The world relies on Russia to build its nuclear power plants

IN MARCH 2011 a tsunami engulfed the Fukushima power plant in Japan, ultimately causing a meltdown. The worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, it was a devastating blow to an industry that has been in the doldrums since the 1980s. Nuclear plants closed around the world. The amount of electricity generated by nuclear power plunged 11% in two years and has not recovered since. Within this declining industry, one country now dominates the market for design and export of nuclear plants: Russia.

Flat domestic demand for electricity has curtailed construction of new plants at home, so Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear-power company, has been flogging its wares abroad. It is focused on what Stephan Solzhenitsyn, a nuclear-energy analyst with McKinsey, calls the “great grand middle”: countries that are close allies of neither the United States nor Russia. In April Russia started building Turkey’s first nuclear plant, worth $20bn. Its first reactor is due for completion in 2023. Rosatom says it has 33 new plants on its order book, worth some $130bn. A dozen are under construction, including in Bangladesh, India and Hungary.