nuclear-news

So says last week’s World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014, which so far is getting more attention in business and power-industry publications than in general media…….. The report’s chief author is Mycle Schneider…his consulting clients have included the International Atomic Energy Agency, the French and German environment ministries, the Belgian energy ministry and members of the European Parliament.

The IAEA has distributed his reports in the past; some have been reprinted in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This year’s report has gained attention from U.S. News & World Report, hardly a journal for lefty, anti-nuke bunny-huggers, as well as Power, concerned with “business and technology for the global generation industry.”

And Power’s take on the Schneider analysis, by the way, is that the true decline is even steeper than stated above. It leads with statistics putting nuclear’s share of “global commercial primary energy production” — which does sound like the thing you’d really want to measure — at 4.4 percent last year, “a level not seen since 1984.”………..

• The average age of the world’s operating nuclear fleet has increased to 28.5 years with over 10% of the total having operated for over 40 years.

• While 67 reactors are under construction in 14 different countries, at least 49 of them have encountered construction delays, with eight being “under construction” for more than 20 years.

• “Newcomer countries” have seen delays in development, with Belarus the only nation to have “an actual construction project” while Bangladesh, Jordan, Lithuania, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Vietnam aren’t that far along as yet.

• Capital costs for construction have escalated from roughly $1,000 per installed kilowatt a decade ago to what is expected to be around $8,000 per installed kilowatt for two new units at the Hinkley Point facility in the UK……..

  In 2013 alone, 37 gigawatts of solar and 32 GW of wind capacity were added throughout the world. In contrast, nuclear capacity has declined by 19 GW since 2000. Again, much of that decrease is due to Japanese reactors being placed in LTO, but even with those reactors considered operational, nuclear capacity would only have increased 17.5 GW during the 14-year period………

  Schneider’s own view:

  It is time to match the international nuclear statistics to the industrial reality. The introduction of the new category Long-Term Outage more appropriately represents the operational status of nuclear power plants and provides industry analysts, political decision-makers and investors with a tool that mirrors empirical facts rather than wishful thinking……..

  Industry prefers other stats

  Neither U.S. News nor Power sought industry comment on the Schneider analysis but — interestingly — Climate Central’s blogger Bobby McGill did, and neither spokesman he interviewed actually took issue with Schneider’s methods or measures, including LTO. They just prefer different, more nuke-favorable ones:……… http://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2014/08/nuclear-generating-less-worlds-power-renewables-are-accelerating