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By Andre Pienaar
Landmark study finds next-generation nuclear could deliver up to 30 per cent of electricity and cut system costs by nearly a third across eight emerging economies — but the geopolitical race to supply these reactors is already underway.
A major new report commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation has set out the most comprehensive evidence to date that nuclear energy — including small modular reactors (SMRs) — could fundamentally reshape the energy futures of the world’s fastest-growing economies. For national security strategists in Washington, London and allied capitals, its findings carry implications that extend well beyond the energy sector.
The report, entitled The Role of Nuclear Energy in Powering Universal Energy Abundance for Emerging Economies, was produced by Bayesian Energy and Radiant Energy Group. It examines nuclear deployment pathways across eight countries: Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Rwanda and South Africa. Together, these nations are home to more than two billion people and represent some of the most dynamic energy markets in the world.
The central finding is striking. Under the right policy and regulatory conditions, nuclear power could supply up to 30 per cent of electricity generation in several of these markets by 2050, while reducing overall energy system costs by as much as 31 per cent compared with renewables-only pathways. The modelling, conducted using Bayesian’s proprietary Convexity platform, simulated power system evolution from 2025 to 2050 under multiple scenarios, both with and without nuclear deployment.
Nuclear and renewables: complementary, not competing
One of the report’s most important contributions is its reframing of the nuclear-versus-renewables debate. The modelling demonstrates unambiguously that nuclear and renewable energy are complementary technologies. Pathways that include nuclear still rely on major build-outs of solar and wind capacity, but they require significantly less energy storage and transmission infrastructure — translating into billions of dollars in avoided costs for countries where capital is scarce and every investment dollar must be maximised.
As Aman Majid, co-founder of Bayesian Energy, has noted, the inclusion of nuclear in the energy mix means less land use, fewer transmission lines and fewer permitting challenges. However, these benefits materialise only if nuclear projects can be delivered on time and on budget — a caveat the report does not shy away from.
For energy security planners, this finding is particularly significant. Emerging economies that rely exclusively on intermittent renewable generation face acute grid reliability risks, especially as their industrial bases expand and demand for consistent baseload power grows. Nuclear provides the kind of firm, dispatchable generation that underpins industrial competitiveness and energy sovereignty.
The geopolitical dimension: who will build the Global South’s reactors?
The Rockefeller Foundation’s study arrives at a moment of intense geopolitical competition over nuclear exports. Russia’s Rosatom remains the world’s dominant nuclear exporter, with reactor projects under construction or planned across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. China’s nuclear industry is expanding its international footprint at pace, offering financing packages, construction capacity and technology transfer arrangements that many Western vendors cannot match.
The eight countries examined in this report — spanning Africa, Asia and Latin America — are among the most promising markets for new nuclear deployment by 2030. The question of who supplies the technology, finances the construction and sets the regulatory frameworks is not merely commercial. It is a question of strategic influence, technological dependency and the long-term alignment of critical infrastructure with democratic governance standards or authoritarian alternatives.
For the United States and its allies, the report should serve as a wake-up call. The Westinghouse AP1000, along with emerging SMR designs from companies such as NuScale, GE Hitachi, Rolls-Royce and X-energy, represents a credible Western alternative to Russian and Chinese offerings. But translating technological capability into deployed infrastructure in emerging markets requires sustained diplomatic engagement, export finance innovation and regulatory cooperation of the kind that has too often been lacking.
The COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil — held just weeks before this report’s release — underscored the shifting political landscape. Nuclear energy featured prominently in the global climate discussions, with the World Nuclear Association expanding its coalition to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, and the International Atomic Energy Agency highlighting that nuclear technology is now firmly embedded in the official climate agenda. A stocktake from the Clean Air Task Force noted that the sector’s challenge has shifted from political ambition to the practical ability to finance, regulate and deploy advanced reactors at speed.
A new role for philanthropy — and a signal to investors
Perhaps the most novel aspect of the Rockefeller Foundation’s intervention is its explicit call for philanthropy to play a catalytic role in nuclear deployment in emerging economies. Historically, philanthropic capital has been almost entirely absent from the nuclear sector. The report identifies specific areas where grant-funded activity could accelerate adoption: supporting the development of safety standards and regulatory capacity, de-risking early-stage investment decisions, facilitating access to international expertise and strengthening public and civil society engagement.
The Foundation convened twenty experts from across philanthropy, government, civil society and industry to explore these pathways. For private investors and institutional capital allocators, this philanthropic signal is significant. When a foundation of the Rockefeller Foundation’s stature publicly endorses nuclear energy as essential to achieving universal energy abundance in the Global South, it alters the calculations of investment committees and development finance institutions that have historically viewed nuclear as too politically sensitive or financially risky.
The report’s detailed country-by-country analysis provides the kind of evidence base that investors and policymakers need to move from aspiration to action. It identifies not only the technical feasibility of nuclear deployment but also the institutional, financial and social barriers that must be addressed — governance capacity, policy design, coordination mechanisms and the need for transparent public engagement.
The African dimension
The inclusion of Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa in the study is particularly noteworthy. Nearly 700 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to reliable electricity. The report models how next-generation nuclear energy could meaningfully expand energy access across the continent — a prerequisite for long-term development, industrial growth and human flourishing.
South Africa already operates the continent’s only commercial nuclear power station at Koeberg and has long debated expanding its nuclear fleet, but failed to renew its lapsed 1-2-3 bilateral agreement with the United States. Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda are each at different stages of nuclear readiness, but all three have expressed policy interest in low-carbon technologies as part of their industrialisation strategies. The report’s finding that nuclear supports higher-paid, longer-lasting jobs than many other clean energy technologies adds an economic development dimension that resonates strongly with African policymakers focused on job creation and skills transfer.
For Western governments seeking to counter Russian and Chinese influence on the continent, supporting African nuclear programmes through technology transfer, regulatory assistance and creative financing represents a strategic opportunity of the first order.
Implications for national security policy
The Rockefeller Foundation’s report, read through a national security lens, carries several clear implications.
First, energy security and geopolitical competition are converging in the nuclear sector in ways that demand coordinated Western responses. The countries examined in this report will build nuclear capacity. The only question is whether Western technology and governance standards will shape that build-out, or whether it will be dominated by Russian and Chinese supply chains.
Second, the economics of nuclear in emerging markets are more favourable than previously assumed, particularly when nuclear is modelled as a complement to renewables rather than a competitor. This undermines a generation of advocacy that positioned nuclear and renewables as mutually exclusive and creates space for more pragmatic energy policy discussions.
Third, the role of philanthropy and development finance in de-risking nuclear investment is a genuinely new frontier. The Rockefeller Foundation’s willingness to engage publicly on this issue creates an opening for other foundations, development banks and blended finance vehicles to follow.
Fourth, non-proliferation and nuclear safety standards must be embedded in any expansion strategy from the outset. The report’s emphasis on regulatory readiness and institutional capacity building reflects an understanding that the pace of deployment must not outstrip the development of robust safety and oversight frameworks.
The global energy transition is entering a new phase — one in which the question is no longer whether nuclear energy has a role to play, but how quickly and on whose terms it will be deployed. For the emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the stakes are measured in hundreds of millions of lives that could be lifted out of energy poverty. For Western national security establishments, the stakes are measured in decades of strategic alignment or strategic loss. The Rockefeller Foundation has provided the evidence base. The question now is whether policymakers and investors will act on it.
