Think Locally, Act Globally

To Export Nuclear Climate Solutions, it’s Time to Reverse the Dictum

By Matthew L. Wald

The world has a crying need for a new class of high-tech products that companies in the United States have designed and are trying hard to sell. But so far, it isn’t happening.

The products are advanced reactors, which could help meet a potential doubling of electricity demand globally without defaulting to coal.

The nuclear export business is going mostly to countries that have active domestic construction programs, with proven products, and have the ability to offer package deals—financing, fuel, spent fuel removal, and extensive construction assistance. Those countries are prowling the developed and developing world, signing memoranda of understanding, and pouring concrete.

In contrast, American firms have traditionally sold a “nuclear steam supply system,” not an entire reactor complex. Some companies, like Westinghouse and GE, also fabricate fuel, but apart from the Department of Energy supplying fuel to research reactors, nobody takes the fuel back.

The world may be excited about advanced reactors designed here, said Craig Piercy, the executive director of the American Nuclear Society, at a recent webinar, but “it still seems like we’re at a disadvantage. We’re bringing a knife to a gunfight, competing against countries that have an entirely integrated nuclear industry.”

And other countries have many recently built reactors suitable for export, which potential buyers can tour. “Until we have a functioning reactor that we can give them and build in other countries, they’re looking to other countries,’’ said Brad Williams, the lead for energy policy and strategic analysis at the Idaho National Laboratory.

In that sense, we ought to turn the old environmental dictum on its head. We can think globally and act locally, but in fact we should be thinking about local steps that will allow global action. The United States’ share of global emissions in 2021 was about 13.5 percent, down by nearly half since 1980 and certain to decline further. Electricity consumption will nearly double by 2050, not counting new demand from artificial intelligence, according to Third Way and the Energy for Growth Hub, which recently updated their map of the global market for advanced nuclear. Globally, 98 countries “could be markets for advanced nuclear power by 2050.” Ten are viable now, and another ten by 2030, the groups projected, and the global market for nuclear could triple by 2050.

Thus, America’s contribution to stabilizing the climate may turn out to be helping the rest of the world reduce its emissions, especially the developing world. But for now, other countries that want carbon-free power are not looking here. As DJ Nordquist, vice president of the Economic Innovation Group, notes in a recent web post, “Russia has 45 MOUs (memoranda of understanding) to develop nuclear in other countries. China has 13 MOUs with a goal to sell 30 overseas nuclear reactors to Belt and Road partners by 2030.”

“Both Russia and now China are poised to clean our clocks on nuclear exports,” according to Nordquist.

If selling your product abroad requires demonstrating construction proficiency at home, the winners are probably China, Russia, and India. China has 31 reactors under construction, which means it has a large cadre of highly-qualified welders, pipe-fitters and technicians, backed up by foundries, metal fabrication shops, turbine and generator manufacturers, and all the other supply chain elements.

Russia is busy at home, and in India, Turkey, Hungary and Egypt. Rosatom recently started pouring concrete for the fourth of a four-reactor complex in Egypt, that is expected to supply about 10 percent of the country’s electricity. Egypt is a country that the United States has tried hard to lure into its orbit. But Rosatom offers a package deal, including fuel and financing and building a product that it already has experience with.

And Rosatom has MOUs in various African countries, the kinds of places that during the Cold War, we assiduously sought to keep in an American orbit, or at least neutral.

Our hemisphere is not exempt. Forget the Monroe Doctrine, promulgated by the fifth president of the U.S., that the country was going to keep Latin America free from overseas influence. Today much of that influence has its roots in commercial relationships and imported technology. When Argentina went looking for a vendor for a fourth nuclear reactor in 2022, it ended up signing a contract with China. It’s the Hualong One model, China’s adaptation of the pressurized water design. (But Argentina is in financial straits, and the timing of the project is not clear.)

Other Competitors

Other competitors may emerge. India has plans for a fleet of 220-megawatt pressurized heavy water reactors, derived from Canada’s Candu design. While China and Russia build big machines for big grids, India is building smaller generators that can be dispersed across its electric system, making up for a shortage of transmission. In that regard, India’s reactors suit many third world countries that are struggling to meet growing electric demand but do not have a strong grid. If you place a large reactor on a weak grid, every time the reactor trips offline, it can cause a widespread blackout.

But nuclear exports are barely on the American agenda. Last month the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Energy Security and Climate program held a panel discussion called “Powering Progress: Deploying U.S. Clean Technologies in Emerging Economies.” Several panelists used the now-clichéd phrase, “all of the above,” but the above was wind, solar, batteries, heat pumps and geothermal, not nuclear. There was talk of how to make sure that the United States participates in the value chain of global decarbonization, but in a one-hour discussion, nuclear was mentioned only once, by the moderator, as a topic of an upcoming CSIS event.

It's not that this isn’t on the minds of the nuclear start-ups. NuScale Power, for example, notes that its reactor modules can also desalinate water, using reactor heat to boil seawater without carbon emissions or fuel supply problems. NuScale could have pointed out that this was a solution for Texas or California, but its website notes that a four-module plant could meet the water needs of a city like Cape Town, South Africa.

In a rare step towards success, a company in the United States that wants to develop nuclear plants recently signed an agreement with a firm in Ghana for a project that would use NuScale technology. That puts the U.S. in the lead, for now, against Électricité de France, the China National Nuclear Corporation, Korea Hydro Nuclear Power Corporation, and Rosatom, the Russian state monopoly.

If small modular reactors are as smooth to construct as promised, they will fit well into more settings, and may be particularly well suited for markets in countries without a highly sophisticated technology base. This is because they are in the “some assembly required” category, rather than built from scratch. They have two other advantages. Their scale is more appropriate to smaller grids, and their ability to raise and lower their output promptly will be particularly helpful on such grids. On a big, strong grid, operators can cope with local shortages or surpluses by moving electricity over vast areas. On a small grid, that isn’t possible.  

Many of the small modular reactors also sidestep an obstacle that faces conventional light-water reactors: they need outside electricity supplies. Today’s reactors draw power from the grid to run their control rooms, pumps, valves and other vital equipment, so that if the reactor “trips,” the equipment to keep the plant safe doesn’t stop working. The plants have emergency diesel generators, but a principle of good design is that they have strong grid connections. Designs like NuScale, BWRX and the AP300 can lose offsite power and still shut down safely, with no overheating from the residual heat production in the core. That makes them good candidates for remote areas that have local demand but limited connections to the outside.

Big Reactors Might Work

There are other routes to success. Reactors of a traditional size, but with more modern designs, are attractive in certain contexts, notably in Europe. Westinghouse may succeed in selling more copies of the AP1000, the design used for the new twin reactors in Georgia, although the delays and cost overruns in that project do not make for good product advertising. Poland is spending significant resources on the idea, and Bulgaria and Ukraine are interested.

The United States notably lost out to South Korea on the contract to build the four-unit Barakah plant in the United Arab Emirates, which now stands as a kind of benchmark for cost and schedule. But the UAE hired several American experts in reactor construction and operation, showing that this country still has expertise to offer.

But sales of any kind of reactor need support from the U.S. government. Countries that want civil nuclear energy have to sign agreements that foreswear military uses. China, notably, does not require such pledges. And financing, which China also provides, is also a big issue for the U.S.

The federal government is only intermittently concerned with promoting high-tech exports of any kind. Among the symptoms: Congress let the charter of the Export-Import Bank expire in 2015, and the five-seat board of directors dwindled to two members. The bank loans up to $100 million to foreign entities so they can buy goods manufactured here, but without a quorum, the loans are limited to $10 million each. Boeing, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, among others, lamented the lack of a quorum.

The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation could help with loans to help Western companies export reactors.

The World Bank does not finance nuclear plants, partly because of opposition from one large shareholder, Germany. Indirectly, it still finances coal projects.

Exports are front and center for some policymakers in Washington. The ADVANCE Act, Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy, signed by President Biden in July, allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to establish a “Nuclear Reactor Export and Innovation Branch,” but does not require it to do so, and thus far it has not. The chairman, Chris Hanson, said that the agency is already carrying out many of the functions that such a branch would take on. The agency says it is “generally ready” to license the export of non-light water reactors.

But pre-requisite for exporting them is licensing them for use here, and building them. The NRC is still struggling to establish an advanced reactor licensing framework.

“At the end of the day,” said Amy Roma, a nuclear expert at a Washington law firm, Hogan Lovells, speaking at the American Nuclear Society forum, “for a lot of U.S. origin technologies, we still come back to, ‘please build it in your country first.’”