Sizing Up SMRs
Assessing the U.S.-China Competition in Small Modular Reactors
The United States leads in small modular reactor innovation — but China is ahead in the capacity to build and deploy them.
Power is becoming a constraint on America's industrial future. Artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrification are driving demand upward while extreme weather strains the grid. Small modular reactors (SMRs) could help meet that need, but only if their promise turns into electrons on the grid.
China has spent the past two decades building dozens of nuclear plants, while the United States has lost capacity. Each completed project strengthened the suppliers, workforce, and construction capabilities needed for the next, giving China a substantial manufacturing advantage as both countries pursue smaller reactors.
Analysis using the SCSP Tech Scorecard finds that China leads in four of five dimensions: Industrial Capacity, Market Ecosystem, Talent Pipeline, and National Leverage. The United States leads in Innovation Leadership, but designs alone will not deliver energy dominance.
China has already brought one SMR into commercial operation and is advancing another, while the United States has many developers and designs but no commercial SMR nearing completion. China's lead is not guaranteed, however. With the right policies, attention, and funding, the United States can still win.
SCSP Tech Scorecard
Measuring the
Balance of Power
The SCSP Tech Scorecard evaluates national competitiveness across five distinct categories of positional advantage. On a 1–5 scale, China leads four of five dimensions, while the United States leads in innovation leadership.
1 — Negligible/Nascent | 2 — Emerging/Minor | 3 — Competitive/Mainstream | 4 — Advanced/Leading | 5 — State-of-the-Art/Dominant
Innovation Leadership
The United States retains a lead on the strength of its broad patent base and the diversity of its private reactor concepts. But China now leads in nuclear research volume and industry–academia collaboration, and in 2025 Chinese-affiliated authors published more than three times as many papers in Nuclear Engineering and Design as American-affiliated authors.
Options versus hardware: The United States holds over 10,000 SMR-related patents to China's 106, but China wrote more than twice as many of the top 10% most-cited papers of the last five years (218 to 95) and is better at turning its options into hardware.
Industrial Capacity
China holds a substantial advantage across heavy manufacturing, qualified nuclear suppliers, uranium access, enrichment, and construction labor. The United States retains strengths in simulation, national laboratories, and private innovation, and its position is weaker but improving.
China's increasing independence: China's first Hualong One reactor was built with 88% domestic parts, and it roughly doubled its enrichment capacity between 2015 and 2023. The United States still depends on imports or downblended weapons stocks for 95% of its reactor fuel supply.
Market Ecosystem
China leads in deployment economics, concentration of resources, and the ability to absorb first-of-a-kind risk, with state-owned enterprises running nuclear buildout as a coordinated industrial program. The United States leads in private demand, entrepreneurial breadth, and early allied-market commitments.
Fewer options, more focus: China is developing five SMR designs across four organizations, while at least 22 American companies are developing 27 designs. Concentration helps China build faster, but the American model can still succeed if the first projects reach operation quickly enough to unlock follow-on orders.
Talent Pipeline
China has a significantly larger nuclear workforce, including far more people in manufacturing and construction. The United States maintains a slight edge in top-tier nuclear education and in its ability to attract international talent.
Workforce scale: China accounts for 25% of the global nuclear workforce, compared with 7% for all of North America. More than 200,000 people took part in building the first Hualong One unit, while the overruns at Vogtle, America's most recent nuclear build, were partly due to a shortage of skilled labor.
National Leverage
China has the stronger financing and execution model, backed by coordinated industrial policy and direct control of its largest nuclear producers and consumers. The United States leads in exporting SMRs and conventional nuclear technology, and recent regulatory changes should make its regulator more globally competitive.
The funding gap: China's domestic nuclear program spent at least $26 billion on nuclear energy in 2025, compared with a $1.69 billion DOE nuclear energy budget in 2026. China operates 63 reactors, with 32 more under construction.
1 — Negligible/Nascent | 2 — Emerging/Minor | 3 — Competitive/Mainstream | 4 — Advanced/Leading | 5 — State-of-the-Art/Dominant
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Assessment
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