FOCUS 30 MARCH-APRIL 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A BRIEF HISTORY OF The United States is locked in a nuclear energy race against Russia and China—a race to control advanced nuclear technologies, markets, and supply chains; assert energy dominance in the era of revolutionizing artificial intelligence; and maintain global nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation norms. Or so goes the prevailing narrative. It is true that the United States urgently needs to make its nuclear industry more competitive than it is today. Russia is dominating global civil nuclear exports. China is set to overtake the U.S. in nuclear energy capacity by 2030. For all the talk in America about advanced and small modular reactors, China is ahead in actually building them. In short, the competition is real. It is by no means, however, the whole story. For nearly half a century following President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit, the United States and China cooperated, rather than Yanliang Pan is a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where his work focuses on nuclear energy, nuclear supply, international nuclear cooperation, and emerging technology issues. The story of U.S.-China nuclear engagement illustrates how steady science and technology diplomacy benefit both countries as well as global security. BY YANLIANG PAN competed, in nuclear technology and science—from fundamental nuclear and high-energy physics to fission and fusion. The United States helped lay the foundation of China’s nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation governance. To this day, U.S. technology permeates China’s conventional and advanced reactors—technology China acquired not through theft but through formal collaboration with U.S. companies and national laboratories under the Department of Energy (DOE). What’s more, there was a time when China’s nuclear weapon establishment welcomed U.S. access to its most sensitive facilities for security, nonproliferation, and arms control collaboration. Barring short episodes of friction, the story of U.S.-China nuclear engagement is one that illustrates how steady science and technology diplomacy could benefit both countries as well as global security. Early Cooperation The story began in November 1972, when the director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Wolfgang Panofsky, received a Chinese scientist by the name of Zhang Wenyu, the director of Beijing’s Institute of Atomic Energy. The institute had contributed critical research, components, and fissile material feedstock to China’s nuclear weapon program in the 1950s and U.S.-China Nuclear Diplomacy NUCLEAR SECURITY
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