U.S. Labs Look to New Materials to Close China's Nuclear Lead

The United States is racing to reestablish itself as a frontrunner in the global nuclear energy sector. While the country still maintains its status as the world’s largest nuclear power producer, it likely won’t be able to hold onto that accolade for long. China has vastly outspent the United States on nuclear power research and development for years now. As a result, its sector is younger, more advanced, and growing at a fast clip while the American fleet stagnates and its reactors age out. Moreover, China is pushing the envelope on next-gen nuclear technologies like small modular reactors and molten salt reactors, giving Beijing a great degree of control in the sector’s future direction.“By a wide margin, China will have the world’s most dynamic and significant nuclear industry through 2035,” Damien Ma, energy lead analyst for Gavekal Technologies, wrote in a 2026 report, as quoted by the South China Morning Post in June. “Construction efficiencies mean China can build a new plant in about six years, compared with more than a decade for the latest Vogtle reactors in the US,” Ma went on to say.But the Trump administration is determined to change that narrative, with the stated intent to “produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market.” Building on nuclear energy supports prioritized by the Biden administration, in the last several years the federal government has made inroads toward directing much-needed funding toward the sector, with a focus on next-generation and advanced technologies in order to stay competitive with China. This renewed focus has already contributed to several breakthroughs in the sector. Just this week, researchers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) announced that they have developed a new metal alloy that has demonstrably withstood stresses of up to 600 megapascals (MPa) at room temperature. This durability could make the material indispensable in nuclear reactor designs in the future.But, even more importantly, the discovery of the experimental alloy, called V555, confirms a process, called robust alloy design (RAD), developed by the PNNL to rapidly screen, simulate, and optimize different materials for use in nuclear power contexts. “The work has developed into a pathway for the nuclear materials community to explore and evaluate a broader range of materials for future nuclear systems,” Osman El Atwani, PhD, a materials scientist and study leader, told Interesting Engineering.“We wanted to show that you can actually choose elements from scratch, if you have the right criteria in mind, and can systematically design a material for nuclear applications,” Mohan Nartu, PhD, a PNNL materials scientist who worked on the project, stated in a press release related to the breakthrough. These kinds of materials breakthroughs are expected to speed up as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into the sector. “Finding new materials, catalysts or processes that can produce stuff more efficiently is the sort of ‘’needle in a haystack’ problem that AI is ideally suited to,” the Financial Times reported last year in an article musing about “How AI might save more energy than it soaks up.” In July, researchers at University of Toronto Engineering announced that they used AI to successfully develop six new metal alloys that could transform the functionality and durability of components in extreme environments including jet engines and nuclear power plants in just a few weeks. “There’s enormous demand for materials that can stand up to huge swings of temperature and pressure, such as what you would find inside a jet engine or in the steam generators inside nuclear power plants, anywhere conventional steel just can’t survive,” said Yu Zou, who led the project..However, some critics think that a focus on futuristic technologies might be a misguided approach to revitalize the United States nuclear energy sector. A recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal argued that the government’s efforts would yield better results if directed toward nuclear technologies that we already know how to build and operate. “The administration is chasing unproven technology when it could encourage Wall Street investment in large-scale reactors,” wrote Paul Tice.By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.comMore Top Reads From Oilprice.comGasoline Up 34% and Heating Oil Up 74% as Voters Head to the MidtermsDARPA Backs Project to Measure AI Energy Use at Every Stage of the WorkflowU.S. Intelligence: China Could Put Laser Weapons in Space by 2030