The proposed U.S. framework is technology-inclusive and risk-informed. Its value will depend on implementation, applicant discipline and rules that survive first contact with commercial-scale machines.
The new federal roadmap is most useful when read not as a promise of power by a date, but as a specification for the facilities, components and evidence America must buy.
America is favourite to build the first credible commercial-style pilot. China is better placed to build the second, tenth and fiftieth plants. The latter is the race that matters.