Russia says it will help China grow its nuclear power capacity and overtake the U.S. as a leading producer of nuclear energy.
The U.S. currently has 94 nuclear reactors, the most in the world, followed by France and China, tied with 57 each, according to the Power Reactor Information System database.
China is working to expand the number of nuclear reactors it has and “has ambitious plans for the development of atomic energy,” Alexei Likhachev, Russia’s Rosatom chief, told Russian state television.
“The task has been set to catch up and surpass the United States in installed capacity, which means reaching a capacity of more than 100 gigawatts,” Likhachev added.
Asked if Russia plans to help China in this endeavor, he said, “We will help. We are already helping,” Reuters reports.
Russia has already begun to help China build nuclear reactors, but there “is nothing inherently threatening about China expanding its commercial nuclear capacity, nor with Russia helping them,” Jack Spencer, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow in the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, tells The Daily Signal.
Both Russia and China “already have a military nuclear capability, and there is very little overlap between commercial and military nuclear anyway,” according to Spencer.
Russia assisting China in the building of nuclear power will give China greater “access to abundant, reliable, and clean energy to fuel a growing, modern economy,” Spencer explains. “It gives them additional expertise and strengthens their commercial nuclear industrial base. That is the same benefit it provides Russia, and this is where it should be a wake-up call to the United States.”
China has made no secret of its desire to grow its global economic influence and has used its Belt and Road Initiative to do just that. China has been on the forefront of solar energy and production of electric vehicle batteries.
Spencer, author of “Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation,” said nuclear energy is not only clean, but the answer to America’s own energy crisis, and other countries are increasingly seeing the appeal of nuclear energy.
“Like China, countries around the world are looking for clean, reliable power, and nuclear is a serious competitor to provide it,” Spencer said. “As this demand grows, China and Russia will be well-positioned to provide it, and those collaborations can cement a century-long relationship. To counter this, the United States—with its friends and allies, like South Korea, who is itself a leader in commercial nuclear technology—must free its commercial nuclear industry to grow and became internationally competitive.”
President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to advance the development of nuclear energy in the U.S. Trump’s executive order aims to eliminate unnecessary red tape that has slowed, and sometime nearly halted, development of new nuclear energy sites in the U.S.
Trump’s executive orders on nuclear energy, Spencer says, must be “faithfully executed to liberate America’s nuclear industry from onerous and obsolete regulation.”
