On Christmas Day in 2015, the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission signed a deal with Russian state nuclear giant Rosatom to build the Rooppur nuclear power plant. The project would cost Bangladesh US$12.65 billion, most of it financed through a Russian export credit. In November 2017, Rosatom poured the first concrete in the village of Rooppur. This June, Bangladesh connected the plant’s first unit to its national grid.
By 2050, the world’s electricity demand will double, driven mostly by developing countries like Bangladesh. Advocates say nuclear power is a clean, safe, and reliable energy source, but steep building costs put it almost completely out of reach for many poorer countries. The World Bank won’t finance nuclear projects, while some of the few other potential lenders charge high interest rates.
China and Russia are happy to step in. Moscow is building 19 nuclear reactors in six countries, plus six at home; China is set to build nine plants in four countries. A new generation of smaller reactors, which could be far easier and cheaper to produce, might transform the industry one day. Already today, China has deals to build small reactors in Hungary, Argentina, and Pakistan.
The United States, meanwhile, has struggled to build even a single new plant. Georgia’s Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, commissioned in 1987, took 14 years to build and cost $10.65 billion—each figure at least double the original estimates. The project ran into lawsuits and engineering snafus. Other Western countries have had similar problems building nuclear plants—and some EU countries are now turning to Beijing and Moscow for help. About 80 percent of all reactors under construction worldwide—58 plants across 17 countries—are Chinese or Russian projects.
How did the world’s two most powerful dictatorships come to dominate nuclear energy?
Ashley Finan is a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and the former chief science officer at the Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. government’s main nuclear-energy research facility. Finan sees China and Russia as having several advantages here—including centrally planned economies, generous state financing, and decades of experience in the field. They also have seasoned workforces and durable supply chains to keep projects on schedule and budget. And their investments don’t have to provide investors with timely returns on capital markets.
The benefits for Beijing and Moscow, meanwhile, are as much strategic as economic. They dictate contract terms to countries worldwide, giving them leverage over global safety and nonproliferation policies. And the economic relationships—through contracts that can run for up to a century—give them leverage over client countries. Bangladesh has missed payments to Russia for Rooppur and flirted with default. It still owes more than $580 million. China and Russia are playing a long game, Finan says, but their nuclear bets are already paying off …
Allison Braden: How important is nuclear energy in the world today?
Dan Meyers
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