuclear programmes, access to financing can be a constraint, with World Bank Group institutions potentially playing complementary roles consistent with their mandates and risk frameworks.

The IDB partnership broadly follows the same logic, and the January 2026 Vienna workshop widened the circle further to include the EBRD, ADB and the OPEC Fund.

The IDB-IAEA framework sits alongside a parallel track of bilateral nuclear cooperation taking shape within the region itself, with Argentina and Chile having formalised their own agreement in 2026 under the Tlatelolco Treaty architecture that governs Latin American nuclear activity.

The World Bank on the financing gap The World Bank’s nuclear energy topic page, updated 2 July 2026, states that for countries with existing nuclear programmes, access to financing can be a constraint, with World Bank Group institutions potentially playing complementary roles consistent with their mandates and risk frameworks.

One thing is still missing from every one of these agreements as of 30 September 2026: no country-level loan approvals, no named reactor projects, and no confirmed government announcements or SMR vendor deals for Argentina, Brazil or Mexico.

That marks this out as an institutional preparation phase, not a deployment phase. The convergence of the World Bank, EBRD, ADB, OPEC Fund and now IDB around IAEA frameworks inside 15 months signals a structural shift in how multilateral capital is positioning itself relative to nuclear. For investors, that alignment is the enabling architecture that eventual project financing will run through.

What the institutional groundwork signals for the years ahead

Two tracks are running at once. The IAEA’s 2060 projections and the 40% SMR figure describe the destination, while the current run of frameworks, workshops and capacity-building describes the starting line. The distance between the two is the investment timeline.

Three variables will decide whether those projections convert into steel in the ground:

• The pace of regulatory and legal reform in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico
• The speed at which multilateral banks build nuclear-specific financing instruments beyond the framework stage
• Whether SMR technology and supply chains mature on a schedule that fits the region’s energy transition commitments

What stays genuinely unresolved is worth stating plainly. As of 30 September 2026, there are no country-level programmes, no named vendor agreements, and no financing commitments publicly announced. The next material signals to watch are country-level announcements and any move by the World Bank or IDB from frameworks toward project-specific instruments.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors.