Nuclear power declines globally, underscoring the need for more environmentally friendly technologies
The Worldwatch Report:
Nuclear power nears its peak
by Christopher Flavin and Nicholas Lenssen,
August 02, 2025
By the end of 1998, 429 nuclear reactors were operating worldwide. As the new century approaches, energy planners around the world are discovering that the "energy source of the future" - nuclear power - is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Most countries have brought the construction of nuclear plants to a halt, and some are debating how fast to phase out the plants they now have.
After growing more than 700 percent in the 1970s and 140 percent in the 1980s, the industry's total generating capacity has so far increased only five percent during the 1990s. In the last decade, nuclear has gone from being the world's fastest-growing energy source to its second slowest. In 1998, capacity fell by 230 megawatts. Wind power, by contrast, rose by 2,200 megawatts.
By the end of 1998, 429 nuclear reactors were operating worldwide - one fewer than five years earlier. All told, these plants generate 343,086 megawatts of power, or just under 17 percent of the world's electricity. Construction is taking place at 33 new reactors, but at least 14 of these are unlikely ever to be completed. Although global capacity will probably rise for another few years, it will almost certainly decline beginning in 2003 at the latest, as the closure of older, uneconomic reactors accelerates.
In Germany and Sweden, the political debate is not about whether, but about how quickly, to shut down the existing nuclear plants. In Canada and the United States, safety problems and economic pressures are leading electric power companies to shut down some of their nuclear plants earlier than planned. And in the last year, even France - the most pro-nuclear European country - has adopted a moratorium on further construction.
Although modest additional nuclear capacity is likely in East Asia in the next few years, it will not be sufficient to prevent the global output from this industry from peaking at less than one-tenth of the 4.5 million megawatts that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency predicted for the year 2000 back in 1974.
This massive shortfall stems in part from the safety problems revealed by the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Additional difficulties have stemmed from the worldwide failure to develop a safe, permanent means of disposing of long-lived nuclear waste. As a result, public opinion has turned strongly against nuclear power in most countries, making it difficult if not impossible to build additional plants.
The industry's biggest problems are economic. Costs rose dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, as operators struggled to deal with unanticipated safety problems. In the United States, for example, the cost of a plant shot from $200 per kilowatt in 1972 to $3,000 per kilowatt in 1985. Meanwhile, since the early 1990s, the cost of other new power technologies has fallen dramatically - offering clean, economical alternatives to the atom.
The technology that dominates the global power market today is the combined-cycle natural gas plant, which uses combustion turbines similar to those of jet engines. It costs roughly $700 per kilowatt, less than one-third the cost of nuclear plants. As nations around the world move to turn their monopoly electric systems into private, competitive businesses, they are finding that the power industry has lost interest in the nuclear option, which is economically obsolete.
In the aftermath of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the first market to evaporate was in the United States, where no new plants have been ordered since the disaster, and where nuclear generating capacity is now lower than it was a decade ago. U.S. power companies have not only stopped building nuclear power plants; they have closed five reactors since 1996 that had become too expensive to operate. Meanwhile, seven of Canada's 21 reactors have been "laid up" and are unlikely to operate again.
For the U.S. sector, the worst may be yet to come. Wall Street analysts and research firms believe that as many as one-third of US reactors are vulnerable to being shut down over the next five years, virtually ensuring that the nuclear share of power will fall well below 20 percent. Investors are sending a clear message that nuclear power is too expensive to compete as electricity markets become more competitive.
Some U.S. power companies have attempted to sell off their reactors, though only two have found buyers so far - at rock-bottom prices. The twin of the reactor that melted at Three Mile Island (TMI), for example, was sold in 1998 for $23 million. This is just 5 cents for every dollar of book value, or 1 percent of the replacement cost. The Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts was sold in 1999 for $80 million, of which $67 million was for fuel.
In France, which produces more than three-fourths of its electricity from nuclear power, dramatic changes are afoot. A moratorium on additional nuclear plant construction was adopted by the French government last year, and the environment minister, Dominique Voynet, has called for making the ban permanent. A December 1998 poll found that only 7 percent of French citizens thought that developing nuclear power should be the top energy priority, compared to more than 60 percent who said the priority should be renewable energy. The state-owned utility, Electricite de France, which has in the past put virtually all its efforts into nuclear, has begun to invest in wind power.
In Germany, where the previous government shut down the nuclear power plants only in eastern Germany, the Social Democrat/Green government elected in October 1998 plans to phase out the 19 nuclear power plants in the western states that produce one-third of the country's power. The German power industry has vigorously opposed the government's plans, and the pace at which the country's reactors will be closed remains uncertain.
In Sweden, the coalition government first elected in 1994, on a platform that included plans to begin shutting down the country's reactors, is moving forward on its pledge. However, the owner of the first targeted reactor, Sydkraft, has taken the government to court and has delayed closure at least through this year. The Netherlands closed one of its two reactors in 1997, with the other one scheduled to be shut in 2004.
In the countries that make up the former East Bloc, including Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine, nuclear power peaked a decade ago with the fall of the Berlin wall - and has since fallen by 10 percent. Some 68 reactors now operate, and only four more are under active construction. No new construction has started since economic reforms began. Although some of these countries hope to expand their nuclear industries, they face financial limitations and strong public opposition.
Asia remains the last stronghold for the nuclear industry, with 88 reactors operating and 26 under construction, although even here a slowdown is evident. Japan, which obtains 35 percent of its electricity from the atom, has only two reactors under construction, with work starting on one of them in 1999 - the first new plant approved in 10 years. Citizens in rural areas have strongly resisted construction of new plants, with some communities passing referenda prohibiting additional units.
South Korea, together with China, has the world's most active construction program, though the twin blows of political change and economic crisis have slowed down the pace and probably ensured that the nuclear share of electricity will plateau at the current level. The country's economic crisis depressed growth in electric power, and has driven up the costs of financing capital-intensive projects such as the six nuclear plants now being built. As in Japan, local communities have taken increasingly strong positions against building more reactors.
Taiwan is building two reactors, but these are widely regarded as the last two likely to be built in that country. Efforts to create commercial nuclear power industries in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam have all failed in recent years. India launched construction on a new project (its first since 1990) last year, but the Hindu nationalist government fell in early 1999, leaving the country's nuclear plans in doubt. Today nuclear energy only supplies two percent of India's power.
China, like South Korea, has six plants under construction, but its plans are more ambitious. China currently intends to go from the three reactors it operates today (supplying about 1 percent of the country's power) to 11 by 2006, and more than 50 by 2020. China's leaders are concerned about the country's heavy dependence on highly polluting coal, and its nuclear weapons establishment provides a strong base of political support for the industry.
China's ambitious program will likely fall short, however, as have those of other developing countries that have tried unsuccessfully to develop nuclear power in the past two decades. China faces foreign exchange limits, which will further constrain its nuclear ambitions, and early this year the government announced that it will delay additional plant starts. For the long run, China has a wealth of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, that are likely to be the best alternatives to fossil fuels.
The same logic is likely to prevail at the global level. Although nuclear industry supporters argued at the climate negotiations last year in Buenos Aires that the problem of fossil fuel-induced climate change will necessitate a return to the atom, few governments - and even fewer private companies - seem to be buying the argument.
Instead, they have responded to the climate change challenge by investing in new energy technologies such as solar energy and wind power. Although these new energy technologies provide tiny amounts of power today, they are already growing at the kind of double-digit rates that nuclear power enjoyed in the 1970s. And renewable energy promises to be immune from the kind of physical and economic meltdowns that crippled the nuclear power industry.
Christopher Flavin is senior vice president at the Worldwatch Institute. Nicholas Lenssen is a private energy analyst and a former senior researcher at the Institute.
Article reprinted from the STAR Foundation website: www.noradiation.org
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