Is there a Cotwus out there?

I have a dream. Suppose one of the poor nations of the planet, maybe even the poorest, adopted Underwriter Certification, as the system by which she regulates nuclear power. The apparatchiks at the IAEA would scream bloody murder. But the country would calmly remind them that under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), with which we will fully comply, neither the IAEA nor anybody else has any say in how we regulate nuclear power. In fact the treaty explicitly gives us the inalienable right to nuclear power including enrichment and fuel reprocessing. You might want to go back and read the NPT. It says “inalienable”.

We shall use the same system by which the first world regulated ocean transportation and high pressure steam on it way to wealth. Under the NPT, you do have the right to inspect what we are doing to determine that it is for peaceful purposes. Come on in. You might find it interesting. You might even learn something.

Nuclear power plant developers would start flooding into the country. They had finally discovered the fabled land of Cotwus, the COuntry That Wants US. And we are not talking mom and pops. Cotwus's small airport would be crowded with corporate jets. And not far behind them would come the construction teams, followed by Classification Society and TUV inspectors.

But Cotwus would say: hold on, not so fast; everybody get in line. We are going to need a lot of infrastructure to support this effort. We need ports, roads, schools, hotels, maybe even some nice parks. Who's willing to pony up? We also could use a whole lot of cheap electricity, at least some of it free. And by the way, we are going to need a piece of the action, shares in your venture.

Everybody has eight weeks to prepare their bid packages. Among other things, it will have to identify the underwriting syndicate which agrees to insure your plants against radiation exposure according to the terms of the RFP which you all should have received by now. We will then take four weeks to review those packages and select the winning outfit(s) that will be allowed to develop their technology in Cotwus.

12 weeks later the winning teams' crews start to arrive. Cotwus becomes a boom country. When the cheap power begins to flow, all sort of industries including AI server farms flock to Cotwus. Cotwus becomes the richest nation on earth, far eclipsing the Persian Gulf oil exporters. When other countries belatedly decide they want a piece of the action and switch to Underwriter Certification, Cotwus gets even richer due to it ownership in the technologies she fostered.

Gradually electric grids all over the planet switch to nuclear power because its cheaper. Cotwus makes sure that competition is maintained among the winners, aggressively clamping down on any attempt to cartelize the nuclear power business. The resulting competition and technological progress forces nuclear's cost down further and further, until finally green hydrogen based fuels start making serious inroads into non-grid fossil markets. The IPCC's worst case projections for global warming keep getting adjusted downward.

That's my dream. But is there a Cotwus out there?