China flips nuclear sanctions upside down: Western regulators are banning Chinese nuke tech
Posted: 16th September 2025
This is a transcript, for the YouTube video found here:
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This is a transcript, for the YouTube video found here:
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Bullets:
Exports of Western nuclear technology and equipment to China are under heavy sanction by Western governments.
The Chinese nuclear industry responded by building an ecosystem and supply chain that is almost entirely domestic, and self-sufficient.
This was shocking even to top Western experts, who now concede that China’s nuclear programs are best in class, while the industry is stagnating in North America and Europe.
Consequently, China’s universities for nuclear engineering now lead the world.
China also seems to have broken the “Cost Escalation Curse” that typifies power projects elsewhere. Chinese firms build new plants far more quickly, and at far lower price points, than were believed possible.
China is now exporting reactors, technology, and talent to friendly countries, while Western regulators are closing off its access to more affordable and faster Chinese tech.
Report:
Good morning.
It’s a common theme now, and it is hard to figure out, that our top industry experts and public policy officials in Western countries finally get around to visit China for themselves, personally, and are stunned by what they’re seeing. Auto executives in Japan, and the head of Ford Motor Company—they have to be reading their own company’s reports that show their market share getting annihilated by Chinese automakers. But it doesn’t register with them until they’re face-to-face with seeing Chinese cars, or Chinese car factories, in person.
We were surprised by the market reactions Chinese AI systems like DeepSeek, because it was common knowledge here how good their AI is, and how they are already in wide use. But our experts back home never bothered to test the systems head-to-head until long after trillions of dollars had been invested by Western investors thinking we had the whole industry to ourselves. And even recently, Silicon Valley insiders booked flights to China, talked to people on the ground here, and said the race is over.
So we don’t know what the problem is, that top experts in industry and science read reports from their own people, but they don’t seem real until they see it for themselves. But here we go again, this time in nuclear. The director general of the World Nuclear Association came to China for a tour of China’s nuclear plants, and was “speechless.” “Amazement”, “stunned by China’s advanced capabilities and incredible industrial scale.” But she isn’t new to the job—she’s been director of the World Nuclear Association for 5 years. We’ve quoted reports from the Association, about China’s nuclear industry, but seeing it for herself makes it all real. Maybe it’s that.
The “progress China has achieved happened despite stringent US sanction.” We’ve noted before that whenever we see those words in that order, change “despite” to “because of”. Once we get that, it’s not ironic that the suspensions of equipment sales “backfired spectacularly.” It was a logical consequence. The sanctions forced Beijing to build a completely self-sufficient industry. That industry now is an “unattainable benchmark of efficiency”—unattainable by Western countries, that is. Our own nuclear companies were warning this might happen, as our suppliers were being locked out of the huge market, and that China would figure out how to make do without them.
And so now everything is upside down. Today, it is our countries that suffer from supply chain problems, and so it is we who cannott build nuclear plants anymore. And now it is Chinese technology and suppliers that are being banned, instead of the other way around. Other “countries should be collaborating with China in plant design”, construction, and how to train people, because nobody can do it faster or better now than China, but inevitably politics takes over, and cooperation will be probably impossible. Instead of export bans, of tech and talent to China, now our regulators want for import bans, on tech and talent from China.
“It’s unlikely that any Western country, plus Japan and Korea who keep getting lumped in as Western even though they’re right over there, about two hours away—that any of them will choose to partner with a Chinese company. That’s even though China is clearly far in the lead. China builds far more reactors than anyone else, and the government has approved 10 new plants per year, each year, since 2022. Seven of the 10 most recent projects are here in China. Again, this report is from the very Association whose director was surprised when she saw it for herself.
Around 90% of the Chinese supply chain for nuclear power comes from domestic companies, and that resulted in a vast labor force who knows how to build reactors, and university programs that are always pumping out more.
That is in stark contrast to the situation in US and France, who previously dominated the industry. We don’t build nuclear power plants anymore—there are none, zero nuclear reactors under construction in the United States today. Our supply chains, industrial plant, and talent bases are weak. And that’s obvious when we look at the precious handful of new projects that do come online. Flamanville Unit 3 in France was scheduled to open in 2012, it finally did so in 2024, twelve years late, and cost 5 times more than they thought in the beginning.
In the US, Plant Vogtle in Georgia was delayed seven years and was $15 billion over budget. That was the last one brought online in the US. By comparison, Fuqing 5 in Fujian was built in record time, in under six years, at low cost. Over five thousand Chinese suppliers nationwide, with all the core equipment produced in-country. Now China is exporting reactors—at least fifteen.
The low production cost for these reactors was also a surprise, because Chinese reactor builders have somehow avoided the “cost escalation curse” that has blown up our own ability to build them on time and on budget. Guys at Harvard Kennedy School did a report on it, which was published also in Nature. They found that China dramatically expanded its reactor fleet, while reducing construction costs. Domestically produced equipment and local labor allowed China to develop its own models, so they’re no longer reliant on importing expensive technology and talent.
China will be the world’s largest nuclear power generator in five years. China is building reactors, and we’re not. China is exporting their technology and talent, and we don’t have much of either to export in the first place. And that leads to another theme we keep hitting, hard, which is that higher education and industrial application go hand-in-hand. These are the top programs in the world for nuclear engineering. China has 3 of the top four spots, and four of the top 6. The United States has four of the top 10. At first glance, the US and China are peers. So where are university graduates far more likely to work on a new nuclear reactor project? The US has no nuclear plants under construction. China approved 10 nuclear sites in just one month alone, this April. So we’re lying to ourselves in our own university rankings, because we knowingly are graduating nuclear engineers who will never build one. These are solar farms in Qinghai. Be good.
Resources and links:
Best Universities for Nuclear Engineering in the World
https://edurank.org/engineering/nuclear/
EIA, Plant Vogtle Unit 4 begins commercial operation
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61963
South China Morning Post, US nuclear power export controls won’t stop China, puts American firms at risk: analysts
SCMP China to nearly double nuclear power capacity by 2040 in rapid build-up
Nature, China reins in the spiralling construction costs of nuclear power — what can other countries learn?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02341-z
Breaking the Cost Escalation Curse of Nuclear Power
https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/breaking-cost-escalation-curse-nuclear-power
Sama Bilbao y León became Director General of World Nuclear Association in October 2020.
https://world-nuclear.org/our-association/director-general
SCMP Exclusive | How US nuclear sanctions on China backfired
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3322757/how-us-nuclear-sanctions-china-backfired
SCMP, China amps up nuclear ambitions with 10 new reactor approvals for fourth straight year
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