Why the battle for nuclear power is becoming a battle for influence

At first glance, a nuclear power plant looks like any other major infrastructure project. A country needs electricity, a foreign company builds a reactor, and the electricity eventually flows into the grid.

But in the nuclear industry, the relationship rarely ends when the plant begins producing electricity. The country that supplies the reactor can remain involved for decades, providing nuclear fuel, training engineers, maintaining control systems, supplying spare parts and, in some cases, managing spent fuel.

That makes the current race to…