The nuclear technology that drives next-generation power generation systems shows that the US is trailing China by 10-15 years and makes the United States the world’s number two nuclear power behind China.
The report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based research institute, stated that China has 27 nuclear reactors under construction at the moment, and on average, the reactors take only seven years to construct, which in this case is drastically shorter than the time taken by many other countries.
According to the report, China has emerged as a new nuclear energy power due to its well-coordinated nuclear energy strategy, which entails cheap and easy access to finance, feed-in tariffs, and recognizable steps in the approval process.
From 2008 to 2023, China’s global nuclear patent proportion began to rise from 1。 3 percent to 13. moving up to 4 percent, the country also tops the list of countries in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
The report ‘China Nuclear Power Industry Outlook Report 2021 – Analysis of Capacity, Generation, Power Plants, Investment, Policies, and Key Players’ states government of China has accorded substantial priority to domestic nuclear reactor construction as a policy of Beijing’s energy strategy, the country will advance the exported volume of nuclear technology, as similar to what it has done with electric cars and batteries.
However, the US, for instance, has created just two new nuclear reactors in the last ten years, and these power plants came online many years past the due date over several years ahead of schedule and billions past the cost estimate.
Though the US is still the leader in nuclear power generation, the report attributes this problem to the unabated complacency of lackadaisical attitude towards industrial policy resulting in the country’s overtaking by China.
The report disproves the everyday story where people have tried to herald China as the ‘copier’ while demonizing the US as the ‘innovator’ The study has pointed out how inputs from extensive research have shown that innovators are sometimes replaced by competitors with lowered cost structure visible across several industries in America ranging from consumer electronics, semiconductors to solar panels.
About this point, the report politely reminds us that it is far from obvious that “China is a slow imitator and was always fated to remain a second”, thus the need to get serious on the absorptions of new nuclear technology by the US.
