Why small modular reactors matter
Traditional nuclear plants are enormous, expensive, and slow to build. The Vogtle expansion in Georgia, the only new conventional reactor project completed in the United States in decades, came online years late and roughly $17 billion over its original budget. SMRs are designed to solve that problem. Their smaller size allows factory fabrication of major components, shorter construction timelines, and deployment in locations where a full-scale plant would be impractical or uneconomical.
They also serve purposes beyond electricity. The Linglong One was designed for district heating, industrial steam supply, and seawater desalination alongside power generation. That versatility makes SMRs attractive to countries trying to decarbonize not just their grids but their industrial sectors. For China, which burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, a scalable SMR design could eventually displace fossil fuel use in applications that wind and solar cannot easily reach.
Where the Linglong One stands
China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration, which operates under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, confirmed the start of construction on the Linglong One and described it as the world’s first commercial onshore SMR project. CNNC’s original project timeline targeted commissioning in 2026, a schedule that multiple international bodies, including the World Nuclear Association and the International Atomic Energy Agency, have cited in subsequent reporting.
One important qualifier: the “land-based” distinction matters. Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov, a floating nuclear power plant with two 35-megawatt reactors, has been operating in the Arctic port of Pevek since 2020. It is technically a small modular design, but it sits on a barge rather than a fixed foundation. The Linglong One would be the first SMR built on land and connected to a national grid for commercial operation.
Detailed construction updates from Chinese regulators have been limited. Unlike the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which publishes thousands of pages of correspondence, safety evaluations, and schedule amendments for each project, China’s regulatory system does not produce a comparable public record in English. As of mid-2026, no recent NNSA filing or CNNC operator statement has been identified in publicly available sources that confirms a specific fuel-loading date or grid-connection schedule. The 2026 target is consistent with the original timeline but has not been independently verified by a new regulatory disclosure.
What happened to America’s SMR plans
The collapse of the most advanced U.S. SMR project is central to understanding the current gap. NuScale Power, an Oregon-based company, spent more than a decade developing a light-water SMR and in January 2023 became the first company to receive a design certification from the NRC. Its Carbon Free Power Project, a partnership with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, was supposed to put that certified design into the ground at the Idaho National Laboratory.
It never happened. On November 10, 2023, CFPP LLC and NuScale notified the NRC that the venture was terminated and requested withdrawal of all related licensing materials. The municipal utilities backing the project had concluded that rising cost estimates made the economics too uncertain. With that cancellation, the only U.S. SMR design with full NRC certification lost its only committed customer.
NuScale has continued to pursue international partnerships and domestic interest since the cancellation, but as of mid-2026, no replacement U.S. deployment project using its certified design has broken ground.
TerraPower and the 2030 horizon
The next major American advanced reactor project belongs to TerraPower, the company founded by Bill Gates. Its Natrium reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor paired with a molten salt energy storage system, a fundamentally different technology from both conventional nuclear plants and the light-water SMR designs pursued by NuScale and CNNC.
The NRC issued a construction permit for the Natrium demonstration plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and the U.S. Department of Energy announced a target completion date of 2030. The project benefits from significant federal cost-sharing under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
But 2030 is a target, not a guarantee. Natrium uses a reactor type that has never been deployed commercially in the United States. The sodium-cooled fast reactor concept has a mixed international track record, with France’s Superphénix and Japan’s Monju both closing after operational difficulties. U.S. nuclear construction history offers its own cautionary tales: Vogtle’s two new AP1000 units were originally expected to cost about $14 billion and enter service around 2016 and 2017. They ultimately cost over $30 billion and did not reach commercial operation until 2023 and 2024.
Nothing in the public record rules out similar risks for Natrium, though TerraPower’s backers argue that the smaller scale and modular approach reduce the likelihood of Vogtle-style overruns.
The rest of the Western field
The United States is not the only Western country with SMR ambitions that trail China’s timeline. In the United Kingdom, Rolls-Royce SMR was selected to build a 470-megawatt plant at the Wylfa site in Anglesey, Wales, but the project remains in the regulatory assessment phase with Great British Nuclear. No construction date has been set. France’s EDF has been developing the Nuward SMR concept but has not advanced to a construction permit. Canada has moved further than most: Ontario Power Generation is building a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 at the Darlington site in Ontario, with a target of the late 2020s, but that project too has yet to reach the stage the Linglong One has already passed.
Across the Western world, the pattern is the same: designs in licensing, permits in progress, construction years away. China has concrete in the ground and a reactor nearing completion.
The structural reasons behind the gap
The timeline disparity is not simply a matter of one country working harder or faster. It reflects fundamentally different systems for building large infrastructure.
China’s state-owned nuclear enterprise, led by CNNC and its affiliates, operates under a centralized planning system. The developer, the grid operator, and the regulator share strong institutional incentives to hit construction targets embedded in national industrial policy. Financing is arranged through state-backed channels. Land acquisition, permitting, and grid interconnection follow a coordinated process that compresses timelines in ways that are difficult to replicate in liberalized electricity markets.
In the United States and Europe, nuclear projects must navigate a more fragmented landscape. Municipal utilities, private developers, state and federal regulators, and local communities all exercise influence over whether and when a plant gets built. The NuScale project depended on a voluntary consortium of municipal buyers who could walk away when costs rose. TerraPower’s Natrium plant, even with federal backing, must prove a first-of-a-kind design within a regulatory framework built around large light-water reactors.
These structural contrasts do not mean one system is inherently better or safer. China’s approach concentrates political and financial risk at the national level and operates with less public transparency. Western systems impose higher accountability and public scrutiny but move more slowly as a result. The tradeoff is real, and it shows up in construction schedules.
What one reactor does and does not prove
Bringing the Linglong One online ahead of every Western competitor would give China a valuable reference plant and a powerful export credential. Countries across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa have expressed interest in SMR technology, and a working demonstration reactor is the strongest possible sales tool.
But one reactor does not settle the global SMR market. Long-term leadership will depend on whether designs can be replicated at scale, manufactured efficiently, and operated reliably over decades. China has built more conventional nuclear reactors in the past 15 years than any other country, which gives it deep construction experience. Whether that translates into SMR dominance depends on factors the current evidence cannot yet answer: export financing terms, safety records, fuel supply chains, and the willingness of buyer countries to accept Chinese nuclear technology alongside its geopolitical implications.
For now, the verified picture is narrow but significant. China has a land-based commercial SMR under construction with official regulatory confirmation. The most advanced U.S. SMR deployment effort was canceled. The next major American project is targeting 2030. And the rest of the Western field has not yet matched what China started building half a decade ago. Within that frame, the race is not close.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
