Nuclear industry -not likely to be a big future winner in China and Russia

The Next Nuclear Renaissance?

CATO Institute, Steve Thomas, Fall 2025 • Regulation,

………………………………………………………………………….China, through its home market, and Russia, through its exports, have appeared to buck the trend of apparently increasing difficulty in obtaining new nuclear orders. Does this experience mean they will have a dominant role in future world nuclear power markets?

China / China’s first nuclear plant began construction in 1985, and up until 2007 there followed a trickle of 14 orders, six imported from France, two from Canada, and the rest supplied by Chinese vendors. Then, from 2008 to 2010, there was a flood of 20 orders: most of which were to use 1970s technology licensed from Areva NP. China also imported four Westinghouse AP1000s and two Framatome EPRs with the expectation that one of those designs—most likely the AP1000—would be licensed by a Chinese company and form the basis for future orders for China. Those six imports saw the worst construction performance of any nuclear plants in China, all taking about 10 years to complete, not the four years forecast. Reliable costs for them have not been published but are certain to be high.

There was then a sharp fall in home orders for China, with only a few placed in the period 2011–2016 after the Fukushima disaster. Ordering then resumed at two to four reactors per year. Two of the three Chinese vendors, China General Nuclear (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation, both previously licensed to Areva, began to develop a design, Hualong One, that they claim would meet the safety standards in Europe and the United States. China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation indigenized the AP1000 under license to Westinghouse, calling reactors using its version CAP1000. It also scaled up the design to 1,500 MW in the CAP1400 design, claiming the design is its own intellectual property. From 2015 onward, most new orders used either the Hualong One or CAP1000 design. There have also been six orders for Russian imports to add to four previous imports from Russia.

From about 2014 onward, China began efforts to win reactor export orders. It appeared to have won orders in Turkey (CAP1000/CAP1400) and the UK (CGN HPR1000), and it planned to carry out the construction for two reactors in Romania using Canadian technology, but those projects all collapsed. Its only exports have been six units to Pakistan, four dating back to before 2011. Little has been published about the factors that led to these orders for Pakistan, but the conspicuous failure to win export orders elsewhere suggests special political factors were involved in Pakistan.

China is increasingly dominating world nuclear statistics and is likely to overtake France in the next couple of years to become the country with the second largest nuclear capacity in the world (behind the United States). In May 2025, it had 57 operating reactors, and it accounts for nearly half (28) of the reactors under construction in the world in 2025. However, in terms of its contribution to China’s electricity supply, in 2023 nuclear was less than 5 percent, and the reactors under construction are likely only to cover demand growth. New low carbon generating capacity in China is dominated by renewables. It was reported that, in April 2025, the capacity of renewables plants in China had reached 1,400 GW, compared to 56.5 GW of nuclear capacity.

China is now explicitly excluded from bidding by the potential nuclear markets in Europe, so it seems likely the Chinese nuclear industry will continue to rely mainly on its home market. Whether China judges it worthwhile to try to win the few orders likely to be placed in the developing world remains to be seen.

Russia / Russia, via its vendor Rosatom, was the first country to offer modern reactors with a core-catcher with its AES–91 design (sold to China). In 2006, it launched its AES-2006 design, which it claimed met all the European safety standards at the time. There were ambitious targets for orders for the home market, but by 2025 only four new reactors using the AES–2006 design had been completed, with two under construction and a further two using its successor, VVER–TOI, under construction. Rosatom was much more successful in export markets, accounting for the majority of world nuclear export orders from 2010 onwards. This includes eight orders from China and six from India. However, Rosatom’s most impressive achievement probably was its exports to countries with little or no existing nuclear capacity. These included reactor sales to Bangladesh (two), Belarus (two), Egypt (four), Iran (one), and Turkey (four). Some other prospective orders never materialized; for example, to Jordan and Vietnam.

The factors behind this export success appear to have been Russia’s offer to finance the purchase and the possibility of it taking an ownership stake in the power company (as in Turkey). Also, Rosatom is willing to sell to markets like Iran that would have been politically infeasible for other suppliers.

Rosatom has been relatively unsuccessful in Europe, apart from its orders to Belarus. An order for Finland, Hanhikivi, was abandoned in 2021 before construction started, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and an order for Hungary, Paks 2, placed in 2014 was only expected to start construction in 2025. Plans to submit the Russian design for evaluation by the UK safety regulator in 2015 were not proceeded with. The Russian invasion of Ukraine means Rosatom is likely to be excluded from European markets for the foreseeable future.

Russia’s most recent export order was placed nearly a decade ago, and it currently has few export prospects. Several factors may explain this. One is a shortage of human and financial resources. Rosatom is reportedly struggling to recruit sufficiently skilled workers, and the strain on its financial institutions of providing loans, typically $5 billion per reactor, may be telling. Also, it may have exhausted the stock of new reactor markets. Its exports have often been to countries that have long aspired to own nuclear power plants, like Egypt and Turkey, but had never been able to place orders, often for reasons of finance. As with China, many markets will be closed to Russian exports, and it seems unlikely that Rosatom will win large numbers of nuclear exports……………………………………………… https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2025/next-nuclear-renaissance#china-and-russia