President Biden’s visit to Asia represented a significant government level interest in cooperating with allied nations in Asia on the topics of clean energy partnership and cooperation. While the cost of nuclear technologies is relatively high, the cost of national security and energy security imperatives through nuclear energy are even higher. Given the current market dominance by Russia and China in the global nuclear market, critical opportunities lie ahead for US-Korea cooperation in nuclear energy and international nuclear commerce as a way to reduce the global geopolitical influence of nations like Russia and China in new and emerging energy markets. A number of potential cooperative models exist to allow US and Korea to effectively compete against state owned nuclear enterprises of Russia and China. However, significant effort will remain in overcoming the challenges in the US-Korea nuclear cooperation, primarily with the IP dispute between KEPCO and Westinghouse. Given that this dispute can be resolved, there are a number of opportunities in third country markets that the US and Korea can cooperate to export nuclear technologies to.
