Publication Laka-library:
Energy, Electricity And Nuclear Power: Developments And Projections – 25 Years Past And Future
| Author | IAEA |
 |
6-01-0-20-130.pdf |
| Date | December 2007 |
| Classification | 6.01.0.20/130 (IMPORTANCE WORLDWIDE) |
| Front |
From the publication:
1. INTRODUCTION
Although only 30 countries have nuclear power plants in operation,
nuclear electricity contributes about 15% of the world’s electricity generation.
This is as much as the electricity generation by hydropower worldwide, despite
the fact that hydropower is very widely used.
Many industrialized countries generate substantial portions of their
electricity from nuclear power, for example France 78%, Belgium 54%,
Sweden 48%, Republic of Korea 39%, Switzerland 37%, Japan 30%, Finland
28%, USA 19% and UK 18%. Some countries with transitional economies also
have very high contributions of nuclear power in their electricity generation
mixes, for example Lithuania 72%, Slovakia 57%, Ukraine 48%, Bulgaria
44%, Armenia 42%, Slovenia 40%, and Hungary 38%. Among the 30 nuclear
power countries, nine countries generate more than 40% of their total
electricity from nuclear power, while seven additional countries have around a
30% nuclear share in their electricity generation.
The developing countries with nuclear power, by contrast, have only 2–
9% of their electricity generated by nuclear power. In particular, the large
developing countries, Brazil, China and India, generate only 2–3% of their
electricity from nuclear power.
Worldwide, there are 438 nuclear power units in operation (see Table 1).
They constitute 372 GW(e) of installed electricity generating capacity. About
one half of these units are in three industrialized countries: USA 104, France 59
and Japan 55 (see Table 1).
Most of the world’s nuclear power development took place in the 1970s
and 1980s, when the number of nuclear power units in operation increased by
332 units with a total capacity of 301 GW(e). After the Three Mile Island
(TMI) and Chernobyl accidents there was a considerable slowdown in nuclear
power expansion. During the 1990s the number of nuclear power plants in
operation increased by only 19 units, equal to 31 GW(e) of capacity. From 2000
to 2005, 6 nuclear power units totalling 18 GW(e) capacity were connected or
reconnected to the grid. However, nuclear power generation has been
increasing continually as a result of improved performance. In 1990, the world
average annual capacity factor for nuclear power plants was 67.7%. In 2005 this
figure stood at 81.4% — an improvement equivalent to some 74 new nuclear
power units of 1 GW(e) each (see the annex for details of calculation).