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World Nuclear industry Status Report 1992 (1992)

Author	WISE Paris, Greenpeace
Date	May 1992
Classification	6.01.0.20/25 (IMPORTANCE WORLDWIDE)
Front

INTRODUCTION

The nuclear power industry is being squeezed out of the global energy marketplace, 
according to a new survey conducted by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, 
World Information Service on Energy in Paris, and Greenpeace International in 
Amsterdam. These new figures contradict the rosy assessments put out each year 
by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. In fact, it now appears 
that the official IAEA figures released in April 1992 include serious inaccuracies, 
including overstating the numbers of reactors under construction by 27.
According to this survey there were 421 nuclear plants in operation at the beginning 
of 1992, ten fewer than there were at the peak in December 1988. These plants had a 
total generating capacity of 325,942 megawatts - only five per cent above the figure 
reported three years earlier. Between the end of 1990 and 1991, the total installed 
nuclear generating capacity actually declined for the first time since commercial 
nuclear power began in the fifties. At the year end there were 49 nuclear plants under 
active construction world-wide (see Table 1), a quarter as many as a decade ago. (1)
Many of the remaining plants under construction are nearing completion so that in the 
next few years worldwide nuclear expansion will slow to a trickle. It now appears that 
in the year 2000 the world will have at most 360,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity- 
only ten per cent above the current figure. This contrasts with the 4,450,000 
megawatts forecast for the year 2000 by the IAEA in 1974. (2)

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