U.S. cedes the lead on nuclear energy

Bill Gates is among those who have invested heavily in efforts to get new nuclear energy technologies approved by U.S. regulators. The Microsoft cofounder's favored technology, a small, modular nuclear device known as a traveling wave reactor, is not only safe, but also cheaper to build and operate than the dangerous nuclear power technology the United States is currently invested in.

Moreover, these reactors are designed to use existing nuclear waste as their fuel. In other words, their use would actually reduce stores of waste generated by huge reactors such as New Jersey's Oyster Creek.

Unfortunately, all the arguments for developing and licensing small, modular nuclear reactors fell on deaf ears at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission has no immediate plans even to begin assessing traveling wave or any other small nuclear technology.

It is not as if mini-nuclear technologies are experimental and unproven. The basic science was developed and paid for by the U.S. government in the 1950s. The Navy has had about 100 small nuclear reactors operating with a perfect safety record for 50 years on its nuclear-powered submarines. Our modern aircraft carriers are all nuclear-powered. And there are about 60 low-energy reactors, mostly in American universities, that have been used in nuclear medicine for half a century.

Recent news that Gates has been meeting with the Chinese about traveling wave technology is particularly ominous. This could help put China at the forefront of a new industry and leave the United States, in nuclear terms, a banana republic.

The Chinese lack the contentious, partisan political structure that prevents some alternative technologies from growing in the United States. One is reminded of Mao's injunction to "let a hundred flowers blossom," which is still the Chinese government's attitude toward technological innovation. With this approach, and no need to contend with uninformed public opinion or political bickering, China threatens to rapidly outpace America in developing tomorrow's means of energy production.

In the 1980s, I went to China to help build factories for the manufacture of fiberglass luxury yachts. The Chinese started from absolute scratch, never having even seen a fiberglass yacht, yet in relatively short order, they were exporting million-dollar boats. If they start applying this kind of innovative energy to the construction and export of small, modular nuclear reactors, the world will cease to look to America for energy solutions. The Chinese, standing on the shoulders of half a century of American ingenuity, will inherit the leadership of the world's most vital industry.