As the world confronts climate change and the worst energy crisis in decades, countries around the world are looking to new nuclear reactors as one source of low-carbon, dispatchable energy. For countries that decide to build new nuclear power plants, most will opt to build reactors supplied by existing vendors, rather than develop domestic designs of their own. A key factor impacting which vendor is chosen to supply reactors to a given country is the associated financing that national governments offer in support of those exports. Russia, the leading vendor of reactors in the world, has supplied billions of dollars of government-backed financing in support of its nuclear exports, as have other vendors from France, South Korea, and China. At some point, the US government will have to decide how it will approach financing US reactor exports in this very competitive environment, and those decisions will impact how much of a role the United States will have in nuclear energy commerce in the coming decades.
The Center on Global Energy Policy hosted a panel of experts to discuss the current international landscape for reactor supply, past financing measures by national governments in support of their reactor exports, and current policy-related issues for US decisionmakers to consider.
Moderator:
- Matt Bowen, Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA
Opening Remarks:
- Katy Huff, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, US Department of Energy
Panel:
- Paul Murphy, Managing Director, Murphy Energy & Infrastructure Consulting, LLC
- Elizabeth Touomou, Commercial Manager, Bechtel Enterprises
- Steven Howlett, Managing Partner, Horn & Watson Capital Strategies LLC
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