For most of its history, nuclear power was a relatively a small, slow, state-shaped business, even where a private utility owned the plant. A handful of vendors, a handful of regulators and a long list of government bodies kept it manageable. It was much easier to ensure its safety.
However, that is changing fast. Nikkei reported on November 1 that 79 reactors are under construction worldwide, the most since 1986. AI is driving much of it. The IEA says data centre electricity demand grew 17% in 2025, against 3% for electricity overall. Meta’s January deals with Vistra, Oklo and TerraPower could support up to 6.6 GW by 2035. Therefore, finance does not seem to be the issue here rather the question is whether the people watching can grow as fast as the people building.
Fuel is the problem everyone sees
At the IAEA’s first fuel supply chain conference last month, the message was that uranium is sufficient. But existing mines and secondary supplies may cover only about half of projected demand by 2040, and the IAEA says conversion capacity is already short. There is movement. This week Urenco USA marked its first commercial LEU+ production. But every new fuel type means new facilities, new transport routes and new things to inspect.
The watchers are shrinking
Private suppliers bring capital, competition and fresh designs. They also mean every new vendor, fuel maker and developer is another entity a regulator has to license and inspect. That burden lands on every country that buys in, not only the ones building.
It is global because the designs are. Dozens of small modular reactor designs are in development, and the same vendor can face review in several countries at once. The IAEA’s answer is its Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative, which includes a collaborative review process that lets regulators work together on national reviews, and a blueprint for advanced reactor reviews published in March. That is a sensible fix, but it only works if each regulator has enough people to take part. However, many don’t.
The IAEA’s own training programme for SMR regulation points to a gap that many countries lack the regulatory experience, technical resources and workforce to oversee these reactors safely. Newcomers are the most exposed, with a first reactor, a new legal framework, a young regulator and often a vendor-supplied design. The IAEA has been running workshops for these regulators for years, and its regulators’ forum has made them a priority through 2028.
Established regulators are under strain too, the US shows how. It has set a goal of 400 GW by 2050, yet a GAO report in September found its regulator, the NRC, lost about 500 staff on net between July 2024 and June 2026, falling from 2,957 to 2,477. The hiring flexibilities the US Congress granted have barely been used.
There is a fair counterpoint. The NRC finalised its new framework, Part 53, in March, well ahead of its deadline, and a regulator that takes a decade to say yes isn’t protecting anyone either. Speed and safety aren’t opposites.
What worries more is where oversight is being split. As in most countries, licensing, fuel, transport, export controls and safeguards already sit with different bodies. A reactor sold abroad adds the vendor’s home regulator and the buyer’s. The reading is that responsibility for one project can now stretch across several agencies and several borders, with none of them seeing the whole picture.
Exports and safeguards
The pressure is international too. The orders told the US to pursue at least 20 new 123 agreements by January 2029. In July the US signed its 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia, which sets up a two-year study on whether enrichment in the kingdom makes sense. Reporting says it doesn’t require the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, the safeguards standard most nonproliferation experts want. When more suppliers compete for customers, that’s the wrong place to loosen conditions. LEU+ (5 to 10% U-235) and HALEU (10 to 20%) sit above traditional reactor fuel. More facilities handling higher-enriched material means more work for safeguards, which leans on states to oversee their own operators. The more operators there are, the thinner that oversight stretches.
Moneeb Mir, Associate Research Officers, Center for International Strategic Studies, AJK.
