The ghosts of Lenin and Mao might well be smirking. Communist and
authoritarian nations are moving to take global leadership in, and
profit from, the commercial use of nuclear power, a technology made
possible by the market-driven economies of the West. New research and
development could enable abundant, affordable, low-carbon energy as well
as further beneficial products for industry and medicine
Yet
outdated and burdensome regulations and restrictions have stifled
nuclear innovation in the U.S. and other Western nations, and are
pushing these opportunities to China and Russia.
China is joining
Russia to build five new reactors in Iran—regardless of what becomes of
the current negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Beijing and
Moscow are also marketing nuclear technology and infrastructure to other
Mideast and Asian nations. China and Russia have a clear commercial and
strategic purpose in advancing nuclear technology abroad, technology
that the West seems loath to exploit.
If the world is serious
about shifting to low-carbon energy, nuclear energy is the most direct
path. Nuclear power is the densest (in watts per square meter of land)
and safest (in deaths per joule) form of energy known to man. Yet the
expansion of nuclear power and other commercial applications of nuclear
reactions have stalled in the West since the 1980s.
This is
partly due to fears of unseen radiation and memories of accidents like
the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, at a facility originally designed to
produce weapons, in the now defunct Soviet Union. Mainly, though, what
holds back nuclear power is its high cost, which is almost entirely due
to government regulations and restrictions that have kept the industry
confined to minor yet expensive improvements to existing reactor
designs. Out-of-the-box thinking on new reactor concepts that could be
far cheaper and safer is systemically discouraged. The most common
retort to any new idea in the nuclear industry is along the lines of
“that will never be approved in my lifetime.”
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