People build reactors, and people maintain them. A nuclear revival needs both skilled workers and advanced technology.
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In Washington DC on Friday, November 7, 2025, Third Way and The National Interest brought together a room full of nuclear experts to talk about what it will take for the United States to rebuild global partnerships. Some experts in the room were cautious about calling this moment a “nuclear renaissance”. That label was used in the 2000s before shale reshaped energy markets and Fukushima ended momentum in 2011. Today people prefer to talk about a nuclear revival or revitalization, because the expectation is a real buildout at home and abroad. The Trump administration has put forward several executive orders to support nuclear, while Europe has its own set of nuclear policy reversals. But the question keeps coming back: can the United States do this alone?
Nuclear Needs Three C’s: Commitment, Consistency, And Complementarity
The short answer is a resounding no. If the United States wants reactors operating by 2030, it will need foreign partners at every step. Supply chains, technology access and immigration policy all shape what is actually buildable, and none of that happens without cooperation. People build reactors, and without people the entire vision collapses into paperwork and PowerPoint. As Miriam D’Onofrio, Senior Director at X-energy, put it, this comes down to three C’s: commitment, consistency and complementarity across domestic policy. The commitment piece is visible right now. In addition to the administration’s executive actions, global leaders have signed the pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, and the World Bank along with fourteen other financial institutions has lifted the long-standing informal ban on financing nuclear projects.
Yet the consistency piece is the one that foreign partners continue to question. The current administration also shows a clear preference for bilateral deals instead of broader multilateral structures. But this is not only an American issue. Many countries shift their nuclear stance every election cycle, and partners abroad are dealing with their own version of policy whiplash.
Complementarity is the purpose of alliance, and Canada is the natural place to start. It has uranium, it has operating reactors, and it is moving ahead on SMRs, including the BWRX-300 at Darlington. The UK fits into the picture the same way. The point is to line up countries that fill real gaps across the supply chain.
The Fourth C: Competition Between Eastern And Western Nuclear Markets
The United States may aim for the three C’s at home, but competition is becoming the more likely reality, especially as the world split into eastern and western nuclear markets. Nuclear companies plan on decade-long timelines, yet the turn from cooperation to rivalry can be fast. The United States once worked with China on a TerraPower collaboration to build a sodium cooled fast reactor. Under current U.S. policy, exporting advanced reactor technology to China is no longer allowed. TerraPower’s Jeff Navin reminded the room how close the two countries were to sharing blueprints. That window closed almost overnight once industrial policy shifted.
The world today is split into two broad nuclear markets. One is anchored by China and Russia. The other includes the United States, France and the rest of Europe, and Canada. South Korea sits somewhere in the middle. It is a Western ally with deep U.S. industrial ties, yet it also competes aggressively in global reactor markets with a state-backed model. South Korea has even created a government-established entity dedicated to developing small modular reactors. The difference is that the eastern model operates under a clear national strategy, while the western model still relies heavily on private developers navigating fragmented policy signals.
Yet nuclear companies are not selling reactors for quick profit. They are creating long-term bonds between countries that last for the entire life of a plant and often beyond, cementing 80- to 100-year relationships. The U.S. nuclear relationships with other countries are also governed by Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, the so-called 123 Agreements. In essence, the U.S. is saying, “We can work with you on nuclear power, but only if you meet our nonproliferation standards.” Once the agreement is in place, U.S. companies can sell reactors, fuel, parts and services, and they can share designs and technical expertise. Without a 123 Agreement, they legally cannot, which makes the process slow, political and very visible.
Several countries are becoming long-term partners to the United States. The view shared in the room was simple: “if we fight, we are going to lose together.” South Korea and Westinghouse have resolved their past IP disputes, and Japan is emerging as one of the more stable nuclear partners for the United States. There is also ongoing collaboration with Australia on SILEX, a laser-based enrichment technology. Silex Systems and Global Laser Enrichment are jointly advancing the SILEX enrichment technology, with work taking place in Sydney as well as at GLE’s facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Paducah, Kentucky.
Poland, a top-20 global economy with extraordinary GDP growth of 800% over the past three decades, is moving ahead with its National Nuclear Energy Strategy to build its first nuclear plant in Pomerania using the AP1000, a US-reactor. Poland has approached the European Commission for state-aid approval and the United States for debt financing.
Still, too often the U.S. companies arrive with a reactor design and a set of PowerPoint slides, and the foreign partner is left trying to piece together how to build one of the most complex projects in modern engineering. Russia shows up with something very different: a full package that includes the design, the financing, the construction and operations teams, the fuel and even the promise to take back the spent fuel. Recently, Egypt and Vietnam engaged Russia in new nuclear-energy cooperation agreements or negotiations. Such deals function like a virtual pipeline that Russia no longer has to build to exert influence.
Nuclear Revival Depends On Financing, Jobs, And AI
The U.S. has invested heavily in RD&D and promotes domestic technologies through buy-American rules, but most of the companies developing new nuclear technologies are still startups, even if their valuations are in the billions. And we should not expect them to sort out electric rate structures or absorb the political fallout that comes with those decisions. That is the mandate of public utility commissions, while the companies themselves simply need to be good grid citizens as they pursue their own bottom lines.
You cannot talk about nuclear without talking about data centers. It is increasingly plausible that nuclear power and AI data centers will be co-located over the next decade, given the direction of current demand. And if that happens, the financing should come from private capital rather than rate-payers. Yet the financing puzzle remains: nuclear startups may raise billions in equity, but that does not translate into project finance. Even more striking, the United States has never had a PPA that directly led to the construction of a new nuclear plant. First-of-a-kind (so-called FOAK) projects come with staggering uncertainty and risk, and financing becomes the bottleneck. As the saying goes, the first car off the assembly line costs a billion dollars.
The path out of this problem is an orderbook. When you build the same reactor repeatedly, unit costs fall. But orders come only after the first successful delivery, which makes this a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Even if the media focuses on the high cost of FOAK at Vogtle, it often forgets that the second unit came in much cheaper. But orders still depend on the first successful delivery, and that remains the core bottleneck.
The experts noted that in the past, nuclear meetings were mostly attended by people from within the industry. Now the mix looks different. “Lawyers and financiers are showing up to nuclear conferences, dirt is being moved. Opportunity is not only there, but we will be strongly delivering on this opportunity,” said John Kotek, Senior VP at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
High electricity demand from AI is keeping electricity price expectations up, which helps nuclear. Over the long term, the nuclear industry still has to find a way to bring costs down. Those reductions may come from places the sector has not traditionally looked. “Robotics and AI for welding automation could lower U.S. construction costs and even put the U.S. in a position to outbuild China”, said Hyun Kang, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Another way the nuclear industry can strengthen its position is by building community acceptance through real workforce commitments, especially in coal communities where plant retirements often coincide with mine shut-downs. That double hit can be devastating. Jeff Navin noted that TerraPower has engaged a coal town in Wyoming with a proposal that would bring 200 to 250 well-paid union jobs to the new plant. Conversations with the mayor suggest the community has welcomed the idea. And it is worth remembering that nuclear jobs are not only white-collar jobs. Alongside the engineers, there are hundreds of construction roles during the buildout and security jobs once the plant is operating.
If Nuclear Is a Printer, Fuel Is the Cartridge. We Need More Cartridges.
There is a familiar saying in the industry that if a nuclear reactor were a printer, uranium fuel would be the cartridge. You cannot print without it. The United States needs a viable supply chain outside of Russia, which means building an integrated American fuel cycle and tightening partnerships abroad. The U.S. has already enacted a ban on Russian uranium imports, with limited waivers available through 2027 and a full prohibition taking effect on January 1, 2028. This puts pressure on the U.S. to expand domestic mining and enrichment capacity, and the market will still need to address potential circumvention routes, where Russian-origin material is blended or rerouted through intermediaries.
As Jennifer Dunn of URENCO USA noted, the company has no concerns about a shortage of uranium supply. URENCO already meets roughly one-third of U.S. enrichment demand through its commercial-scale facility in New Mexico, right on the Texas border. The plant represents a five-billion-dollar private investment, built entirely without government funding, and supports about 500 American jobs. It is regulated by the NRC and has been authorized to produce HALEU, with first deliveries are expected in 2027. The New Mexico facility is adding 2.5 million SWU of new capacity by 2030. This being said, the advanced fuel market is still in its infancy, and its future size is uncertain. URENCO also operates three European enrichment plants and one in the United States, which allows the company to manage both market and geopolitical risks.
There are other prominent players in this landscape. Cameco, based in Canada, is one of the world’s largest publicly traded uranium miners. Westinghouse is replacing Russian fuel in several markets, including Ukraine, which has relied heavily on Russian-designed reactors.
The United States is not short on reactor designs, talent or ambition. What it needs now is the political will to match its competitors, the financing tools to turn designs into steel, and the partnerships to make the fuel cycle real. Nuclear power has always been a long game, measured in decades, not election cycles. A long-term nuclear revival will not happen without allies and a strategic national plan.