World Nuclear Industry Status Report
2013 report
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| Author |
Mycle Schneider Antony Froggatt |
|---|---|
| Subject | Nuclear power industry |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report that explores the global challenges facing the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, an independent energy expert, and gives a detailed overview of the global nuclear industry and special analysis on key events and trends.
In January a fully interactive visualization on nuclear power construction was launched. This contains information on the 754 reactors that are or have been under-construction since 1951. The Global Nuclear Power Database is hosted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
As of the middle of 2016, 31 countries were operating nuclear reactors for energy purposes. Nuclear power plants generated 2,441 net terawatt-hours (TWh or billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity in 2015 , a 1.3 percent increase, but still less than in 2000 and 8.2 percent below the historic peak nuclear generation in 2006. 59 reactors are considered here as under construction, three fewer than WNISR reported a year ago, and eight less than in mid-2014. Eighty percent of all new-build units (47) are in Asia and Eastern Europe, of which 22 in China alone.
Globally, the nuclear industry’s situation continued to deteriorate in 2015, except in China. Eight out of the ten nuclear power reactor startups in 2015 were in China.
The latest report, written by Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt with contributions of four other experts from Japan, the UK and France, says that the nuclear industry was struggling with grave problems prior to the Fukushima accident, but that the impact of the accident has become increasingly visible. Global electricity generation from nuclear plants dropped by a historic 7 percent in 2012, adding to the record drop of 4 percent in 2011.
The 427 operating reactors worldwide, as of 1 July 2013, are 17 lower than the peak in 2002. The nuclear share in the world’s power generation declined steadily from a historic peak of 17 percent in 1993 to about 10 percent in 2012. The report details a range of restart scenarios for Japan's nuclear reactor fleet which, as of September 2013, were all shutdown. Nuclear power’s share of global commercial primary energy production plunged to 4.5 percent, a level last seen in 1984.
Besides an extensive update on nuclear economics, the report also includes an assessment of the major challenges at the Fukushima nuclear site, in particular the highly contaminated water on site. This water contained in the basement of reactors and in storage tanks contains 2.5 times the total amount of cesium-137 released at the Chernobyl accident.
The report says that China, Germany and Japan, three of the world’s four largest economies, as well as India, now generate more power from renewables than from nuclear power. For the first time in 2012 China and India generated more power from wind alone than from nuclear plants, while in China solar electricity generation grew by 400 percent in one year.
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