The United States and China are entering a new kind of nuclear competition that could well redefine global power. While Washington still operates the world’s largest nuclear fleet, Beijing is expanding so fast that it is on track to surpass the US within a decade. That shift comes as America faces a looming energy shortage and an aging power grid struggling to meet future demand.
By 2050, the world will require nearly twice the amount of energy it consumes today. AI, electric vehicles, robotics, and quantum computing all need an enormous amount of clean, dependable power. Yet, the already-strained US grid would need to increase generation capacity by 50% by 2040 just to keep up. Current infrastructure proposals would address just about 20% of that growth.
There is only one scalable, clean, high-output solution to that demand: nuclear energy. But while China is accelerating, the US is barely moving.
PRC Expands Rapidly and Overtakes America
With 94 reactors, the United States has the most of any country, but its lead is narrowing. In the past 50 years, the US completed construction on only two new reactors — and it is building none today.
The country operates 58 reactors, but its pipeline is unmatched.
33 reactors under construction
43 approved
147 proposed
First 150 new plants planned in the next 10 years
The long-term strategy in China of standardizing designs, training thousands of engineers, and building a complete domestic supply chain has sharply lowered costs there. While US reactor construction now tops $15/watt, China’s costs have plunged toward $2/watt because it simply builds more, and it learns faster.
This is enabling Beijing to deploy new technologies a decade or more in advance of other countries. China has already brought online its first fourth-generation reactor-mostly developed with domestic technology-and leads in SMRs and experimental thorium reactors. According to analysts’ estimations, this puts the country 10 to 15 years ahead of the US in next-generation nuclear development.
How America Lost Its Nuclear Momentum
America once planned more than 250 reactors nationwide. However, a series of political and public shocks brought a halt to that progress.
The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island killed no one and exposed no one to harmful radiation, but it destroyed confidence and set off two decades of endlessly expensive regulation. Plans for dozens of stations were scrapped; uranium mines closed; construction of reactors slowed to a crawl.
The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, then Fukushima in 2011, solidified global public fear. After Fukushima, the push by the Obama administration for a US nuclear revival ended up with just two reactors finished rather than dozens.
Projects that survived often ran massively over budget and time. At one point, America’s flagship nuclear company, Westinghouse, went bankrupt after a reactor project soared from $14 billion to $34 billion.
As the US stalled, China surged
Energy, Prosperity, and Power
Through history, control over energy defined global leadership. Coal powered the first industrial revolution. Oil defined the 20th century. Nuclear may define the 21st.
China understands this. Early growth in China was powered by coal, cheap but dirty. Today, its coal reserves are estimated to only last around 35 years, and domestic oil and gas cannot keep up the long-term demand. Nuclear energy became its strategic answer, seen not just as electricity but as national power.
America, meanwhile, entered the 21st century with a fractured approach: heavy regulation, aging plants, and no unified industrial strategy. The US grid was weakening, its supply chain withering, as China built dozens of reactors. Today, America lacks much of the heavy forging capacity needed to construct modern reactors without foreign help — including fuel sourced from Russia.
A New Race with High Stakes
Both countries realize that whoever becomes the leader in nuclear energy will have a commanding lead regarding the global industry, AI, and manufacturing-military preparedness. The US is trying to make a comeback. New policies were passed through Congress that aimed at accelerating nuclear permitting.
Major tech companies have invested billions into SMR startups, and the current administration has advocated for a “nuclear renaissance.” Rebuilding supply chains, training a new workforce, and restoring lost capacity will take years, probably decades. China, meanwhile, is already scaling.
The world is watching a new nuclear race unfold, and its outcome could well decide which country shapes the energy future – and with it, the balance of global power – for the remainder of the century.
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