In 1969, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee switched off a pioneering experiment in nuclear power generation for the last time. Now, the Chinese government has given the go-ahead for a plant based on their blueprint in Gansu Province, in western China.

The Gansu plant — which uses what’s known as a Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor — was jointly developed by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) and the State Nuclear Power Automation System Engineering Company. While it is still at the experimental stage, analysts say it represents a breakthrough in the next generation of nuclear energy technology: The reactor is safer than those currently in use around the world, and it requires far less water during the cooling process. Its development is testament to China’s rising status in the global nuclear industry.

“China has the potential to become a nuclear leader in the same way it became a solar leader,” says Cory Combs, an associate director at Trivium, a China-focused policy analysis firm. “I think that is obviously a concern economically, politically and geostrategically for a lot of Western countries.”

…if you’re not building plants, your skills atrophy. Your supply chain participants look for other things to do. People retire. Whereas China just has this massive domestic market [for nuclear].

Ravi Madhavan, a business professor at the University of Pittsburgh

As the world scrambles for alternative forms of energy to combat climate change and replace the gas that’s in short supply due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many countries — including the U.K. and Japan — are looking at nuclear power with fresh eyes. 

The controversial fuel source, which doesn’t generate planet-warming greenhouse gas but does produce radioactive waste, has suffered a reputational decline in much of the West, following accidents in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and most recently, Fukushima in 2011. The U.S. and Western Europe — home to a host of plants built in the 1970s that are approaching their end-of-life — have largely stopped constructing new reactors; when they do, the projects often blow their budgets by billions of dollars and run years behind schedule.

In China, the reverse trend is at play. In 1990, the country didn’t have a single commercial nuclear reactor. Now, after a spate of new builds, it’s the world’s number three user of nuclear power after the U.S. and France, with 52 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity. Beijing sees the technology as an ideal source of on-demand power to back up renewables as it retires more coal-fired power plants. Currently, only about 5 percent of China’s energy comes from nuclear power; S&P Global Commodity Insights projects this will climb to 10 percent by 2035.

“It’s very clear from a technological standpoint what it [nuclear] is good for,” says David Fishman, a senior manager at the Lantau Group, an Asia Pacific energy-focused economic consultancy. “It serves a baseload function, in that it has predictable, steady supply of power, and it has little, very light exposure to international markets, to volatility in coal or gas.”

During the past decade, China has built 39 of the world’s 68 new reactors. This year alone, China has approved 10 more, according to energy consultancy BloombergNEF (BNEF), and is aiming to build six to eight more a year through 2025. In contrast, the U.K. is embarking on its first new reactor in 20 years, while the U.S. launched its last two reactors in 1996 and 2016 (two more are expected to come online in 2023, but they are the only new builds under construction).

Beijing’s 14th Five Year Plan outlines a goal of 70 GW of nuclear capacity by 2025. That’s still less than the 95 GW online in the U.S. today, but the American fleet is set to decline, while China has a further 58 GW either planned or under construction, according to the World Nuclear Association. State-owned China General Nuclear Power Group, one of China’s two main nuclear companies alongside China National Nuclear Corporation, has said it is aiming for 200 GW of nuclear capacity either in operation or under construction by 2035. 

China’s reactor construction frenzy, experts say, has allowed the country to hone its nuclear engineering skills and become a world-leader in the industry, even where the science originated elsewhere. The Oak Ridge laboratory in Tennessee collaborated with China’s SINAP on research and development for salt-cooled reactors — like the one in Gansu province — from 2014 to 2016. China has gone on to actually build and commission one.

“China is one of the few countries in the world where they’ve been able to build a number of large reactors in the last decade or two,” says Ravi Madhavan, who teaches business at the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads a multidisciplinary program studying China’s nuclear energy capability. That’s an important advantage, he says, because “if you’re not building plants, your skills atrophy. Your supply chain participants look for other things to do. People retire. Whereas China just has this massive domestic market [for nuclear].”

…the fact is that China has the funding, the technological capacity, and the talent, to actually try to pull off this pilot.

Cory Combs, an associate director at Trivium

Being able to draw on public finance has been another key advantage. In the West, nuclear projects – prone to delays, budget blowouts, and political headwinds – are hardly investor-bait. That’s why analysts say it’s no coincidence that today’s leaders in nuclear energy are China and Russia. China, “[has] the benefit of just oodles of government money poured into any kind of program that helps … enhance their energy security,” says Fishman, from the Lantau Group. 

China is in turn seeking a greater share of the nuclear energy export pie, currently dominated by Russia. Under the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero scenario, global nuclear capacity will need to double worldwide to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2015, Beijing struck a deal with the U.K. to participate in three new reactors; Pakistan switched on a Chinese reactor in 2021, and in 2022, China signed an agreement with the Argentinian government to build a plant there.

From a technological perspective, few experts doubt the appeal of Chinese nuclear power to prospective buyers. “If you were a country looking to build new reactors, you want someone who’s really invested in and building the same reactors they are exporting,” says Matt Bowen, a scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. 

But Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches nuclear technology trade, says that for Beijing, “the problem becomes the willingness of the international market to accept Chinese reactors,” due to concerns about Chinese influence over such critical national infrastructure.

The U.K. Government has grown increasingly uneasy about China’s role in its nuclear sector since the agreement the two countries made seven years ago. Its flagship new plant, Hinkley C, is 20 percent owned by China’s CGN, and the 2015 deal also envisaged CGN would play a key role in the next-in-line project, Sizewell C. But due to the souring bilateral relationship, the U.K. has made moves to oust China from that reactor, which is not yet under construction.

“China may encounter an international pushback from countries more aligned with European and American values,” says Liu, though she notes much of the future demand for new nuclear power is likely to come from the developing world. “Countries in the Middle East, or Africa in general – that’s also a huge market.” 

If the Gansu Province reactor works, China’s next step, according to Chinese domestic media, will be to build a 373 megawatt plant, enough to power about half a million homes. That would be an unprecedented achievement. “But the fact is that China has the funding, the technological capacity, and the talent, to actually try to pull off this pilot,” says Combs, from Trivium.

---