nuclear-news

The rise and fall of nuclear power, in 6 charts, Vox Brad Plumer on August 1, 2014,  @bradplumer brad@vox.com Nuclear power is slowly going out of style. Back in 1996, atomic energy supplied 17.6 percent of the world’s electricity. Today that’s down to just 10.8 percent — and it could drop even further in the years ahead.MANY REACTORS ARE CLOSING — AND NEW REACTORS HAVE BEEN BOGGED DOWN BY DELAYSThat’s according to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014, which charts the rise and fall of nuclear power over time.

The upshot is that significantly fewer nuclear reactors are in operation today than was the case in 2010 — in large part due to the shutdown of 48 reactors in Japan after the Fukushima disaster. On the flip side, only China currently has plans to massively ramp up reactor construction. And new reactors in many countries, from Finland to Vietnam, are falling victim to delays and cost overruns.

That’s not encouraging news for efforts to tackle global warming. The proportion of energy that the world gets from carbon-free sources has stagnated since 1999 — in part because of the nuclear industry’s struggles. And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that reducing emissions will be significantly more expensive if nuclear power’s not available.

Here are six key charts from the report:

1) Nuclear energy production has been falling since 2006……..

All told, the report notes that 49 of those reactors under construction have met with significant delays, ranging from several months to several years. Nuclear reactors are expensive and take a long time to build. They can face all sorts of obstacles in the meantime — from cost overruns to complex licensing processes to regulatory hurdles to popular opposition (the latter recently blocked construction of two reactors in Taiwan).

“Past experience shows that simply having an order for a reactor, or even having a nuclear plant at an advanced stage of construction, is no guarantee for grid connection and power production,” the report notes.

5) Just 14 countries have plans to build new nuclear reactors……..

all of the world’s current reactors will have to retire — as the chart above shows, the report pegs this date at sometime in the 2050s. That means the world will have to build around 394 additional reactors between now and then just to maintain existing capacity.And if nuclear power is to expand above current levels, we’d have to build more than that……….http://www.vox.com/2014/8/1/5958943/nuclear-power-rise-fall-six-charts