Civilian Nuclear Power, Global Systems, and Strategic Competition
The United States is racing to build a technology stack for the 21st century—chips, compute, data centers, talent, standards, and alliances to secure leadership in artificial intelligence.
But there is a dangerous mismatch between our digital ambition and our physical preparedness.
There is no tech stack without an energy stack.
And there is no credible energy stack for the AI age without nuclear power.
Yet while America debates nuclear policy in fragments—reactors here, fuel there, waste somewhere else—our competitors operate with clarity and purpose. Russia and China are not just exporting reactors. They are exporting systems. And systems create alignment.
What the United States lacks is not technology. It is coherence.
Nuclear Power Is Alliance Infrastructure
Nothing binds countries together more tightly—or for longer—than a nuclear power plant.
A reactor is not a transaction. It is a 50- to 80-year relationship involving fuel supply, engineering services, workforce training, safety oversight, grid integration, financing, and waste management. Once installed, it anchors a country to the supplier’s standards, institutions, and geopolitical orbit.
Russia and China understand this. That is why they bundle technology, fuel, financing, and operations into turnkey export packages. Nuclear power, for them, is not energy policy—it is statecraft.
The United States, by contrast, still treats nuclear primarily as a regulatory and environmental issue. That mindset is obsolete.
The Pieces We Have—and the System We Lack
America retains world-class nuclear capabilities:
- Advanced reactor designs and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
- Exceptional safety culture and regulation
- Trusted alliances and global legitimacy
- National laboratories and deep scientific talent
But these assets sit in silos.
Reactor developers pursue licensing.
Engineering firms build projects when contracts exist.
Fuel policy lives inside technical agencies.
Financing is fragmented across institutions.
Capacity building is treated as development assistance, not strategy.
No one integrates the whole.
A nuclear stack is the missing system.
What a Nuclear Stack Actually Means
A nuclear stack is not a single company or a new bureaucracy. It is a state-enabled platform that aligns public authority with private execution—much as the U.S. now does in semiconductors and defense exports.
A coherent nuclear stack would integrate five layers:
- Technology
Large reactors, SMRs, and advanced designs—standardized where possible to enable speed, learning curves, and exportability. - Fuel
Domestic and allied enrichment capacity, HALEU (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium) availability for advanced reactors, fuel assurance tied to exports, and multilateral fuel banks under safeguards. - Financing
Pre-assembled financing packages that combine export credit, development finance, allied co-investment, and private capital—offered early, not improvised late. - Capacity Building
Long-term investment in partner-country regulators, utilities, grids, and workforce—so nuclear projects are absorptive, credible, and trusted before steel is poured. - Governance and Waste Responsibility
Clear standards, transparency, and a serious approach to the back end of the fuel cycle—because credibility requires carrying the full burden of nuclear power, not just the benefits.
This is how nuclear power becomes a strategic asset, not just an energy source.
Why Financing Is the Decisive Gap
Nuclear competition is not being lost on reactor quality. It is being lost on financing.
Russia and China finance systems: long-tenor loans, sovereign guarantees, build–own–operate models, fuel bundling, and political backing that absorbs risk.
The United States and its partners finance projects: slower, fragmented, risk-averse, and often disconnected from strategic priorities.
This is not a capital shortage. Global markets have ample capital for nuclear power. It is a mandate and coordination failure.
Until financing is organized as an instrument of alliance-building, nuclear exports will continue to drift toward those willing to underwrite risk for influence.
Capacity Building Comes Before Exports
Most countries now considering nuclear power do not lack interest. They lack institutional readiness.
They need:
- Independent regulators
- Grid resilience and baseload integration
- Skilled operators and inspectors
- Legal frameworks for liability and waste
- Public trust mechanisms
The United States once understood this and invested accordingly. Over time, that capacity-building muscle atrophied. Russia and China filled the gap—training regulators, embedding advisors, shaping standards long before contracts are signed.
A nuclear stack must rebuild this capability, not as charity, but as strategic preparation.
The Hardest Question: The Back End
No nuclear strategy is credible if it refuses to address spent fuel and waste.
The United States currently lacks a politically viable system for permanent disposal or large-scale fuel take-back. That reality weakens export credibility and nonproliferation leverage.
Reprocessing can reduce waste volume and extend fuel supply—but it does not eliminate the need for disposal, and it raises legitimate political and proliferation concerns. There are no shortcuts here.
A serious nuclear stack does not dodge the back end. It confronts it deliberately, transparently, and over time—because responsibility is the price of leadership.
From Atoms for Peace to the Nuclear Stack
Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace recognized that nuclear technology would spread—and that leadership meant shaping the system, not withdrawing from it.
The challenge today is different, but the principle is the same.
Russia and China are practicing their own versions of Atoms for Peace—without the restraint, transparency, or institutions that once defined American leadership.
If the United States does not build a nuclear stack of its own, others will finish wiring the world to theirs.
Frontiers of Freedom Takeaway
America does not lack nuclear capability.
It lacks nuclear coherence.
The choice is not whether nuclear power will expand globally. It will.
The choice is whose standards, whose fuel, whose financing, and whose alliances that expansion will reinforce.
A nuclear stack is how democracies ensure that the atomic age remains compatible with freedom, stability, and prosperity.
The technology is ready.
The allies are willing.
The stakes are clear.
What remains is the will to integrate—and to act.
In line with my belief that responsibly embracing AI is essential to both personal and national success, this piece was developed with the support of AI tools, though all arguments and conclusions are my own.
Author
Mark Kennedy
Director & Senior Fellow