The scope of the worldwide surge in energy infrastructure deployment defies comprehension. In the last few days, I exchanged emails with P. Uma Shankar, the #3 leader of India’s Energy Ministry – their version of the Department of Energy. We met at GridWeek and my interview with him will appear in the upcoming issue of EnergyBiz magazine. [ You may subscribe at: EnergyBiz. ]

Shankar told me that more than 720 million people live in rural India. About half of the 140 million rural homes they occupy lack any connection to the world of electricity. India is out to totally connect all of them in the next few years.

The challenge is immense. That is why on the generation front India, along with China, are among the vanguard of nations still building out nuclear power. One global group said that the number of nuclear reactors in the world – now standing at 443 – could double in the next 15 years.

Meanwhile, we in the United States are building a handful and waiting to see how the capital markets react to plans to build more and how the environmentalists in this country respond to such initiatives.

The danger is that leadership in nuclear power can rapidly slip away from America and her manufacturers. Don’t think that Japan is hobbled by the disaster at Fukushima and the fallout from it. The New York Times reports that Japanese companies are working on or bidding to work on more than 20 nuclear projects in China, Vietnam, Turkey, Lithuania – and the United States.